Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca

Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca (1451–1524) was a Spanish archbishop, a courtier and bureaucrat, whose position as royal chaplain to Queen Isabella enabled him to become a powerful counsellor to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs. He controlled the Casa de Contratación, an agency which managed expeditions to the New World on behalf of the Spanish crown. He later served as the president of the Council of the Indies, when it was founded in 1521. He managed the administration of a number of significant Spanish expeditions including voyages by Christopher Columbus and Magellan's circumnavigation of the earth.