[1] After a brief period in Pavia, where he taught theology between 1308 and 1313, he returned to Milan, where he lectured on various subjects, including ethics, rhetoric and economics.

His book, Cronica universalis, written sometime between 1339 and 1345, includes a passage in which he describes Iceland, Greenland, and Markland:[3] Further northwards there is the Ocean, a sea with many islands where a great quantity of peregrine falcons and gyrfalcons live.

They dwell in subterranean houses and do not venture to speak loudly or to make any noise, for fear that wild animals hear and devour them.

From all these facts it is clear that there are settlements at the Arctic pole.Until 2021, when this passage was discovered, there had been no evidence that anyone outside Northern Europe had heard of America before Columbus’s voyage in 1492.

Paolo Chiesa, a professor of Medieval Latin Literature at Milan University, believes these accounts of the New World likely came from seafarers in the port city of Genoa.