2019
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Leonardo Ariel Carrió Cataldi, « Astrology on board: Andres de San Martin and Magellan’s voyage », HAL-SHS : histoire, ID : 10670/1.5067ai
Andrés de San Martín, a pilot who participated in the Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, is one of the least known crew members of the armada. Historians have mainly paid attention to his role calculating longitude during the voyage, ignoring his role as an astrologer. In this article, I examine how San Martin was represented in Spanish and Portuguese sources dealing with the issue of the position and possession of the Moluccan Islands. I argue that San Martín only emerges as a relevant actor thanks to the Portuguese chronicles of the second half of the sixteenth century. As I show, he was always closely linked to astrological knowledge through which the pilot tried to guide the crew to the Spice Islands.