Plus Ultra: The Iberian Explorations and Cartography

Abstract

The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of European expansion beyond the confines of the continent were processes based on the vast knowledge accumulated since Antiquity. Part of the Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman knowledge was lost at the beginning of the Middle Ages, but cosmography was partially preserved both in the monasteries and by the Islamic civilization. In fact, it also united the East with the West and made its own contributions to geography and, above all, astronomy. The role of Al-Andalus and its heir states, both Muslim and Christian, was decisive. The translation activity in the different Christian Iberian kingdoms, in which the so-called Schools of Translators of Toledo in the Castile of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries stood out, was extraordinarily active. It was heir to a rich intellectual life and the result of both local and European administrative needs. The Alfonsine Tables, which provided ephemerides for different celestial events, were key in European astronomy and, despite the accumulation of errors over time, were not surpassed until the Contemporary Age. The European expansion towards new geographical horizons began in the fourteenth century, with the discoveries led by Portuguese sailors in the Atlantic islands, seconded by those of other Iberian kingdoms, the French and several city states of the Italian peninsula. Castile disputed with Portugal for supremacy until the signing of several treaties that resulted in the division of the world, including the unknown seas and lands. Ptolemy’s Geography, reintroduced in the West during this competition, was used as a model to incorporate the new discoveries. The southward expansion also propelled the incorporation of the new southern constellations to the celestial globes.