Making a Global Image of the World: Science, Cosmography and Navigation in Times of the First Circumnavigation of Earth, 1492-1522

INTRODUCTION: MAGELLAN’S VOYAGE AND EARLY MODERN SCIENCE

Last year, 2019, was the 500th anniversary of the departure of the Magellan-Elcano expedition, the famous voyage that went around the globe, always sailing westwards. 2022 will be five centuries since its return. The expedition departed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) on September 20th 1519 heading west in pursuit of the Moluccas Islands, with five ships -old and in bad condition-, and returned almost three years later,¹ Initially intended to last two years. on September 6th 1522, from the east with only one ship, the Victoria. The return of the Victoria to Seville shredded once and for all the geographical schemes of Aristotle and Ptolemy and empirically configured a new world map (Portuondo, 2019Portuondo, M. M. (2019) “Un mundo nuevo: La revolución en la geografía y la historia natural.” In: A. Fernández Torres, ed., El viaje más largo. La primera vuelta al mundo. Madrid: Sociedad Mercantil Estatal de Acción Cultural, pp. 329-335.). This event was reflected by the famous Genoese cartographer Battista Agnese in one of his world maps of 1544 (Fig. 1).² Most of the maps that are included in this article have been majestically reproduced in Moreno Martín (2019a). On the maps from the voyage, see also (Manso, 2019a; Moreno Martín, 2019b; Castro, Hamon and Thomaz, 2007). Spanish figures such as Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, Pedro de Medina, and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, but also foreigners as Giovanni Battista Ramusio, among others, left a record of this historical episode.³ In the “Discorso sopra il viaggio fatto da gli Spagnouli intorno al mondo” which precedes the publication in Italian of Transylvanus famous letter on the Moluccas, Ramusio stated that Magellan-Elcano’s expedition was: “one of the greatest and most remarkable that there has ever been, and one at which those great philosophers of old, hearing of it, would have been stupified and beside themselves.” Stanley (2010, p. 182). D’Anghiera also praised the feat and alluded to the Greeks: “What is most strange, and what had never before been attempted since the beginning of the world, is that this ship followed the entire parallel and made the circuit of the globe. If a Greek had accomplished this what would not the Greeks have written about his incredible feat!” Anghiera (1912, p. 166). The same spirit led Pedro de Medina to write the following words in chapter XXV of his Libro de las grandezas y cosas memorables de España: “This is such a great thing [to go around the world] that after God created the world, it was never done, nor thought, nor even believed to be possible.” Medina (1549, f. 28r). Author’s translation. In spite of his praise, Medina incurs later (chapter 49) in a series of inaccuracies about Magellan’s expedition. Likewise, in chapter I of book XX of the second part of the Historia general y natural de las Indias, Fernández de Oviedo praises the feat of the ship Victoria affirming that it was the “first and only that sailed the whole globe [...]. The truth of the thing is that there is not known nor written, nor another similar seen, nor one so famous in the world.” Fernández de Oviedo (1852, p. 21).

Generally, this event has been considered one of the great deeds of humanity, those that begin a new era.⁴ For a historiographic review of Magellan and the expedition, see Torodash (1971, 1995). However, this has never been the case for the hegemonic historiography of modern science.⁵ See the classic works on modern science and the Scientific Revolution by Butterfield (1949) and Koyré (1962), as well as the more recent works by Shapin (1996) and Dear (2001). Not even explicitly for those who put forward alternative explanations -more social and artisanal- of the emergence of modern science (Zilsel, 1942Zilsel, E. (1942) “The Sociological Roots of Science.” American Journal of Sociology, 47 (4), pp. 544-562. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/218962 ). Therefore, it seems that this voyage and modern science were distant phenomena. It seems that being modern was a distinctive label belonging only to natural philosophers and observational astronomers who gave new explanations about the structure of the universe and not to those who discovered new worlds or circled the globe guided by the stars. Only a few isolated voices expressed the importance of going beyond the realm of physical-mathematical sciences to address other decisive contexts of social change in modern Europe, such as cosmography and navigation (Hooykaas, 1987Hooykaas, R. (1987) “The Rise of Modern Science: When and Why?” The British Journal for the History of Science, 20, pp. 453-473 . doi: https://doi.org/ 10.1017/s0007087400024225 ).

The aim of the expedition was to find a sea passage in South America that would allow reaching the lucrative Spice Islands, an Indonesian archipelago located in the Pacific, the largest ocean on the planet, so large that it “went off the map.”⁶ Extract from Una casa en la arena (1956-1966) by Pablo Neruda. Cited in Serrera (2019, p. 324). This required measurements to determine the distance of the Moluccas from the Tordesillas meridian. To do this, the expedition led by the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan crossed the Atlantic, after passing through the Canary Islands, heading for South America in the hope of finding this passage and reaching the Moluccas by crossing the Pacific. This passage would open up a new commercial route with the East, always sailing in the area of the globe that was under Castilian jurisdiction as established in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 (Moreno Madrid and Leitão, 2020Moreno Madrid, J. M. and Leitão, H. (2020) Atravessando a Porta do Pacífico. Roteiros e Relatos da Travessia do Estreito de Magalhães, 1520-1620. Lisboa: By the Book.). It would also end Portugal’s commercial monopoly in Southeast Asia -which had in turn put an end to the Arab monopoly on spices in the same region (Díaz-Trechuelo, 1994Díaz-Trechuelo, L. (1994) “El Tratado de Tordesillas y su proyección en el Pacífico.” Revista Española del Pacífico, 4, pp. 11-22.).

This voyage has been interpreted on several occasions as a maritime adventure into the unknown led by brave, tough and fervent Catholic men with modest scientific knowledge (Higueras Rodríguez, 2018Higueras Rodríguez, M. D. (2018) La vuelta al mundo de Magallanes-Elcano: la aventura de lo imposible, 1519-1522. Madrid/Barcelona: Ministerio de Defensa, CSIC and Lunwerg.). However, what can be deduced from the documents related to the voyage is that this expedition was carefully designed by the imperial administration and was to be carried out based on the science of cosmography and the art of navigation, despite the fact that in most cases both depended on political decisions.⁷ In this article, I will follow the English version of the sources of the expedition found in Stanley (2010), with the exception of the Ginés de Mafra’s narrative and some letters. See Elcano et al. (2018). In this sense, the expedition of Magellan-Elcano was also and, above all, a voyage of science and technology from day one of its preparation. In order to carry it out, it was necessary to incorporate among the crew “men of great science and experience” -as it was said in the nautical jargon- and to equip them with a significant number of scientific data, techniques and instruments. New regiments, nautical charts, astrolabes, quadrants, cross-staffs, compasses, and hourglasses, among many other devices, were produced. During the voyage, pilots and astronomers had to make use, as was usual in transoceanic journeys, of the observation and measurement techniques typical of astronomical navigation, that is, they had to calculate the height of the stars with the astrolabe to determine their latitude. This was a decisive aspect for the modern world (Albuquerque, 1988Albuquerque, L. (1988) Astronomical Navigation. Lisboa: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses.).

In the process of applying observational astronomy to ocean navigation techniques, it was necessary both to adapt the complex astronomical instruments already in existence for use on board and to simplify the methods of observation. The old astronomical astrolabes and quadrants, converted into nautical instruments during the fifteenth century, were limited to measuring angles to determine latitude. It was necessary to observe the height of the North Star during the night and to determine the meridian height of the Sun during the day. At an earlier stage, around the middle of the 15th century, the Portuguese pilots measured the height of the North Star to know the displacement of the ship in a north-south direction from some point of reference. To do so, it was necessary to consult the North Star regiment. In a second phase of ocean navigation, the value of latitude could be known directly through simple rules that explained how to correct the height of the North Star, measured at sea or on land. This procedure became ineffective as soon as the ships headed for the southern hemisphere, where the North Star was progressively lost on the horizon. Faced with this inconvenience there was another way to find latitude: the observation of the Sun at noon. The observer could know its latitude thanks to the values of the height of the Sun over the horizon and the solar declensions. For it was enough to have the regiment of the declination of the Sun with tables of declinations for every day of the year. Taking into account that during the equinox the sun at noon reaches its zenith (the highest point in the sky from the point of view of the observer) being situated perpendicular to the equator (at 90º of height), then it was enough to make a simple operation to know the latitude. It was enough to subtract at 90º the height of the sun at noon from the position of the navigator who was making the observation. With this data, the pilots were able to determine their latitude at any point in the planet (Gaspar, 2012aGaspar, J. A. (2012a) “De la Méditerranée à l’océan: nouveaux problèmes, nouvelles solutions.” In: C. Hofmann, H. Richard and E. Vagnon, eds., L’Âge d’or dês cartes marines. Quand l’Europe découvrait le monde. Paris: Seuil & Biblithèque nationale de France, pp. 126-130.). This was not something that was within the reach of the ancients.

This knowledge was already available in Magellan’s time and had a long tradition. On the one hand, were known the solar tables of the Almanach Perpetuum (1496) by Abraham Zacuto, which served as models for the nautical tables made in Portugal. On the other hand, the two procedures to find the latitude were exposed in two anonymous navigation manuals at the beginning of the 16^th century, the two oldest known Portuguese nautical guides: the Regimento do astrolábio e do quadrante (ca. 1509) -known as Guia náutico de Munique- and the Regimento da declinação do Sol (ca. 1517) -also known as Guia náutico de Évora (Albuquerque, 1965Albuquerque, L. (1965) Os guias náuticos de Munique e Évora. Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, Lisbon.).

Astronomical navigation changed the way in which to know the position of a ship in the middle of the ocean. The uncertain “point of fantasy” used in the Mediterranean, based on magnetic course and estimated distances, gave way to the “set point”, based on magnetic course and calculation of observed latitudes. Both points provided the navigator with the position of the ship. However, these two methods resulted in significant errors when the physical phenomenon of magnetic declination, variable in time and space, was present. Representing the places within areas affected by magnetic declination according to their true latitudes and directions in relation to other places required a new cartographic model: latitude charts whose reference points had been incorporated according to observed latitudes (Gaspar and Sánchez, 2013Gaspar, J. A. and Sánchez, A. (2013) “Do Mediterrâneo ao mundo. Os alvores da cartografia ibérica do Renascimento.” In: H. Leitão, ed., 360º Ciência descoberta, Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, pp. 64-91.).

In an attempt to strengthen the link between these scientific developments of maritime expansion and the modern world, the sociologist of science David Turnbull highlighted -in a widely cited article- the close relationship between cartography and modern science. Turnbull stated that the State and cartography created the conditions of possibility for modern science through what he calls “the assemblage of local knowledge” in new spaces, one of the fundamental characteristics of the production of scientific knowledge. To this end, he claimed the pioneering role of technical institutions on the Iberian Peninsula, such as the Casa da Mina in Lisbon and the Casa de la Contratación in Seville, which he considers to be the first scientific institutions in Europe (Turnbull, 1996Turnbull, D. (1996) “Cartography and Science in Early Modern Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces.” Imago Mundi, 48, pp. 5-24. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085699608592830 ).⁸ Turnbull was referring to the Armazéns da Guiné e Índia (Wharehouse of Guinea and India), which was the institution where the cartographic activities of the Portuguese Crown were concentrated.

Following the trail of Turnbull’s article, the present paper reconstructs the political motivations, the institutional framework and the technical-scientific developments that led to the realization of Magellan’s voyage in 1519. More specifically, this text seeks to explain how the nautical and cosmographic knowledge possessed by Magellan and his men was developed and organized, as well as to show in what administrative and institutional structure it was sustained. In short, it tries to make explicit how this local nautical and cosmographic knowledge were assembled -using Turnbull’s terms- in new spaces of science. The aim is to analyse the conditions of possibility of the first modern voyage in 16th century Europe.⁹ Isabel Soler has highlighted the value of great voyages of dis covery, such as Magellan’s, for the birth of the modern world (Soler, 2015). In this sense, Soler recovers - free of over-blown patriotism - the homage that Oliveira Martins made to the Iberian civilization in the context of modern European history (Martins, 1879). An argument that has been continued more recently by Fernández-Armesto (2010) or Insua (2019, pp. 93 and 170), among others. This voyage generated a global image of the world that allowed access to a geographical understanding of our planet (Portuondo, 2019, p. 329Portuondo, M. M. (2019) “Un mundo nuevo: La revolución en la geografía y la historia natural.” In: A. Fernández Torres, ed., El viaje más largo. La primera vuelta al mundo. Madrid: Sociedad Mercantil Estatal de Acción Cultural, pp. 329-335.). This was, as Turnbull would say, a scientific task and, without a doubt, a very modern one.

A GEOPHYSICAL PROBLEM: HOW TO START THE CAKE

Magellan’s voyage was presented as a response to a political-diplomatic and economic problem of great dimensions that was basically a problem of geophysical order: the Iberian distribution of the world. This problem went back, at least, to the Treaty of Alcaçovas-Toledo signed on September 4, 1479 between the Catholic Kings and Afonso V of Portugal. This treaty regulated the navigation in the African Atlantic and distributed the territories of the areas of influence of both kingdoms. The signing of the treaty made Portugal sovereign of the Atlantic islands and the lands of the African coast, that is, Guinea and its gold mines, the islands of Madeira, Puerto Santo, the Desertas, the Azores and the islands of Cape Verde. For its part, Castile would exercise its sovereignty over the Canary Islands, leaving open the possibility of exploring the western Atlantic.¹⁰ About the Treaty of Alcaçovas-Toledo, see Varela Marcos (1996, pp. 109-111), Rumeu de Armas (1992, pp. 263-265), and Castañeda (1973, pp. 103-115). On the Portuguese-Spanish rivalries before the Treaty of Tordesillas, see Pérez Embid (1948). See also Hampe Martínez (1999).

The Treaty of Alcaçovas-Toledo prevented Castilian sailors from sailing in the waters of the Atlantic that were south of the parallel that passed through the Canaries, but instead they could do so north of that parallel and, more importantly, to the west. This regulation always took place at a geographical and spatial level and, in short, in a scientific-technical register. The truce, which was premised on the agreement, for the rights of the Atlantic would last until March 1493, when Christopher Columbus returned to the peninsula with the news of his discovery.¹¹ On Columbus and the Court’s demands for the construction of a map showing the new discoveries, see Fernández Navarrete (1853) , Colón (1986), and Varela (1988). From then on, the aforementioned Iberian division of the world concentrated on an even more technical problem, the drawing of the demarcation line proposed by Columbus. This line was extracted from the Alexandrian bulls of 1493 - clearly favourable to Castile¹² The second of the four Alexandrian bulls, the Inter Caetera bull granted on 4 May 1493 by Alexander VI to the Catholic Monarchs, legitimised the ownership of the new territories. The new text conferred on Castile, by apostolic authority, the donation, constitution, and allocation of: “all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic pole, namely the south, no matter whether the said mainlands and islands are found and to be found in the direction of India or towards any other quarter, the said line to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde. With this proviso however that none of the islands and mainlands, found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered, beyond that said line towards the west and south, be in the actual possession of any Christian king or prince” (Remesal, 1994, p. 135). Thus, the first bull proclaimed the sovereignty of Castile and the second defined the areas over which it could exercise that sovereign power. On the 26th of September 1493, Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella the bull Dudum siquidem, the fourth and last of the Alexandrian bulls, which extended the donation to Castile of all those Asian territories that were discovered from the West. See Gutiérrez Escudero (1990, pp. 130-132). The logical disagreement of John II would become apparent the following year in Tordesillas.- and, consequently, from the Treaty of Tordesillas signed the following year by the monarchs of Portugal and Castile.¹³ For the historical process that took place between Columbus’ discovery and the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas, see Sánchez (2009, pp. 3-6). This event, which began in 1479, would give rise to a long dispute between the two maritime powers which would be settled much later with the unratified Treaty of Limits of 1750 and formalised in 1777 with the Treaty of San Ildefonso (Juan and Ulloa, 1972Juan, J. and Ulloa, A. (1972) [1749] Dissertacion historica, y geographica sobre el Meridiano de Demarcación entre los Dominios de España, y Portugal, y los parages por donde passa en la America Meridional, conforme à los Tratados, y derechos de cada Estado, y las mas seguras, y modernas observaciones. Madrid: Instituto Histórico de Marina. ). This agreement was intended to forever put an end to the disagreements between the two crowns and to establish the borders (boundaries) between Spain and Portugal in South America.¹⁴ For Alexandrian Bulls, see also Linden (1916), Pino Ycaza (1945), and Rumeu de Armas (1992, pp. 268-269). On the geographical and political implications of the Tordesillas meridian, see Manzano (1942), Pérez de Tudela (1985), Cerezo Martínez (1994b); and Trueba and Llavador (1997).

In the months leading up to the signing of the treaty, the dispute focused on determining what Columbus had discovered and where exactly it was. A map was required to show the partition line. To do this, the Catholic Kings requested the knowledge of expert cosmographers, such as Jaume Ferrer (Cerezo Martínez, 1994a, p. 176Cerezo Martínez, R. (1994a) La cartografía náutica española en los siglos XIV, XV y XVI. Madrid: CSIC., 1994b, pp. 512-513Cerezo Martínez, R. (1994b) “El meridiano y el antimeridiano de Tordesillas en la geografía, la náutica y la cartografía.” Revista de Indias, 54 (202), pp. 509-542. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/revindias.1994.i202.1118 ; Gil, 1998Gil, J. (1998) “Diplomacia y cartografía en el Tratado de Tordesillas.” In: Limites do Mar e da Terra: Actas VIII Reunião Internacional de História da Náutica e Hidrografia. Cascais: Patrimonia, pp. 153-162. ; Millás Vallicrosa, 1991Millás Vallicrosa, J. M. (1991) [1949] “El cosmógrafo Jaime Ferrer de Blanes.” In: Estudios sobre historia de la ciencia española. Barcelona: CSIC, pp. 455-468.). The desired map -today lost-, in this case a nautical chart, arrived at the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella months before the meeting in Tordesillas (Varela Marcos, 1994Varela Marcos, J. (1994) “La cartografía del segundo viaje de Colón y su decisiva influencia en el Tratado de Tordesillas.” In: J. Varela, ed., El Tratado de Tordesillas en la cartografía histórica. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, pp. 85-108., 1996, p. 85Varela Marcos, J. (1996) El Tratado de Tordesillas en la política atlántica castellana. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid. ). Not without discrepancies, Spanish and Portuguese historians have defended that both this chart and the chart -also lost- sent by Pêro da Covilhã to the Portuguese monarch John II from Cairo in 1491 contributed to the layout of the Tordesillas meridian (Cerezo Martínez, 1994b, p. 519Cerezo Martínez, R. (1994b) “El meridiano y el antimeridiano de Tordesillas en la geografía, la náutica y la cartografía.” Revista de Indias, 54 (202), pp. 509-542. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/revindias.1994.i202.1118 ; Cortesão, 1975, p. 51Cortesão, A. (1975) “As mais antigas cartografia e descrição das Molucas.” In: A. T. da Mota, ed., A viagem de Fernão de Magalhães e a questão das Molucas: actas do II Colóquio Luso-Espanhol de História Ultramarina. Lisboa: Junta de Investigações Científicas do Ultramar, pp. 49-74. ).

The voyage of 1519 was a direct consequence of all these disagreements and the Treaty of Tordesillas signed by the Catholic Kings and John II of Portugal on June 7, 1494. In this famous treaty, several relevant aspects were agreed upon that would affect Magellan’s expedition. The Spanish Crown undertook not to send ships to the eastern part. The Portuguese Crown did the same for the western part. Any Castilian explorer who found new lands in an area dominated by the Portuguese flag or any Portuguese explorer who found new territories in the area of Castilian jurisdiction had to notify the discovery as soon as possible so that it could be conferred on its sovereign. It was also agreed to draw up a map with the parting line, a zero meridian that would cut in a straight line the Atlantic from north to south at 370 leagues west of the islands of Cape Verde, presumably from the island of San Antón, the westernmost one.¹⁵ In the document, the King of Portugal asked the Kings of Castile “that a boundary or straight line be determined and drawn north and south, from pole to pole, on the said ocean sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic pole. This boundary or line shall be drawn straight, as aforesaid, at a distance of three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.” Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Patronato Real, 1, N. 6. R. 1. See also Tratado de Tordesillas (1973, p. 58) and Fonseca and Ruiz Asencio (1995). On the other seven points of the agreement, see Tratado de Tordesillas (1973, pp. 55-61). This meridian line would simply reflect the territorial interests of both crowns. The lands east of the line would belong to Portugal and the rest to Castile. The line of demarcation would be fixed within a maximum period of ten months and for its determination, two or more caravels would be sent with astrologers and sailors who would go from Gran Canaria to Cape Verde in order to measure the 370 leagues to the west. However, in 1494 there was still no reliable method to determine the longitude accurately, as Transylvanus recalls.¹⁶ “As yet, nothing of the longitude had been clearly proved” (Stanley, 2010, p. 187). The establishment of a unit of measurement to compute the distance should not have posed serious problems at first, but it would cause them later with the discovery of the Moluccas.

Two nautical planispheres from 1502, the so-called Cantino planisphere and King-Hamy planisphere, represented the demarcation line on a map for the first time. The Cantino planisphere occupies a prominent place in this paper for two reasons. The first one, as has been mentioned, because it represents the meridian line of Tordesillas over the New World, next to which we can read Este he or marco dantre Castella and Portugal (this is the border between Castile and Portugal) (Fig. 2). To the west of the line three Castilian flags safeguard the lands of the Catholic Kings. To the east of the line, on Brazilian soil, two Portuguese flags -one at Cabo de San Jorge and the other at Puerto Seco and Vera Cruz- and a legend certify the discoveries made by Pedro Álvares Cabral. Also to the east of the partition meridian a series of flags mark the Portuguese and Spanish islands in the Atlantic, that is, the archipelagos of the Azores, Cape Verde and Madeira (without a flag) -on the one hand- and the Canary Islands -on the other.

The second one, because it constitutes a new geometric model. It is the first chart that incorporates observed latitudes according to the data offered by astronomical navigation. The incorporation of scientific data based on calculation and observation gave cartography and its mapmakers a status they could not have imagined before. This would be the way of making maps that would be adopted by the Casa de la Contratación some years later -with the arrival of Amerigo Vespucci and some Portuguese cartographers to Seville- to create the Padrón Real (Royal Pattern Chart) and to organize their oceanic voyages. On this basis, the cartography of Magellan’s voyage would be made a few years later (Gaspar, 2012bGaspar, J. A. (2012b) “Blunders, Errors and Entanglements: Scrutinizing the Cantino Planisphere with a Cartometric Eye.” Imago Mundi, 64 (2), pp. 181-200. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2012.673762 ; Sánchez, 2013, pp. 81-87Sánchez, A. (2013) La Espada, la cruz y el Padrón. Soberanía, fe y representación cartográfica en el mundo ibérico bajo la Monarquía Hispánica, 1503-1598. Madrid: CSIC.).

Less famous is the King-Hamy planisphere, a chart of latitudes based on a Portuguese prototype and attributed to Amerigo Vespucci (Fig. 3). However, like the Cantino planisphere, the part of America was made up from information obtained in the Cabral expedition and Spanish explorations. It assumes the agreements signed in the Tordesillas pact and represents the partition meridian, incorporating the most up-to-date geographical information in the midst of the Portuguese-Spanish dispute (Levillier, 1954Levillier, R. (1954) “New Light on Vespucci’s third voyage.” Imago Mundi, 11 (1), pp. 37-46.).

In the Treaty of Tordesillas, it was also established that the King of Portugal authorized the passage of Castilian ships through his area of influence when they were heading west, with the only condition that they did not stop to explore in Portuguese lands. In the same way, it was agreed that, if before June 20th of that same year of 1494 the Castilians found new places within the first 250 leagues of the line, these would henceforth belong to Portugal. If, on the other hand, they were within the next 120 leagues, up to the agreed 370 leagues, they would become part of Castile. In this way, the procurators of Castile and Portugal promised to fulfil the content of the capitulation, as well as the old Alcaçovas agreements. The representatives of both crowns swore to fulfil each of the conditions, putting God as their witness. Finally, within one hundred days each of the parties would deliver to the other the deed of the treaty with their approval and ratification (Tratado de Tordesillas, 1973, pp. 55-61Tratado de Tordesillas. (1973). Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. Facsimile edition. ; 2007El Tratado de Tordesillas. 1494. (2007) Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura. Facsimile edition in Spanish and Portuguese.; Albuquerque, 1973Albuquerque, L. (1973) “O Tratado de Tordesilhas e as dificuldades técnicas da sua aplicação rigorosa.” Separata da Revista da Universidade de Coimbra, 23, pp. 1-21.; Cortesão, 1973Cortesão, A. (1973) “D. João II e o Tratado de Tordesillas.” Separata dos Anais do Clube Militar Naval, 1-3, pp. 1-12.; Mota, 1973Mota, A. T. Da (1973) “Reflexos do Tratado de Tordesilhas na cartografia náutica do século XVI.” Separata da Revista da Universidade de Coimbra, XXIII, pp. 3-15. ; Serrão, 1995Serrão, J. V. (1995) “O Tratado de Tordesillas visto de Portugal.” In: L. A. Ribot, ed., El Tratado de Tordesillas y su época. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, Tomo I, pp. 3-8.).

Once Columbus had returned from his second voyage with the confirmation of the discovery of America, it was Portugal that urged the creation of a boundary line. However, when the Portuguese Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived in Brazil in 1500, the urgency also shifted to the Catholic Kings, especially once the conflict over the rights of spices was reopened. The Tordesillas meridian partially avoided the conflicts between Castile and Portugal in the Atlantic, but not in the Far East. In the first years of the 16th century, and as a consequence of the arrival of the Portuguese in India thanks to the route opened by Vasco de Gama in 1498, the idea of establishing an antimeridian was born. This idea was related to the possibility that there was another coastline to the western side of South America and, therefore, to the existence of a strait. The idea and the doubts about finding a maritime access to the west, but also the slowness in the exploitation of the riches of the East, and the successes of the Portuguese via their route to India led to King Ferdinand gathering in Toro (Zamora), in 1505, three authorities related to the politics and cosmography of the Indies: the bishop of Palencia Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the navigator Vicente Yánez Pinzón, and the cosmographer Amerigo Vespucci. The meeting of experts held in Toro had as its main objective the reconsideration of the search for the strait that Columbus could not locate (Ezquerra, 1973Ezquerra, R. (1973) “Las Juntas de Toro y Burgos.” In: El Tratado de Tordesillas y su proyección. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Tomo I, pp. 149-170.; Lamb, 1974Lamb, U. (1974) “The Spanish Cosmographic Juntas of the Sixteenth Century.” Terrae Incognitae, 6, pp. 51-64. doi: https://doi.org/10.1179/tin.1974.6.1.51 ).

Despite its medieval character -based on the idea of the separation of two expansive and evangelizing powers- the Tordesillas meridian held a sign of modernity, as it attempted to establish a geographical and astronomical boundary that described the contours of new lands (Muñoz Pérez, 1973, p. 202Muñoz Pérez, J. (1973) “La ‘frontera astronómica’ de Tordesillas.” In: El Tratado de Tordesillas y su proyección. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Tomo II, pp. 197-215.). In addition, it promoted the creation of other modern symptoms that we will see below.

AN INSTITUTION, A POSITION AND A MAP: ORGANIZING THE SCIENCES OF DISCOVERY

Three years after the Junta (meeting of experts) of Toro, in March 1508, the King again convened, this time in Burgos, a new meeting in which, in addition to those present in Toro, the navigator Juan de la Cosa and the explorer Juan Díaz de Solís joined in. In Burgos, some measures adopted in Toro were ratified and, among other points, it was decided to create the office of Pilot Major of the Casa de la Contratación -the first scientific position of the young institution- and the Padrón Real -the official cartographic model of the Carrera de Indias (commercial sea route). In addition, in Burgos it was also decided to prepare an expedition that would reach a maritime passage towards the West. The experts of the Toro and Burgos boards had the difficult task of devising a strategy that would allow Castile to get ahead of Portugal in the lucrative exploitation of the spice trade. However, the decisions now had a different face. An institutionalised scientific framework supported them. In 1503, the Casa de la Contratación had been created to regulate and manage the commercial and technical affairs of the Indies. Moreover, in 1508 Vespucci -coming from Portugal- was appointed first Pilot Major of the Casa with the obligation to elaborate a model map called the Padrón Real from which all the copies used by the navigators in their oceanic routes towards America had to be extracted (Sandman, 2007Sandman, A. (2007) “Spanish Nautical Cartography in the Renaissance.” In: D. Woodward, ed., The History of Cartography: Cartography in the European Renaissance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, vol. 3, pp. 1095-1142.; Sánchez, 2013Sánchez, A. (2013) La Espada, la cruz y el Padrón. Soberanía, fe y representación cartográfica en el mundo ibérico bajo la Monarquía Hispánica, 1503-1598. Madrid: CSIC.; García Redondo, 2018García Redondo, J. M. (2018) Cartografía e Imperio. El Padrón Real y la representación del Nuevo Mundo. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles.). Thus, since the early years of the 16th century, Seville had an institution of applied science, a scientific profession of high qualification and a cartographic model to provide regulatory support for any political-diplomatic decision. Something similar took place in Portugal, and probably earlier, with the Armazéns da Guiné and Índia, the position of Cosmógrafo-Mor (Chief-Cosmographer) and the cartas padrões d’el Rei ( standard charts) (Sánchez, 2016Sánchez, A. (2016) “Science by Regimento: Standardising Long-Distance Control and New Spaces of Knowledge in Early Modern Portuguese Cosmography.” Early Science and Medicine, 21, pp. 133-155. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15733823-02123p03 , 2018Sánchez, A. (2018) “Charts for an Empire. A Global Trading Zone in Early Modern Portuguese Nautical Cartography.” Centaurus, 60 , pp. 173-188. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12198 ).

In the meetings of Toro and Burgos, the idea of a voyage like the one of Magellan-Elcano began to take shape (Fernández Navarrete, 1944Fernández Navarrete, M. (1944) Viaje de Magallanes y de Sebastián de Elcano alrededor del mundo. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores.). Around 1512 the Portuguese had already sailed through India and Malaysia and news was beginning to arrive that a certain Francisco Serrão, a good friend of Magellan, had arrived in the Moluccas. In 1510, an anonymous Portuguese cartographer, perhaps Jorge Reinel, depicted the Moluccas for the first time on a chart of the Indian Ocean (Ozanne, 1989Ozanne, H. (1989) “La découverte cartographique des Moluques.” In: M. Pelletier, ed., Géographie du monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance. Paris: Éditions du CTHS, pp. 217-228. ) (Fig. 4). Three years later, Francisco Rodrigues, Chief Pilot of António de Abreu’s navy, represented the Spice Islands on six of the twenty-six nautical charts that make up his atlas (Garcia, 2008Garcia, J. M., ed. (2008) O Livro de Francisco Rodrigues: o primeiro atlas do mundo moderno. Porto: Editora da Universidade do Porto.) (Fig. 5). Two years later, the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires described for the first time the new islands and their riches in his Suma Oriental. At that time, the Spanish Vasco Núñez de Balboa discovered the so-called South Sea (Pacific Ocean). The bull Praeclarae devotionis by which Pope Leo X granted Portugal in 1514 the lands of the East further complicated the situation of Castile in Southeast Asia. For fear of the progressive Portuguese incursion into the East, King Ferdinand proposed in 1512 to the new Pilot Major of the Casa Juan Díaz de Solís -substitute of Vespucci- an expedition to the west of Castilla del Oro, in the northern part of South America, where they hoped to find a sea passage to the west. As had already happened in 1494, the question now was: where would the line of demarcation in the eastern hemisphere pass if it were elongated around the earth’s sphere like a ring? The voyage did not materialize until 1515, when Solis was entrusted with the search for such a passage to the newly discovered South Sea, this time from the southern coast of Brazil. Solis’ death at the hands of a group of natives in the Rio de la Plata ended the expectations of the Spanish crown.

The diplomatic war between Spain and Portugal placed cartography at the centre of the battle (Marques de Almeida, 1995Marques de Almeida, A. A. (1995) “Conhecimento e representação do Mundo no tempo de Tordesilhas.” In: B. Schröter and K. Schüller, ed., Tordesillas y sus consecuencias: la política de las grandes potencias europeas respecto a América latina (14941898). Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, pp. 29-39. ). The cunning and ingenuity of cartographers awakened the territorial awareness of rulers while their territorial needs led to a growing sense of space.

The very usefulness of maps for the official interests of the Court stimulated a new cartographic conception of administration, no longer directed only to the practical purposes of navigation but also to the convulsed world of political diplomacy (Sandman, 2001, pp. 26-91Sandman, A. (2001) Cosmographers versus Pilots: Navigation, Cosmography, and the State in Early Modern Spain. Ph. D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin.).

The early Portuguese cartography of the Moluccas was followed by other charts made by Pedro Reinel and his son Jorge, where the Spice Islands were always located in the Portuguese hemisphere and only exceptionally in the Spanish hemisphere (Cortesão, 1975Cortesão, A. (1975) “As mais antigas cartografia e descrição das Molucas.” In: A. T. da Mota, ed., A viagem de Fernão de Magalhães e a questão das Molucas: actas do II Colóquio Luso-Espanhol de História Ultramarina. Lisboa: Junta de Investigações Científicas do Ultramar, pp. 49-74. ). Thus, in the years prior to Magellan-Elcano’s voyage, a fervent cartographic struggle between Spanish and Portuguese interests to locate the islands where appropriate was initiated. The most controversial places were always those located near the meridian and the antimeridian of Tordesillas. Brazil and the Moluccas played a leading role throughout the sixteenth century in a host of political and geographical controversies between the Portuguese and the Castilians. If the Castilians tried to move the Moluccas towards the Spanish hemisphere, the Portuguese tried to extend the territorial extension of Brazil.¹⁷ Although a little exaggerated, the testimony of the Spanish cosmographer Andrés García de Céspedes is revealing. In 1606, he lamented the difficulties [Spanish cartographers] have had in representing “the coasts of the Mar Océano (Atlantic)”, due to the deliberate efforts of the Portuguese to “obscure” information about the colonies on their maps. According to Céspedes, the Portuguese had made maps “shortening” in their “descriptions the coast of Brazil all the way down to the island of Gilolo, walking on the eastern side.” Not content with that, they had “dispersed these maps all over Europe” making known to foreigners an unreal world (García de Céspedes, 1606, p. 128).

One of the maps that locate the Moluccas on the Spanish side is the so-called “Kunstmann IV”, an anonymous planisphere attributed to Jorge Reinel and made in 1519, the year in which the Reinels were in Seville working on the preparation of Magellan’s expedition. The art and science of making maps was at the center of the problem. However, to see the antimeridian on a map we would have to wait for the results of the voyage.

When Magellan arrived in Castile in 1517 with the intention of presenting his plan to Charles I, he was not alone. His act of disloyalty and betrayal towards Portugal was about to be consummated and required scientific collaboration.¹⁸ Luís de Camões would remember this act of disloyalty in the 140th octave of the tenth canto of Os Lusíadas: “Magellan was truly a Portuguese in reality, but not in loyalty” (Camões, 1819, pp. 369). The idea of betrayal is also present in Chapter 6 of Book VI of Castanheda (1833, pp. 8-9). Some cartographic material and a rich retinue of Portuguese cosmographers, cartographers, and navigators, among whom were the brothers Rui and Francisco Faleiro, Pedro Reinel, his son Jorge (Reinel) and Diogo Ribeiro accompanied his expeditionary project (Gil, 2009, pp. 239-413Gil, J. (2009) El exilio portugués en Sevilla. De los Braganza a Magallanes. Sevilla: Fundación Cajasol.). Some Spanish historians and chroniclers echoed the cartographic material that Magellan brought from Portugal to persuade the King of Castile, of whom João de Barros affirmed, “he was in love with charts and pomas de marear” (Barros, 1777, book V, chap. 8, p. 629Barros, J. (1777) Decadas da Asia. Lisboa: Regia Officina Typografica.). The first of them, Bartolomé de las Casas, affirmed that “Magellan brought a well painted globe, in which all the earth was shown, and there he pointed out the path that he was to take, except with the strait left […] in white, because someone had not altered it” (Las Casas, 1876, p. 377Las Casas, B. (1876). Historia de las Indias (Tomo IV). Madrid: Imprenta de Miguel Ginesta.). Later Antonio de Herrera repeated the information given by Las Casas: “Magellan brought a well painted globe, where all the earth was well shown, and there he pointed out the path he was to take, and he left the strait blank because it could not be altered” (Herrera, 1601, p. 66Herrera, A. (1601) Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Océano. Madrid: Imprenta Real.). Shortly after Herrera, Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola pointed out:

According to the chronicler of the voyage Antonio Pigafetta (also known as Antonio Lombardo), Magellan was able to defend the existence of a strait “because he had seen it on a marine chart of the King of Portugal, a map which had been made by a great pilot and mariner named Martin of Bohemia” (Stanley, 2010, p. 58Stanley, H. E. J. ed. (2010) [1874] The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Nevertheless, the truth is that at that time only a globe made by Johannes Schöner in 1515 represented the longed-for sea passage to the Moluccas (Van Duzer, 2010Van Duzer, C. (2010) Johann Schöner’s Globe of 1515: Transcription and Study. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society) (Fig. 6).

Little is known about the cartographic preparation of this project beyond these late testimonies, which were likely aware of the missive sent on July 18, 1519 by Sebastião Álvares, Factor of the King of Portugal in Seville, to King Manuel I. In that letter, Álvares informed the king with displeasure not only of the itinerary planned by Magellan, but also of the fact that he had seen the Moluccas represented in a nautical chart drawn up by Jorge and Pedro Reinel. Álvares’ letter confirms not only that the Reinels carried out a cartographic work in Seville in the months prior to the departure of the expedition. It confirms also that they left there a cartographic model with the representation of the Moluccas that would later be followed by the person who would become a prestigious cartographer of the Casa, the Portuguese Diogo Ribeiro.¹⁹ “The course they say they are taking is from Sanlúcar straight for Cabo Frío, leaving Brazil to the right until they pass the dividing line. And from there sailing west and northwest [right] to Maluco, whose land I saw represented in the poma and chart that Reinel’s son made here, which was not finished when his father came for him. His father then finished everything and put in these lands of Maluco. All the charts that Diogo Ribeiro makes are made from this pattern chart, as well as the compass, quadrants and spheres” (Fernández Navarrete, 1837, p. 155).

Álvares’ letter indicates that, in the summer of 1519, a few weeks before the departure of the expedition, there was already at least one nautical chart in Seville where the Moluccas, the main objective of the expedition, could be seen. We do not know if the islands were represented on the Spanish or Portuguese side, as Álvares does not make this explicit. This chart could have been the anonymous planisphere of Munich (Cortesão and Mota, 1987, pp. 1921Cortesão, A. and Mota, A. T. da (1987) [1960] Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Vol. I, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda.) (Fig. 7). This planisphere, better known as Kunstmann IV, represents the world discovered by Europeans at the end of the second decade of the 16th century. The author of the chart represents the western coast of the Isthmus of Panama, discovered by Nuñez de Balboa in 1516-1517, but not the Strait of Magellan, two facts that have allowed specialists to date the planisphere with relative accuracy. Apart from being the first known map with the graduated equator, the most outstanding aspect of this planisphere is that it located the Moluccas to the east of the demarcation meridian, that is, in the Spanish hemisphere (Fig. 8).²⁰ Colour facsimile edition made in 1843 by a Bavarian officer named Otto Progel. The original was kept at the Bayerische Armeebibliothek in Munich until it disappeared at the end of World War II (Sánchez, 2013, pp. 172-174).

This planisphere has a double virtue. Firstly, it synthesises the context prior to the preparation of the Magellan-Elcano expedition, which was marked by three main episodes: the Treaty of Tordesillas and the meridian, the Moluccas dispute and the antimeridian, and the search for a strait that would end the Portuguese trade monopoly in the East.²¹ There is an extensive bibliography on the so-called “Moluccas dispute.” See, among others, Denucé (1908-1911), Latorre (1923), Hidalgo Nieto (1942), Branquinho (1999). Secondly, it projected the future cartographic works of the Casa and the voyage of 1519 (Sánchez, 2009Sánchez, A. (2009) “De la ‘cartografía oficial’ a la ‘cartografía jurídica’: la querella de las Molucas reconsiderada, 1479-1529.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos [Online], Debates. doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.56899 ).

THE VOYAGE: BEYOND ADVENTURE

The problems derived from all the previous events caused King Charles I to accept the proposal, made by Magellan and Rui Faleiro in Valladolid,²² See the “Memorial atribuido a Hernando de Magallanes y Ruy Faleiro sobre el descubrimiento de las islas del Maluco”, AGI, Patronato, 34, R. 7. This was not the only proposal the monarch would receive. Alonso de Zuazo, a man of law, made a similar proposal in January 1518. See Zuazo’s letter sent from Santo Domingo on January 22, 1518 (Gil, 2009, pp. 247-248). to reach the coveted Moluccan Islands by sailing in the South Sea.²³ “Capitulación y asiento del rey Carlos I con Fernando de Magallanes y Ruy Faleiro para dirigir la armada del Maluco hacia las Islas de las Especias” (Valladolid, 22nd March 1518), AGI, Patronato, 34, R. 1. On the capitulations of Valladolid, see Ramos Pérez (2019). As has already been said, Magellan arrived in Seville with a large group of specialists in the field, some of whom would accompany him on his expedition. Among them were astronomers, astrologers, navigators, cosmographers and cartographers, several of them great names from the Iberian cosmography of the 16th century. The navigator and the failed cosmographer defended the viability of their project with cartographic material that placed the eastern islands in the Castilian part. Thus, the main objective of the voyage would be of geographic character, that is to say, to place the Moluccas within the framework of the new idea of the antimeridian and to clarify later, with maps, to whom they belonged. This was stated in the instructions given by the king on August 9, 1519, a few days before the departure.²⁴ “Instrucción del Rey a Magallanes y a Falero para el descubrimiento de las islas del Maluco”, AGI, Patronato, 34, R. 8. Convinced of the importance that this project had for the Castilian aspirations and for himself, the young emperor ordered the expedition be organized. The Knight of the Order of Santiago, who knew the East and was skilled in both the art of the sword and the compass, and the erudition of Faleiro had convinced him.

The scientific preparations

 ⌅

Thus, five hundred years ago the port of Seville was preparing, with its fervent nautical activity, to launch into the Atlantic -as on so many other occasions- the five ships of the great expedition. This intense nautical and commercial activity was perfectly captured in the View of the city of Seville, a topographical image from the end of the 16th century attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello (Fig. 9). So often used to allude to the world of transatlantic sailing, the realistic image of the port of the city of Seville on the banks of the Guadalquivir quickly puts us in context and allows us to be transported, even momentarily, to 16th century Seville, one of the richest and most powerful urban centres in modern Europe. When we look closely at this view of Seville we have the feeling of being able to hear the daily hustle and bustle of the nautical activity, with its rowing galleys and ships, its shipyards and its hectic commercial and artisanal élan vital. Not very different from this reality must the atmosphere have been in which Magellan’s trip was organized.

Figure 9.  View of the city of Seville (anonymous), end of the 16th century. Attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello. Oil on canvas, 146 x 295 cm. Prado National Museum (Madrid), P004779.

The preparations for the expedition were being made by a major scientific and technical company whose economic investment -from the Crown, from major German investors such as the Fuggers and the Welsers, and from Burgos merchants such as Christopher of Haro had reached very high levels.²⁵ On Haro and the interests of the Burgos merchants in the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, see Gallez (1991). The money invested in the provision of the five ships of the armada exceeded 8,000,000 maravedís -including ships. Of that amount, more than 68,000 maravedís were spent on making nautical charts on parchment, wooden and metal quadrants and astrolabes, compasses and hourglasses. Most of this money was used to buy skins for the charts, to pay the cartographer Nuño García de Toreno to make twenty-four charts and to purchase the planisphere sent to the king. Unfortunately, we know nothing about the whereabouts of this material.

Sixty-eight thousand one hundred and eighty-two maravedís have been spent on the nautical charts and quadrants going into the armada, as follows: 1,125 maravedís that were given to Nuño García to buy parchments to make charts. 900 for a dozen parchments that were given to the said [Nuño Garcia]. 864 maravedís the cost of another dozen skins that were given to the said Nuño García. 13,125 maravedís for seven charts that he made on the order of Rui Faleiro, five ducats each one. 11,250 maravedís that were paid to Nuño García for eleven charts that he made on the order of Ferdinand Magellan. 13,500 maravedís for another six charts that Rui Faleiro made, with one that he sent to His Royal Highness [...] 4,500 maravedís paid to Captain Magellan for a spherical plan that he had made for His Majesty (Fernández Navarrete, 1837, pp. 179-180Fernández Navarrete, M. (1837) Colección de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV (Tomo IV). Madrid: Imprenta Nacional. ).

The scientific direction of the expedition was left entirely in the hands of the Magellan’s trusted men, especially Rui Faleiro, a renowned cosmographer and judicial astrologer who was appointed, together with Magellan, as captain general of the armada.²⁶ About Rui Faleiro see the invaluable documentary work done by Juan Gil (2009, pp. 349-387) that also incorporates the list of books that made up the Faleiro’s magnificent (scientific) library, including books on astronomy (Ptolemy, Al-Farghani, Zacuto, Albumasar), arithmetic (Boethius) and astrology (Jerónimo Torrella, Juan Gil), among others. On the hypothetical library of Magellan, see the recent study by Rui Loureiro (2019). Faleiro had occupied an important role in the negotiations with Charles I. He had ordered the construction of several charts and other nautical instruments for the expedition and, in addition, had written a Regimiento de la altura de Leste-Oeste (Regiment of the Leste-Oeste height) that have been able to facilitated the calculation of distances during the voyage, especially for Andrés de San Martín, astronomer of the expedition (Castanheda, 1833, pp. 9 and 13Castanheda, F. L. (1833) [1551] História do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos portugueses. Lisboa: Typographia Rollandiana.; Mota, 1986Mota, A. T. da (1986) O Regimento da altura de Leste-Oeste de Rui Faleiro: Subsídios para o Estudo Náutico e Geográfico da Viagem de Fernão de Magahlães. Lisboa: Edições Culturais de Marinha. ; Laguarda, 1991Laguarda Trías, R. A. (1991) El cosmógrafo sevillano Andrés de San Martín: inventor de las cartas esféricas. Montevideo: Imprenta Militar.). This regiment is one of the most valuable documents of the expedition from the scientific point of view. It explains three procedures to determine longitude, one of the great scientific problems of the Modern Age.²⁷ These three methods are also explained in the short Pigafetta’s Treatise of Navigation, which also gives elementary instructions on how to use the armillary sphere and how to know the latitude (Stanley, 2010, pp. 167 and ff.). On the problem of longitude in the framework of Tordesillas, see Reis (1994). These three methods were through the latitudes of the Moon, through lunar eclipses and through the variation of the compass.²⁸ A copy of this document can be found at AGI, Patronato, 262, R.3. For a study on this document, see Mota (1953) and Laguarda Trías (1959, 1975).

Despite his efforts in the technical direction of the expedition, Rui was unable to embark, as due to some unknown mental illness he lost his mind -“he was almost out of his mind”- and remained in Seville under the care of his brother Francisco.²⁹ Góis refers to Faleiro in these terms in chapter 37 of the fourth part of his Crónica del rey D. Manuel (Góis, 1567, f. 45v). The mutineer Juan de Cartagena took his place in the captaincy general of the expedition and the scientific work of measurements and astronomical calculations would fall into the hands of the aforementioned San Martín.

Rui Faleiro was, without a doubt, the most important person in the scientific-technical preparations of the expedition. The role of his brother in those preparations, Francisco Faleiro, also a cosmographer, was much more modest. Nevertheless, we know of his participation as technical consultant in several scientific activities of the Casa, like the revision of charts and other nautical instruments, the reform of the Padrón Real or in questions about territorial demarcations. Of Francisco’s cosmographic activity in the city of Seville, the publication of his famous Tratado de la esfera y del arte de marear, published in Seville in 1535, is particularly noteworthy. This is a navigation manual for pilots that would open a new chapter in Iberian treatise -and one could well say, European- on nautical matters.³⁰ About the Faleiro brothers, see Mota (1975). About Francisco Faleiro, see Collins (2013).

As far as the young Diogo Ribeiro is concerned, he is usually associated with the production of the nautical charts of the expedition, despite the fact that -as we have seen above- it is Nuño García de Toreno who is referred to in the receipts of the official list of the expenses invested in the Magellan expedition. The little data that is known about García de Toreno seem to indicate that he carried out important cartographic work for the Casa de la Contratación between the years when Amerigo Vespucci was a Pilot Major (1508-1512) and 1526, the date of his death. The last stage of his life, the 1520s, was one of the most prolific periods of the Casa’s cartographic activity. In the opinions gathered in the Junta of pilots and cosmographers of 1515, García de Toreno claimed to have made charts in Vespucci’s house (Fernández Duro, 1884, p. 29Fernández Duro, C. (1884) “La situación del cabo de San Agustín en el Brasil, el año de 1515.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica, 16, (1), pp. 25-30.). He also made charts for the expedition of Jofre García de Loaysa in 1525 together with Diogo Ribeiro (Vigneras, 1962, p. 78Vigneras, L. A. (1962) “The Cartographer Diogo Ribeiro.” Imago Mundi, 16, pp. 76-83. ). However, he would only receive the post of cartographer at the Casa in September 1519, the same month in which Magellan’s expedition left for the Moluccas. Among the many charts that Toreno must have made over a period of almost two decades, only one chart or part of it bears his name, the chart of the Philippines of 1522, which I will discuss later. Two other charts have been attributed to him, the anonymous planisphere of Turin (ca. 1523) -also attributed to Juan Vespucci- and the anonymous planisphere of Salviati (ca. 1525).

In addition to Toreno’s cartographic work, the expedition required the most advanced cosmographic knowledge and navigation techniques of the period. By 1519, astronomical navigation and nautical charts of latitudes had become part of everyday life in maritime culture. The Greek pilot of the Victoria, Francisco Albo, did nothing else during navigation but take the height of the Sun at midday every day - “with the astronomical instruments that pilots use” (Elcano et al., 2018, p. 147Elcano, J. S., Pigafetta, A., Transilvano, M., Albo, F. and Mafra G. (2018) [2012] La primera vuelta al mundo. Madrid: Miraguano Ediciones-Ediciones Polifemo.)- as he himself recorded in his logbook, along with other data regarding the course and estimated distance covered. Pigafetta himself refers in his account to latitude coordinates, as well as to the errors of those cosmographers who had never visited the lands through which the expedition passed. Sometimes, he even refers to maps and nautical charts as an element of authority -as when he refers to Martin Behaim’s map mentioned above.³¹ Pigafetta also tells how Magellan, in the company of the King of Butuan, “showed him the sea chart and the ship compass, and informed him how he had found the strait to come there” (Stanley, 2010, p. 77).

Pigafetta’s testimony, although scarce, is revealing for two reasons. On the one hand, it gives indications of Magellan’s way of navigating, following the parameters of modern navigation.³² In his Treaty of Navigation he stated: “At the present time the pilots content themselves with knowing the latitude; and are so proud that they will not hear speak of longitude” (Stanley, 2010, p. 167). On the other hand, in criticizing other cosmographers he was doing something even more modern, namely correcting the errors of the old cosmography, of which knowledge was not based on the experience of “seeing with one’s own eyes.” The young Vincentian was ultimately questioning the authority of ancient knowledge. He expresses this clearly on October 3, 1519 when sailing around the Cape Verde Islands he states: “sometimes we had the wind contrary and at other times sufficiently good, as well as rains without wind. In this manner, we navigated with rain for the space of sixty days until the equinoctial line, which was a thing very strange and unaccustomed to be seen, according to the saying of some old men and those who had navigated here several times” (Pigafetta, 2019, p. 41Pigafetta, A. (2019) [1524] La primera vuelta al mundo. Madrid: Alianza.). The ancients considered that it did not rain in the tropics and that it was an uninhabited region of the world.

Transylvanus’ letter also insists on criticism of the ancients: “For whatever we read concerning the native soil of the spices has been told to us by ancient authors, and is partly, certainly, fabulous; and, partly, so far from the truth” (Stanley, 2010, p. 184Stanley, H. E. J. ed. (2010) [1874] The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Both, Pigafetta and Transylvanus, give an account of the new natural and cultural world that the expedition found in the way of modern naturalists and ethnographers, overcoming the limits of ancient knowledge in this field, too.

AFTER THE VOYAGE: A GLOBAL IMAGE OF THE WORLD

In addition to the accounts mentioned so far, the geographical results of the expedition were partly collected by Nuño García de Toreno in a chart of the Far East dated 1522. This chart was made in the “noble town of Valladolid” -where the court was located and where Toreno apparently used the information provided by Juan Sebastián Elcano to King Charles I (Fig. 10). This chart is, together with the so-called anonymous chart of Istanbul in polar projection, and a chart of the Indian Ocean, both attributed to Pedro Reinel, the first cartographic testimony made with sources from the expedition (Magnaghi, 1927Magnaghi, A. (1927) “La prima rappresentazione delle Filippine e delle Molucche dopo il ritorno Della spedizione di Magellano, nella carta costruita nel 1522 da Nuño García de Toreno, conservata nella Biblioteca di S. M. il Re in Toreno.” In: Atti del X Congresso Geografico Italiano, vol. 1. Milán: Touring Club Italiano, pp. 293-307.). The chart of Toreno, which seems to be part of a lost planisphere, represents South and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and some of its imaginary islands, the Malacca Peninsula and the archipelago of the coveted Moluccas Islands, located to the east of the antimeridian, in the area of Castilian influence. The red demarcation line stands out, cutting in half the Indochinese Peninsula and the island of Sumatra, under which it can be read: Linea divisionis castellanorum et portugalliensium (line of division between Spanish and Portuguese).⁴⁶ For a more detailed analysis of the Toreno chart, see Martín- Merás (1993: 87), Cerezo (1994a, pp. 173-174), and Sánchez (2013, pp. 175-176).

The chart of the Moluccas is a chart of latitudes made with the geographical data of the expedition that fed the diplomatic confrontation between Portugal and Castile in their particular race towards the spices. It is a chart of political vindication built at one of the highest moments of diplomatic tension between the two powers. If, as has been maintained, this chart was given by Charles I to his sister-in-law Beatrice de Portugal, of the Avís dynasty and married to Charles III of Savoy, its vindictive meaning would have to be added to a propagandistic intention of notable interest (Martín-Merás, 1993, p. 87Martín-Merás, M. L. (1993) Cartografía marítima hispana: la imagen de América. Madrid: Lunwerg.). The king and his ambassadors used some of the charts made by the cartographers of the monarchy as poisoned gifts, where the courteous and distinguished gesture of giving a gift implied obtaining recognition. The receiver could only interpret this gesture as evidence of affirmation. Several of the great Spanish nautical planispheres of the 1520s - presumably copies of the Padrón Real- had this purpose.

For its part, the so-called anonymous chart of Magellan -also known as “Hazine 1825”- attributed to Pedro Reinel (ca. 1522) was drawn on a polar projection representing the southern hemisphere (Fig. 11). The northern hemisphere must have been represented in another (lost) half of the chart. In the chart, South America can be seen as far as the Strait of Magellan. As in the anonymous planisphere of Munich, the equinoctial line appears graduated in intervals of five degrees, as is graduated the meridian of partition cutting the entire south hemisphere to leave the Moluccas of the Portuguese side (Destombes, 1955Destombes, M. (1955) “The Chart of Magellan.” Imago Mundi, 12: 65-88.; Cortesão and Mota, 1987, I, pp. 39-41Cortesão, A. and Mota, A. T. da (1987) [1960] Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Vol. I, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda.; and Couto, 2013Couto, D. (2013) “Autour du globe? La carte Hazine n.º 1825 de la bibliothèque du Palais de Topkapi, Istanbul.” Cartes & Géomatique, 216, pp. 119-134.).⁴⁷ The historian Dejanirah Couto has suggested that there are several indications that the Hazine chart no. 1825 may have been part of the set of maps that Magellan carried on board the expedition. Since it could also have been Pigafetta who took it to Istanbul (Couto, 2013). The chart of the Indian Ocean attributed to Pedro Reinel also made around 1522 represents the Moluccas on the Portuguese side (Cortesão and Mota, 1987, I, pp. 35-36Cortesão, A. and Mota, A. T. da (1987) [1960] Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Vol. I, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda.) (Fig. 12).

The arrival of the Victoria in Seville with new information and new testimonies must have exceeded the expectations of the Casa’s cosmographers in charge of the Padrón Real, which had to be urgently updated. After the first voyage around the globe, the image of the world had changed considerably -both in its physical aspect and in its political significance- and required to be re-mapped.

The charts of Reinel and García de Toreno were followed by the anonymous Turin planisphere of 1523, a new cartographic work built with the information collected by the expedition (Fig. 13). It is the first universal chart that incorporates such information. It has been attributed to García de Toreno, but also to Juan Vespucci, since both had license of the king to carry out cartographic works, one as cartographer and the other as someone authorized to make copies of the Padrón Real (AGI, Indiferente, 418, L.3, ff. 324v-325v).

The Turin chart represents Europe, Africa, Asia to the Indochinese Peninsula, the Antilles, and the Atlantic coast of America from the Gulf of Mexico and Florida to the Strait of Magellan.⁴⁸ According to the narrative of an anonymous Portuguese pilot, “some called it the Strait of Magalhaens, because our captain was named Fernando de Magalhaens” (Stanley, 2010, p. 31). The Moluccas, represented on the far left, are located to the east of the imaginary antimeridian, on the Castilian side. Its location on the left side of the chart shows a clear political vindication that will be repeated in all the planispheres of the Casa. However, the meridian was not traced in the Turin chart. Instead, what appears to be the antemeridian was delineated, even though it leaves Malacca outside Castilian jurisdiction. The author claims to be aware of some of the latest explorations of the New World, but ignores many others. One of the great novelties is the representation of the Strait of Magellan, which opens up the possibility of exploring the South Sea towards the East Indies. This will be the first in a series of planispheres made by the Casa’s cartographers during the 1520s, a prodigious decade. The cartography of that period would reflect several of the most important events that took place in the Iberian Peninsula during that decade, from the Junta de Badajoz-Elvas of 1524 to the Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529, including the marriage of King Charles I with Isabel of Portugal in 1526.⁴⁹ For a new cartographic discovery related to the Padrón Real of the 1520s, see Manso (2019b).

The end of the voyage brought the Moluccas’ dispute to a head, causing the resurgence of the debate on the demarcation line and calling more than ever for a new map. The chart of García de Toreno constituted a good tool of defense and an extraordinary example of propaganda to reaffirm the rights of Castile before the Courts, since it represented the Moluccas islands in the Castilian side. The maps were in this occasion political artefacts imbued with scientific authority. As it has been already said, this was the first Spanish map of the region of the south and Southeast Asia where the antimeridian of the Moluccas appeared drawn.

Likewise, in 1523 the first account of the voyage would be published, the De Moluccis Insulis by Maximilianus Transylvanus, secretary to the emperor and brotherin-law of Christopher of Haro, one of the main financial promoters of the expedition. However, the greatest narrative glory of the event would go to the Venetian Antonio Pigafetta and his Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, published the following year, which with its dramatic and realistic prose became the main testimony of the expedition. Unlike Pigafetta’s story, Transylvanus’ letter narrates the experience of the voyage through the testimony of the survivors.

The stories of Transylvanus and Pigafetta did not reduce the tension, but they did serve as an incentive to end a dispute that had advanced very little since Tordesillas, and that seemed to have no end. In 1524, the Junta of Badajoz-Elvas were held with the aim of closing the dispute. As with almost all the meetings held in this context, expert cosmographers and navigators led them. In these meetings, what is likely to have been used is the world map of Juan Vespucci of the same year, which represents the meridian and the antimeridian of Tordesillas (López de Gómara, 1979, p. 57López de Gómara, F. (1979) [1552] Historia General de las Indias y vida de Hernán Cortés. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.) (Fig. 14). In the case of the Moluccas, their role was to guide the king and seek the most persuasive scientific explanation in order to win the rights to the spice trade. Three central issues were raised at these meetings: what would be the best cartographic medium on which to represent the line of demarcation, a nautical chart or a globe; how to situate the islands of Cape Verde on this mapping device; and from which point among of these islands to start the 370-league count. Nevertheless, these points highlight the few agreements that the Spanish and Portuguese had been able to reach during the thirty years following the Treaty of Tordesillas. The scientific debate was irremediably linked to the problem of determining longitude, a problem that scientific modernity would still take some time to solve. However, the points of view could not have been more opposed. If the Spaniards accused the Portuguese of altering distances and misreading charts, the Castilian cosmographers traced the antimeridian through Malacca. After two months of meetings, the negotiations failed again in their attempt to find a point of understanding, which would only come about five years later. Meanwhile, Charles I did not stop trying to reach the Moluccas by other means of access. Esteban Gómez tried in 1523, Jorge García de Loaysa in 1525, and Sebastian Cabot in 1526, all without success.

If Columbus’ first voyage resulted in the Treaty of Tordesillas, the circumnavigation of Magellan-Elcano led to the Treaty of Zaragoza, signed on 22 April 1529 (AGI, Patronato, 49, R. 9). At that time, Charles I was immersed in Spanish-Portuguese matrimonial policy and a European war, as well as with the diplomatic and economic exhaustion that both problems generated. This agreement was presented as a viable way out for both Portugal and Castile. King John III presented Charles I with a tempting offer for the lease of the Moluccas. In the meantime, the famous Vatican planisphere of Diogo Ribeiro of 1529 placed the Moluccas 172.5 degrees west of the line of separation of Tordesillas, on the Castilian side, like all the charts of the Casa of that period (Sánchez, 2013, pp. 177-210Sánchez, A. (2013) La Espada, la cruz y el Padrón. Soberanía, fe y representación cartográfica en el mundo ibérico bajo la Monarquía Hispánica, 1503-1598. Madrid: CSIC.) (Fig. 15). However, with the agreement of Zaragoza, Charles I renounced the islands and ceded his rights of exploitation to the Portuguese crown for the price of 350,000 gold ducats or, in other words, 131,250,000 maravedís. Thus, despite its significant economic consequences, the diplomatic battle between Portugal and Spain was not only fought on land but also at sea; it was a nautical and cosmographic conflict.

In addition to the Ribeiro planisphere, other Portuguese and Spanish maps of the Moluccas followed the Zaragoza agreement. In 1566, the new monarch, Philip II, reopened the debate asking Fray Andrés de Urdaneta and the cosmographers Alonso de Santa Cruz, Pedro de Medina, Francisco Faleiro, Jerónimo de Chaves and Sancho Gutiérrez to give their opinion about the position that the Philippines occupied in relation to the agreement of Zaragoza. The experts’ opinion placed the Moluccas back on the Castilian side, which meant that the spices would continue to be exploited by Portugal, as stipulated in the treaty of 1529. The Philippines would torment Philip II even after the union of crowns in 1580. In 1611, the Portuguese cosmographer João Baptista Lavanha concluded that the Moluccas were more than three degrees within the boundaries of Portugal, a calculation close to the nearly five that they actually were. Lavanha’s verdict and the arrival of the Dutch East India Company on the Moluccas in the early 17th century placed Spain and Portugal further away from the coveted Spice Islands, and further away from modern science.

The impact of the voyage was felt inside and outside the Iberian Peninsula, especially from the second half of the 16th century onwards. The expedition initiated by Magellan and completed by Elcano would modify the cartographic image of the world and, consequently, the geographical thinking of modern Europe (Heawood, 1921Heawood, E. (1921) “The World Map before and after Magellan’s Voyage.” The Geographical Journal, 57 (6), pp. 431-442. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1780791 ). The new global image of the world was reflected in the famous planispheres of Diogo Ribeiro in the second half of the 1520s, but its echoes also reached the workshops of renowned cartographers such as Abraham Ortelius, Giovanni Battista Ramusio and Battista Agnese. In short, as Stefan Zweig states in such a revealing and elegant way, a new time had begun. To which this article would add, that a new time had also begun in our scientific understanding of the planet.

CONCLUSIONS

Indeed, a new time had begun. Why not a new science? Was not it, as Zweig reminds us, the empirical demonstration of the Earth’s sphericity -which also revolves around itself-, the verification of the dimensions of America and the Pacific, and the discovery of a passage connecting two great oceans sufficient reason to inaugurate a new scientific era? Was not the measurement of our planet’s orbit, the overcoming of the cosmography of the ancients, and the voyage around the world enough? Were not these achievements modern enough?

This article argues that yes, these were more than enough reasons. That is why the celebrations and collective memories of the fifth centenary of Magellan-Elcano’s voyage are a good opportunity to do historical therapy and to revive this voyage in the face of a major problem, the genesis of modern science and European scientific modernity. Beyond sterile debates about whether the merit of the first circumnavigation belonged to the Portuguese or the Spanish, the commemorative atmosphere we are experiencing is presented as a good opportunity not to celebrate the history of Iberian civilization, but rather to critically rethink what role this and other events occupy in the global framework of the modern era.

In this article, I have reconstructed the political motivations, the institutional framework and the technical-scientific developments that allowed the materialization of Magellan’s voyage in 1519. In doing so, I have argued that the Magellan-Elcano expedition was a voyage of science with a scientific objective that led to another scientific fact -probably unsuspected, but of greater dimensions- the first voyage around the world. The question is: was this voyage a mere Iberian adventure or rather the manifestation of a type of science that illustrates a whole era? Why does it still occupy a marginal role in the narratives about the emergence of modern science? Why has such an innovation been relegated only to the world of voyages of discovery and techniques? From now on, the new object of study of modern science will be the orb, the globe, everything that exists. In short, the aim of modern science would be to offer a greater understanding of the place in which we live.