In line with the studies on early modern Portuguese cosmography and navigation initiated by authors like Reijer Hooykaas and John Law, and under the growing historiographical interest aroused by recent studies on the Iberian world, this presentation is devoted to the study of three elements: a text (the Regimento do Cosmógrafo-Mor or the Regiment of the Cosmographer Major), a map (the padrões d'el-Rei or royal pattern charts) and a scientific post (the Cosmógrafo-Mor or Cosmographer Major). These three elements are crucial to understand the attempts of the Portuguese crown to carry out the standardization of cosmography as a science in the service of the interests of the empire.

First, the Regiment do Cosmógrafo-Mor of 1592 is a treaty with a series of statements that attempted to regulate the Portuguese navigation and cartography in the sixteenth century, in general, and nautical astronomy, making charts and nautical instruments and nautical teaching in particular. This textual document is an unprecedented testimony of organizational, technical and educational conditions of the Age of Discovery. Secondly, the padrões d'el-Rei were cartographic models used by the chartmakers in the Armazéms da Guiné e India of Lisbon to make copies for pilots. And third, the Cosmógrafo-Mor was the highest official scientific position of the sixteenth century and was the person in charge of transmitting new cosmographical knowledge and nautical techniques to her students, to correct the nautical regiments and to introduce the progressive developments of overseas exploration in the cartographical patterns.

The comparison between the Regimento do Cosmógrafo-Mor, the cartographic padrões d'el-Rei and the figure of Cosmógrafo-Mor with other elements from the Spanish cosmography of the same era such as the instructions for the formation of the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias, the Padrón Real (Master sea-chart) of the Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville or the scientific post of Piloto Mayor (Pilot Major) offers us new meanings of why cosmography, along with navigation, was systematically regulated and controlled by the Iberian crowns throughout the sixteenth century.