Building Cosmographical Knowledge of the New World: Andrés de Alcántara and his Fábrica del astrolabio

We study the possible intellectual contexts and contents of the unnnoticed Castilian manuscript on the construction of an astrolabe—found among the papers of the cosmographer-chronicler López de Velasco—that the unknown Andrés de Alcántara wrote in the last quarter of the 16th century, most probably as a text to instruct cosmographers. This treatise emerges in the context of King Philip II‘s cosmological program to describe and map the extension of the mundus novus, which engaged most intellectuals and technicians of the sixteenth century in Spain and the New World, especially regarding the calculation of the longitude and high-sea navigation using astronomical measures. The study includes the edition of Alcántara‘s text (MS Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial K III 8, ff. 289r-310v, possibly autograph).