Abstract

ALVAREZ, Salvador. Campanus and New Spain. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2013, vol.34, n.135, pp.59-123. ISSN 2448-7554.

In 1557, Friar Alonso de la Veracruz, the first Chair of Theology at the Universidad de México, wrote his Physica Speculatio, which he published together with his own transcription of Campanus de Novara's Tratado de la esfera, dated 1268. An examination of these texts, their interrelations, and their doctrinal sources allows us to see that the teaching of Christian cosmology in New Spain was still based upon the Scholastic-Aristotelian system developed in the Universidad de Salamanca during the previous three centuries. The analysis sheds light on the tensions and misadventures that the diffusion of geographic-cosmographic thought -the form we associate with the period of grand discoveries- confronted in America.

Keywords : cosmography; cosmology; historical cartography; discoveries; exploration.

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