{ "id": "cosmografo-y-catedratico-de-matematicas-del-consejo-de-indias", "type": "entity", "name": "The Cosmographer and Chair of Mathematics of the Council of the Indies, with the three-year syllabus printed in the law", "summary": "One salaried post in Madrid held two jobs: keep the crown's map and sailing-route archive of the Americas, and teach mathematics an hour a day beside the Council of the Indies. The code prints the whole three-year course — Sacrobosco, arithmetic, Peurbach, the Alfonsine tables, Euclid, trigonometry, Regiomontanus, Ptolemy, cosmography, navigation, the astrolabe — fills the post by public edict, and withholds a third of the salary until the year's work is shown.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "science", "mathematics", "astronomy", "navigation", "cartography", "geography", "colonial-institutions", "spanish-empire", "americas", "education", "seventeenth-century", "archives" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "coronista-mayor-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "lopez-de-velasco-descripcion-de-las-indias-1574" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "instrucciones-eclipses-de-luna-1577" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "casa-de-contratacion" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "ordenanzas-del-archivo-general-de-indias-1790" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "garcia-de-palacio-instruccion-nautica-1587" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "spanish-navigation-manuals-in-england" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mendoza-rios-tables-for-navigation-1805" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "universities-of-lima-and-mexico" } ], "questions": [ "Did Spain fund a chair of mathematics for the government of the Americas?", "What did the cosmographer of the Council of the Indies actually have to do?", "What was taught in the mathematics chair of the Council of the Indies?", "How did Spain try to fix the longitude of places in the Americas?", "How was the cosmographer of the Council of the Indies appointed and paid?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The post is created for a stated administrative reason and filled by open competition. Libro II, título XIII of the Recopilacion de leyes de los reynos de las Indias is headed \"DE EL COSMOGRAFO, Y CATEDRATICO de Matematicas de el Consejo Real de las Indias\"; its ley j — margin \"D. Felipe IIII en la Ordenanza 238. de 1 de Agosto de 1636\" — reasons that for the good government of the Indies \"y su navegacion y correspondencia\" it is fitting to have notice of the lands and provinces and of the voyages and \"derrotas\" the galleons, flotas, armadas and ships are to follow, and that there be someone able to teach it to the crown's vassals and to the natives of its kingdoms; therefore the Council is to have a Cosmografo who is Catedratico de Matematicas, \"con salario competente\", and whenever the post falls vacant a person of much skill and sufficiency is to be sought by posting edicts at court and in the universities and such places as seem most to the purpose.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "His first technical duty is a longitude programme run by post. Ley ij — margin \"D. Felipe II en la Ordenanza 118. de el Consejo. Y D. Felipe IIII en la 239. de 1636\" — charges the Cosmografo with calculating and ascertaining eclipses of the moon and other such phenomena \"para tomar la longitud de las tierras\", and with sending to the governors in the Indies a memorandum of the times and hours at which the observation is to be made, together with the order and the instruments needed; in the cities and provincial capitals where the longitude is not yet ascertained they are to keep observing until it is, and as it is ascertained it is to be entered in the libro de las descripciones.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "His second duty is to turn returning sailors into a route archive. Ley iij — margin \"D. Felipe II en la Ordenanza 121. de el Consejo. Y D. Felipe IIII en la 240. de 1636\" — orders him to select and compile in a particular book all the \"derrotas\", navigations and voyages from these kingdoms to the parts of the Indies and within them from one part to another, so far as he can gather them from the sailing directions and reports that the pilots and sailors who navigate to the Indies bring back from their voyages, informing himself of them and of all others who can give him the necessary notice, putting into it much study, care and diligence, \"como para cosa de tan grande importancia\".", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "His third duty is the map series and the master description. Ley iiij — margin \"D. Felipe II en la Ordenanza 119. de el Consejo. Y D. Felipe IIII en la 241. de 1636\" — orders him to make and order the tables of cosmography of the Indies, setting down in them by longitude and latitude and a scale of leagues, \"segun la verdadera Geografia\", the provinces, cities, islands, seas, coasts, rivers and mountains and other places that can be put into drawing and painting, in conformity with the general and particular descriptions sent in from those parts; and, because the Archive of the Council is to hold a book of the descriptions of all its provinces, lands, coasts, islands and ports, he is to keep making, ordering and amending it with the greatest possible diligence, so that in it may be found the general matter of all the Indies and the particular matter of each province. The Consejero in charge of the Archive is his Comisario.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The teaching is fixed in the law down to the hour. Ley v — margin \"D. Felipe IIII en la Ordenanza 242. de 1636\" — orders that the Cosmografo, reading as Catedratico the chair of mathematics, read in the part assigned him in the royal house and palace and near the Council of the Indies, every day the Council sits, one full hour in the morning: from nine to ten in winter and from eight to nine in summer, the hours to change when the Council changes its own. He is to have July and August off, and the recesses the Council keeps, and he may hold no other chair.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The same ley prints the syllabus, which runs on a three-year cycle. The first year begins in September: from its start to Christmas the Sphere of Sacrobosco, the four rules of arithmetic, the rule of three, the extraction of square and cube roots and some rules of fractions; from Christmas to the end of April the Theoricae of Peurbach; and from the beginning of May to the recess the tables of \"el Señor Rey Don Alonso\" — the Alfonsine tables compiled at Toledo in the thirteenth century.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The second year is a mathematics course proper: from its beginning to the end of February the first six books of Euclid; from the first of March to the end of that month arcs and chords, right sines, tangents and secants; to the end of April the fourth book of the Spherical Triangles of Juan de Monte-Regio, that is Regiomontanus; and from the beginning of May to the recess as much as he can reach of the Almagest of Ptolemy.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The third year applies it. From the start of the year to Christmas cosmography and navigation; from Christmas to Easter the use of the astrolabe, \"declarando primero su fabrica\"; from Easter to the recess the way that must be kept in making observations of the movements of the Sun and Moon and the other planets; and in that same time he is to teach the use of the \"Radio globo\" and some other mathematical instruments, with which the course ends — and thereafter every three years he is to read the same again. In the recess months he may read on clocks and mechanics, with some machines, and explain what their force consists in.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "He is paid on the same terms as the crown's historian. Ley vj — margin \"D. Felipe IIII en la Ordenanza 243. de 1636\" — orders that in what he writes and hands in for the Archive he keep the order given by ley 4, título 12 of the same book to the Coronista mayor de las Indias, and that the Consejero who is Comisario of the history, being also Comisario of the description, take account of how much of his time the chair consumes when judging whether what he presents is enough, and give him the certification for the last third of his salary to be paid.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "The text is not an eighteenth-century revision. The first edition of the code, Madrid 1681, prints the same título at page 186 under the running head \"Del Cosmografo del Consejo\", with leyes iij, iiij and v in substantially the same words and the same marginal authorities, including the route book, the cosmographical tables kept \"segun la verdadera Geografia\", the book of descriptions in the Archive, and the same hours of nine to ten in winter and eight to nine in summer. The two impressions read here are 110 years apart and agree.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1681-t1", "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "What this object does not claim, and the honest counterpoint. The code prescribes a chair; it is not evidence of attendance. Neither printing read here names a holder of the post, a student, a salary figure, an observation returned from the Indies, or one longitude actually fixed by this route. The laws are codified from ordinances of 1636, with Felipe II's originals of the 1570s cited in the margin, so what is read is a restatement rather than a founding act. And the syllabus itself invites a cool judgement: a course that in 1636 still ends at Ptolemy's Almagest and the Alfonsine tables, with Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Kepler nowhere in it, is teaching the astronomy of the previous century — the practical matter, navigation and the astrolabe and the instruments, is where it is strongest.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "The usual English sentence about Spanish colonial science is that Spain had cosmographers. What almost nothing in English quotes is the statute that created and staffed the post, and it is far more concrete than the summaries: a single salaried officer who kept the route book and the map tables, ran a lunar-eclipse longitude programme by correspondence with governors overseas, was recruited by edicts posted in the universities, taught an hour a day beside the Council, and lost a third of his pay if he showed nothing at the year's end — with the entire three-year reading list printed in the law, from Sacrobosco and the rule of three to Euclid, Regiomontanus, Ptolemy and the astrolabe. Read here page by page in the 1681 first edition and the 1791 fourth impression, with the ordinance number and date the compilers printed in the margin, and with the syllabus judged for what it leaves out as well as for what it contains.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-08-19", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/cosmografo-y-catedratico-de-matematicas-del-consejo-de-indias", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/cosmografo-y-catedratico-de-matematicas-del-consejo-de-indias.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The Cosmographer and Chair of Mathematics of the Council of the Indies, with the three-year syllabus printed in the law", "description": "One salaried post in Madrid held two jobs: keep the crown's map and sailing-route archive of the Americas, and teach mathematics an hour a day beside the Council of the Indies. The code prints the whole three-year course — Sacrobosco, arithmetic, Peurbach, the Alfonsine tables, Euclid, trigonometry, Regiomontanus, Ptolemy, cosmography, navigation, the astrolabe — fills the post by public edict, and withholds a third of the salary until the year's work is shown.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/cosmografo-y-catedratico-de-matematicas-del-consejo-de-indias", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-19", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, mandadas imprimir y publicar por la Magestad Católica del Rey Don Carlos II — Tomo Primero", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=xekM1Eud-40C&pg=PP7" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Primero (Libros I a III)", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=P1xp68LXgw8C&pg=PP9" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Cosmographer and Chair of Mathematics of the Council of the Indies, with the three-year syllabus printed in the law" } }