 In the case of Menéndez Pelayo, whose interest in the Antoniana came from his youth, Gómez Pereira was considered as an outstanding physician, a great scholar and a true pioneer of Cartesianism not only from the point of view of animal mechanism, but also as the first author of the famous cogito ergo sum (González Vila 1977: 113). Later the Cantabrian scholar dedicated a detailed monographic study to the Antoniana, which he first published independently in 1878 and later as an appendix to his famous work La ciencia española (Menéndez Pelayo 1887–1888: vol. II, Appendix). Against the interpretative tradition that was rooted in Pierre Bayle’s opinion with respect to the thought of Pereira, Menéndez Pelayo argued that in the Antoniana there is a complete philosophical system based on well-established principles. The image of Pereira drawn by Menéndez Pelayo was that of a great thinker (comparable to Vives), a sincere Catholic who was able to reconcile independence with orthodoxy, and someone who represented the living proof of the freedom of Spanish scientists under the Inquisition.