This is the first scientific domestic publication and the first translation into Russian of the work “The Canary, or the Book about the conquest of the Canary Islands and the conversion of their inhabitants to the Christian faith,” compiled by two Norman clerics P. Bonthier and J. Le Verrier at the beginning of the 15th century. It describes the expedition of French knights under the command of Baron Jean de Betancourt (1402 - 1405), which ended with the conquest and colonization of the Canary archipelago - an event that became the starting point of the history of the Great Geographical Discoveries and the first link in the history of the creation of European colonial empires. The book contains two introductory articles (“Jean de Bettencourt and his time,” which characterizes the Age of Discovery and Bettencourt’s biography, and “The Canary Book in History and Literature”), detailed comments and notes, as well as an appendix including translations of five chapters of the “Treatise on Navigation and Modern Travels” by a French scientist of the first half of the 17th century. Pierre Bergeron. For historians and literary scholars, as well as a wide range of readers - political scientists, philologists, journalists, cultural experts.