SUMMARY

BAM has received two letters from Ovando along with a letter of credit. He will send the requested instruments and books to Ovando once the issues with England are resolved.

COMMENT

We do not have the original of this letter dated September 5th, 1569, but we know its content briefly thanks to a report made by Juan de Ovando of all the letters that BAM sent him during his stay in Flanders, which has been preserved in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, Envío 78, document number 2, under the title «Relaciones de cartas que tengo recebidas de el D. Arias Montano de Anbers y de Pº de Puerta de Laredo, y otras en respuesta y escriptas a el[l]os» the complete text of which can be consulted in Macías, Correspondencia con Ovando, pp. 346-348. In the entry corresponding to the letter dated September 5th, 1569, Ovando recorded the paragraph we edit below. On the other hand, Ovando replies to that letter of September 5th in his dated January 21st, 1570 (1570 01 21), where he provides a series of details that allow us to further complete the content of the lost letter. According to this testimony, we know that BAM had asked for news about Juan del Caño, their common friend; he justifies Ovando's praise that Becano had placed in the dedication at the beginning of his work Origines Antwerpianae; likewise, it is deduced that BAM has obtained the globes by Mercator he requested for him; and finally, it appears that BAM had praised him in his letter to Christopher Plantin.

Regarding the dating of the present document, it seems clear that it must have been drafted around the date of the last recorded letter, the one Ovando writes to BAM on April 17, 1571. It could be thought that it was elaborated gradually as the letters were received; however, being a draft, all in the same handwriting, on a single sheet of paper, and with great uniformity of style, the most plausible explanation is that it was written in a short period of time.