Antonio Pigafetta's First Voyage Around

the World: A Travelogue

On September 8, 1522, the crew of the Victoria cast anchor in the waters off of Seville,
Spain, having just completed the first circumnavigation of the world. On board was
Antonio Pigafetta, a young Italian nobleman who had joined the expedition three years
before, and served as an assistant to Ferdinand Magellan en route to the Molucca
Islands. Magellan was dead. The rest of the fleet was gone: the Santiago shipwrecked,
the San Antonio overtaken, the Concepcion burned and the Trinidad abandoned. Of the
237 sailors who departed from Seville, eighteen returned on the Victoria. Pigafetta had
managed to survive, along with his journal—notes that detailed the discovery of the
western route to the Moluccas. And along the way, new land, new peoples: on the far
side of the Pacific, the fleet had stumbled across the Marianas archipelago, and some
three hundred leagues further west, the Philippines.

First Voyage, Cachey points out, is intent on marveling at what it encounters—and

therein lies much of its appeal. It is a work that is intent on wonder. On astonishment. In
travel writing, one often must recreate the first moment of newness, that fresh sense of
awe, on the page for the reader; Pigafetta does it again and again, by reveling in odd
and odder bits of detail. We watch Pigafetta wonder at trees in Borneo whose leaves
appear to walk around once shed, leaves that "have no blood, but if one touches them
they run away. I kept one of them for nine days in a box. When I opened the box, that
leaf went round and round it. I believe those leaves live on nothing but air.” (Pigafetta,
76). We marvel, in the Philippines, at sea snails capable of felling whales, by feeding on
their hearts once ingested (48). On a stop in Brazil, we see an infinite number of
parrots, monkeys that look like lions, and "swine that have their navels on their backs,
and large birds with beaks like spoons and no tongues"

In First Voyage is great gulf between what Pigafetta sees and what Pigafetta knows. I
grew up, in the Marianas, hearing about this gulf. It is part of why travel writing can be
so fraught for me now. On reaching the Marianas after nearly four months at sea with
no new provisions,"The captain-general wished to stop at the large island and get some
fresh food, but he was unable to do so because the inhabitants of that island entered
the ships and stole whatever they could lay their hands on, in such a manner that we
could not defend ourselves." (27). The sailors did not understand that this was custom,
that for the islanders, property was communal and visitors were expected to share what
they had.
Magellan named the archipelago Islas de los Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves. The
name would stick for the next three hundred years, long after the islands were absorbed
into the Spanish empire. The name, the bold, condemnatory stroke of it, has long been
anchored to my past, to those old history lessons. There is no feeling in it but rage. So I
was surprised to see, in Pigafetta's text, the sailors moved to compassion. They seem
to understand, in that moment of astonishment, that the islanders are defenseless
against the unknown.

From the Marianas, the fleet moved on to the Philippines. They linger there, exploring
the land, exchanging gifts with the chiefs, observing the people. And I know what's
coming for the people; I know that we're seeing, through Pigafetta, the hush of a world
just before it changes, wholly and entirely. And there is Pigafetta, marveling, at the
coconuts and the bananas and the naked, beautiful people. It's happening even now in
the text, as the Filipino pilots are captured to direct the way to the Moluccas, the way to
the spices. There is Pigafetta, roaming and cataloging and recording, caught up in the
first flush of a new world, and as I read I can start to hear my father describing his
country, wondering at it, my father traveling as a young man up and down Luzon,
across the sea to the Visayas, across the sea to Mindanao. I can hear the ardor and the
sadness and the terror and the delight. I can hear the wonder. I can feel the pulse to
move.
Transylvanus Account of the Magellan
Expedition

In 1520, Transylvanus had published, at Augsburg, a work in Latin that describes the
reception that nominated Charles I, King of Spain, as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519
at Molins de Rei, in Spain. This is the Legatio ad sacratissimum ac invictum Caesarem
divum Carolum .... ab reverendissimis et illustrissimis principibus ... qua functus est
...Federicus comes palatinus in Molendino regio vlt. Novembris Anno
MDXIX (Augsburg: Sigismund Grimm und Marx Wirsung, 1520). At this point,
Maximilianus seems to have already been serving as personal secretary to Charles V,
as well as accompanying the monarch on his travels.

As Secretary to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, for whom Magellan had sailed,
Transylvanus interviewed the survivors of the voyage when Magellan's surviving
ship Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522. This group included Juan Sebastián
Elcano, Francisco Albo, and Hernando de Bustamante. The result was Maximiliani
Transyluani Caesaris a secretis epistola, de admirabili & novissima hispanoru in
orientem navigatione, que auriae, & nulli prius accessae regiones sunt, cum ipsis etia
moluccis insulis, published in Cologne in 1523.

Maximilianus, a pupil of Peter Martyr Vermigli, interviewed the surviving members of the
expedition when they presented themselves to the Spanish court at Valladolid in the fall
of 1522. Eager to acquire fame as a writer, he produced his tract De Moluccis Insulis as
a letter to Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Salzburg, who
had suggested that he perform the interviews in the first place. [1] It may have also been
Vermigli who suggested the project to the young courtier. Vermigli, was, after all, very
interested in overseas exploration.

Maximilianus' letter is dated 24 October 1522, and his account was sent to Lang, whom
he calls ambiguously domine mi unice ("my sole lord"), while the cardinal-archbishop
was attending the Diet of Nuremberg. This diet was concerned with pacifying the
first Protestants, which resulted in the sending of a letter of appeal to Pope Adrian VI.

Maximilianus' letter reached the hands of a Cologne printer, Eucharius Cervicornus (a

Latinized rendering of "Hirtzhorn"), and the first edition of De Moluccis Insulis was
printed in January 1523. Despite the war that had erupted between Charles V
and Francis I of France (see Italian War of 1521), this first edition reached Paris, where
it was printed anew by Pierre Viart in July 1523. A subsequent edition was printed at
Rome by Minutius Calvus (Minizio Calvo), in November 1523.