THE COMPASS IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN. Ill 



made by order of Alfonso X.-, King of Castile, in 1263 ; the 

 28th statute of which is the following : 



"And as the sailors are guided in an obscure night by 

 means of the magnet needle, which is their mediator be- 

 tween the star and the lodestone, and shows them where 

 to go as well in good weather as in bad ; so those who 

 have to aid and to counsel the king should always be 

 guided by justice, which is the mediator between God and 

 the world, always giving safety to the good and punish- 

 ment to the wicked, each according to his deserts." 



It appears, however, that the instrument was not then 

 in use in Spanish ships. In the chronicle of Don Pedro 

 Nino, Conde de Buelna, a famous Castilian knight, appears 

 the decisive statement under date of 1403: "The galleys 

 of Conde, it is said, left the island of la Alharina in Bar- 

 bary. . . The pilots compared their needles rubbed with 

 the magnet stone and opened their charts." This the 

 distinguished Spanish historian Capmany 1 says is not only 

 the first mention of the use of the compass in a Spanish 

 vessel, but he finds that in the inventories of a three- 

 decked ship fitted out in Barcelona in 1331 against the 

 Genoese, there is no reference to such an instrument ; nor 

 yet in the similar schedules of 1364 of the galleys of Don 

 Pedro IV., of Aragon, although all articles, even those of 

 very small 'account, are noted. On the other hand, he 

 points out that in the galley inventories of Alfonso V., of 

 Aragon, dated 1409, the compass is fully set forth. 



1 Capmany : Memorias Historicas Sobre la Marina, Commercio, etc. 

 Madrid, 1792. 



