Basinillo, Perbielyn A.

January 16, 2020

BSA 1-15 Readings in the Philippine History

Biography of Antonio Pigafetta

MANILA, Philippines – “Taghai, bolan, songhot, adlo, abaca, sabun, ayam, ido, balay, boloto,” reads Filipino
historian Ian Alfonso.

(Cup, star, moon, sun, cloth material, shirt, dog, house, small boat.)

These ancient Bisaya words leap from a digital copy of a 16th century French manuscript – one version of the
account of a Venetian named Antonio Pigafetta, the first Westerner to document the Bisaya language.

Alfonso goes through this dictionary of sorts, rendered in flowery font by a scribe for the reading pleasure of
European royals wanting to learn more about distant islands.

Alfonso uses laptop keys to turn the pages, as his boss, chairman of the National Historical Commission of the
Philippines (NHCP), Rene Escalante, looks on.

A few keyboard taps later, pages of words give way to pages of paintings. Grey islands pop from a blue
backdrop of wave-flecked sea. White banners proclaim them to be depictions of “Mattan,” “Zubu,” “Bohol,”
“Zuluan,” “Humunu,” and “Pulawan.”

They are known today as Mactan, Cebu, Bohol, Guiuan, Homonhon, and Palawan.

“We’re almost at the first encounter,” says Alfonso excitedly, as he uses his laptop to arrive at the page where
Portugese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew catch their first glimpse of the Philippine islands and are
about to meet their first “natives” in Guiuan, Eastern Samar.

A year ago, Alfonso would have had to travel to the United States or Europe to view Pigafetta’s manuscript in
high resolution, and likely be asked to pay a fee.

But he is viewing them in Manila, inside the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) library
beside Rizal Park.

This access can now be enjoyed by any Filipino for the first time because the NHCP has finally brought home
high-resolution digital copies of all 4 Pigafetta extant manuscripts.

Some of these manuscripts have long been accessible online, but not in high resolution, a limitation for
historians who want to see crucial details or for the government who may want to use blown-up images of the
documents.

Antonio Pigafetta was a young Venetian, likely in his 20s when he arrived in the Philippines as part of
Magellan’s crew on March 17, 1521.
The geographer and scribe of the group, he recorded not only names of places and the vocabulary of the natives,
but their food, attire, customs, and traditions, too. He described historical events like the first Easter Day Mass
celebrated in the Philippines and the battle of Mactan, where Magellan was killed by Lapulapu’s men.

Pigafetta’s eyewitness account is the “most detailed and only surviving account” of this critical event in
Philippine history, says Escalante.

Pigafetta wrote all his observations in a journal, now lost. But based on this original journal, 4 manuscripts were
produced – 3 in French and one in Italian. They were distributed to European royals interested in financing their
own expeditions to the Spice Islands.

These 4 manuscripts have survived. The originals are in libraries in the United States, France, and Italy.

Their pages are a treasure trove of knowledge about the Philippines’ mysterious precolonial past – when
chieftains ruled independent fiefdoms, animals and plants were sacred, and Western civilization was hazier than
myth.

Collecting the manuscripts

Like Pigafetta himself, Escalante has had to reach out to different parts of the world to bring home the high-
resolution digital copies of all 4 manuscripts.

While in New York City for negotiations on the return of the Balangiga Bells, he decided to take a drive to Yale
University, only 3 hours away, where one French manuscript is kept.

After paying roughly P20,000 and promising to abide by conditions like not using the document for commercial
purposes, Escalante secured a high-resolution digital file of Pigafetta’s account for the Philippine government.

He would later on write to two other institutes – the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and Biblioteca Ambrosiana
in Milan – which possess the remaining 3 chronicles.

The Ambrosiana manuscript, the longest of the 4, was the priciest, costing the government P100,000. The two
manuscripts in Paris were obtained for only some P5,000 after the library gave NHCP an 80% discount.

In total, the government spent P125,000 for the manuscripts.

The government’s expense is the Filipinos’ gain. With all 4 digital copies now with the NHCP, any interested
citizen can troop to the commission’s office in Rizal Park and request to view Pigafetta’s accounts, free of
charge.

A request can be made with an email to nhcp.chair@gmail.com indicating the name of the requestor and the
purpose of the request.

With this kind of access, anyone can be a historian.

“In history, there is still this passion for primary sources. If you really want to be a credible historian, you
should not be [content] with translations and secondary accounts,” said Escalante.
Bringing home the Pigafetta manuscripts is one way to promote the study of history, especially that chapter in
the Philippines’ shrouded in mystery.

As one explores further and further into the past, the number of materials about the time period diminishes. The
only artifacts in our own backyard that have shed light on precolonial Philippines are jars, human remains, and
epics preserved by oral history.

That’s why written accounts by foreigners who visited the Philippines in that epoch are valuable, and the
Pigafetta manuscripts all the more so, for their level of detail and the historic events they describe.

For instance, Pigafetta narrates that the first Easter Day Mass was celebrated in the Philippines in a place called
Limasawa. Despite a law in the 1960s declaring that this happened in Limasawa Island, Southern Leyte, there
remain adherents to the theory that the site was Butuan, in a swampy area that had been called Mazaua.

Pigafetta also relates the planting of a cross in a mountain in Limasawa, and days later, in Cebu, the bequeathal
of a statue of the baby Jesus to Juana, wife of Bisaya ruler Raja Humabon.

The climax of Pigafetta’s account is Magellan’s death in the Battle of Mactan. Reading his chronicle would
challenge what most Filipinos know about that historic event.

Pigafetta wrote that Magellan was killed, not necessarily by Mactan ruler Lapulapu himself, but by a swarm of
his men. After a blow to his leg at the height of the battle, Magellan fell face down in the water where he was
besieged by Lapulapu’s men.

“Immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our
mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide,” wrote Pigafetta.

To be consistent with this narration of events, the government has begun efforts to replace the current Lapulapu
statue in Mactan with a “liberty shrine” that more accurately depicts the collective effort that led to Magellan’s
death.

It is from Pigafetta’s account that we learn Magellan’s death may have been due to his own folly because he had
refused the help of a rival Cebu chieftain, Zula, against Lapulapu.

Magellan asked Zula and his men to stand back and watch the battle, confident that the Europeans outmatched
Lapulapu’s army. The mistake cost him his life.

Apart from historical events, Pigafetta jotted down his observations about even the mundane details of the lives
of early Filipinos.

He devotes paragraphs to describing Filipinos’ many uses of the coconut – a source of liquor (“uraca”), oil,
vinegar, bread, and milk. He enthuses about how Butuan was full of gold “the size of walnuts and eggs” and
how its king, Rajah Colambo, was the “finest looking man” they saw.

There are descriptions of the food served to them (roast pork, roast fish, ginger, bananas), attire, drinking
ceremonies, burial rituals. Pigafetta speaks of the islanders’ habit of chewing a fruit called “areca” with betel
leaves because of its “cooling effect.”
For Escalante, returning to Pigafetta’s manuscripts allows Filipinos to learn about a part of Philippine history
“unadulterated” by colonialism. It would challenge the misconception of some that Filipinos, before
colonization, were savages.

“We can tell them that we have already a respectable degree of ciivlization, we have forms of government, we
have customs and traditions, we have appreciation of art, we are practicing also basic agriculture. We have
developed the technology of boat-making and then land-navigating and seas,” said Escalante.

But the value of the manuscripts lies not only in Pigafetta’s words, but also in their other visual elements. Not
your modern-day drab, typed-up report, the chronicles are painstakingly handwritten and come with colorful
paintings.

Scholars of calligraphy, cartography, drawing techniques, and early forms of languages would also have much
to mine from the pages, especially in their high-resolution renderings.

Hike for history

One hot April day, Francis “Chas” Navarro found himself huffing and puffing up a hill in Limasawa, Southern
Leyte with fellow historians.

Navarro, a history professor with Ateneo de Manila University was with church historians Father Tony de
Castro, Victor Torres, and Brother Madz Tumbali; Rolando Borrinaga of University of the Philippines
Tacloban, and Carlos Madrid, former head of Instituto Cervantes, an organization that teaches Spanish language
and culture.

Their young guides said it would take only 15 minutes until the peak, but they didn’t consider how the steep
assault would force Navarro and his companions to stop for rests and gulps of water.

They almost gave up.

Their hike up Limasawa was not for an adrenaline rush but to settle a historical debate – if the first Easter Day
Mass was held in Limasawa, Southern Leyte or in Butuan.

In Pigafetta’s account, Magellan and his crew scaled a hill in the place where they would later on hold the Mass
to see the entire island and its surroundings. This is apart from their other hike to plant a cross after celebrating
the Easter Day Mass for the newly-baptized islanders.

Was it this hill the explorers climbed, thus proving Limasawa – and not Mazaua in Butuan – was the site of the
Mass?

Navarro and his companions, sweaty and out of breath, found the answer at the peak as they looked out into the
seascape.

“It was at that particular point that when they were up there, they saw 3 peaks. That would be the peaks of the
mountains of Samar, Leyte, and another province, and it was verified that it could be seen at the peak of
Limasawa,” said Navarro.
Madrid would later on climb a hill near the supposed location of Mazaua, the place in Butuan which some
believe to be where the first Easter Day Mass was really held.

But Madrid did not see 3 peaks, which led him to conclude it was not the right place.

Navarro is part of a group of historians tapped by the NHCP to settle disputes on the March 31, 1521 Easter
Sunday Mass celebration using the Pigafetta manuscripts and other primary sources.

Because of his expertise in the transcription of historical documents, Navarro was specifically tasked with the
transcription and translation of the portion of the Pigafetta manuscripts that deal with the Philippine leg of the
Magellan-Elcano expedition.

Navarro, who specializes in Spanish documents, asked the University of the Philippines’ Jillian Melchor and
fellow Ateneo academic Robert Yu to translate the Italian and French manuscripts, respectively.

He himself focused on the accounts of Gines de Mafra and Francisco Albo, the other crew members who kept a
diary or logbook of the expedition, among other relevant documents.

The Philippine portion comprises only 25% of Pigafetta’s account of the entire Magellan-Elcano expedition but
transcribing and translating this is painstaking work. Transcribing is turning the characters of historical writings
into Roman letters. Translation is when these writings are made understandable in another language, like
English.

Months of transcriptions and translations, trips to different parts of the country, and dialogues with various
historians championioning their own theories have borne fruit.

An effort that began in January will soon culminate in a final report the panel of historians is now finishing.
Escalante said the findings would be contained in a two-volume book to be released in 2021 in time for the
commemoration of the 500th-year anniversary of Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines.

It was the 2019 to 2022 quincentennial celebration of the Magellan-Elcano expedition or the First
Circumnavigation of the World that catalyzed NHCP’s efforts to bring home the Pigafetta manuscripts.

In past years, the government had been more focused on commemorating events that took place during the
colonial era, like the birth anniversaries of national figures like Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, and Emilio
Aguinaldo.

The quincentennial of Magellan’s journey gave NHCP the perfect opportunity to collect materials about that
little-known time in the country’s past when ancient Filipinos answered to no foreign master.

The Pigafetta manuscripts are just the beginning of a long journey. The NHCP is looking for more sources of
primary accounts of ancient Philippines from other countries, including its Asian neighbors.

They’ve reached out to Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Turkish, and Indian officials. NHCP
historians have flown twice to Malaysia to follow up on some sources.

They’ve secured digital files of the richly-illustrated, 300-page Boxer Codex for a mere P5,000.
Some P10 million in public funds have been earmarked for the retrieval of such historical materials, said
Escalante.

These documents would again have to be transcribed, translated, analyzed, and discussed extensively.

It’s work reserved for both the Philippines’ experienced and budding historians, who together, can weave an
ancient world from centuries-old ink. – Rappler.com

Retrieved from: Bringing home the Pigafetta manuscripts. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/242606-bringing-home-pigafetta-manuscripts.

First Voyage Around the World by Antonio Pigafetta

By Anna Ettore
Antonio Pigafetta was a key player of one of the most amazing world exploration trips.He was born in Vicenza
in 1492, and he was an Italian seafarer and geographer.
The relevance of his own venture, fundamentally lies in the fact that he took part to the first globe
circumnavigation, between 1519 and 1522, and he was able to accomplish it after the murder of Ferdinand
Magellan, leaving a detailed description of the journey in the Report of the first trip around the world, a lost
manuscript that was rescued later, in 1797, and today is considered one of the most important documentary
evidence relating the geographical discoveries of the Sixteenth Century.
Antonio Pigafetta, fascinating and fleeing personality, for scholars he still represents a partial mystery. About
him too little is known to define a satisfactory profile on the biographical side. Documents and the testimony of
contemporaneous are scarces, and his own character primarily appears from what he wrote in his own report.
His own narration about the first world circumnavigation was one of the greatest achievements in the history of
navy exploration and discovery.
In this narration can be found descriptions of peoples, countries, goods and even the languages that were
spoken, of which the seafarer was trying to assemble some brief glossaries.
Pigafetta tells how, being in Barcelona in 1519, he heard about Magellan’s expedition, and being wishful to
learn about the world, he asked for and obtained the permission to join in the voyage.
Magellan’s fleet weighed anchor from Seville on August 10th of the same year with five smaller vessels,
heading towards Canary Islands and down along the African coast, and across the Equator. From there they
sailed towards Brazil coast , where they stayed for some time, making supplies and weaving friendly contacts
with the cannibalistic natives who dwelled there.
Moving on, then they arrived in Patagonia, where they spent winter months in a desolate solitude. They met
local people, who looked like giants in their eyes full of wonder, because of their robust body types.
They survived the mutiny of one of the captains and some disgruntled sailors, and continued the exploration of
the coast. One of the vessels was drowned, but the whole crew managed to be saved.
They proceeded until the discovery of the strait, named after, Magellan himself, on October 21st 1520, and went
through, although one of the ships deserted, sailing back to Spain.
Finally, they arrived in the Philippines, where they became acquainted with the natives who proved hospitable
and welcomed them as guests in the king’s palace. The indigenous people, affected by the celebration of Mass
and the crucifix planted in the island, promised to convert to Christianity.
Quickly they developed commerce and trade, and the king, the queen and other notables of Cebu were
converted, until the entire population rapidly followed them in the new religion.
Shortly after, happened the disastrous episode that changed the course of the expedition. Magellan took part in a
conflict between some local tribes and was killed. The rest of the expedition managed to escape and retired,
preparing to leave, but a trap set by Magellan’s interpreter and the king of Cebu, led to another massacre of the
Europeans.
The surviving ships continued toward Borneo and to the city of Brunei, where they managed to stock up, then
from there, traveling southbound, they came to the Moluccas, 27 months after the departure from Spain, finding
a warm welcome by an astrologer king who had predicted their arrival.
But at this point, despite the perspective of good business and the rich exchanges that would lie ahead, their
desire to return to Spain urged them and pushed them to a quick return.

Translation by Silvia Accorrà (edited by Davide Spagnoli)

First Voyage Around the World
by Antonio Pigafetta
That land of Verzin is wealthier and larger than Spagnia, Fransa, and Italia, put together, and belongs to the
king of Portugalo. The people of that land are not Christians, and have no manner of worship.
They live according to the dictates of nature, and reach an age of one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred
and forty years. They go naked, both men and women. They live in certain long houses which they call boii and
sleep in cotton hammocks called amache, which are fastened in those houses by each end to large beams. A fire
is built on the ground under those hammocks. In each one of those boii, there are one hundred men with their
wives and children, and they make a great racket. They have boats called canoes made of one single huge tree,
hollowed out by the use of stone hatchets. Those people employ stones as we do iron, as they have no iron.
Thirty or forty men occupy one of those boats. They paddle with blades like the shovels of a furnace, and thus,
black, naked, and shaven, they resemble, when paddling, the inhabitants of the Stygian marsh. Men and women
are as well proportioned as we. They eat the human flesh of their enemies, not because it is good, but because it
is a certain established custom.

That custom, which is mutual, was begun by an old woman, who had but one son who was killed by his
enemies. In return some days later, that old woman’s friends captured one of the company who had killed her
son, and brought him to the place of her abode. She seeing him, and remembering her son, ran upon him like an
infuriated bitch, and bit him on one shoulder. Shortly afterward he escaped to his own people, whom he told
that they had tried to eat him, showing them [in proof] the marks on his shoulder. Whomever the latter captured
afterward at any time from the former they ate, and the former did the same to the latter, so that such a custom
has sprung up in this way. They do not eat the bodies all at once, but every one cuts off a piece, and carries it to
his house, where he smokes it. Then every week, he cuts off a small bit, which he eats thus smoked with his
other food to remind him of his enemies. The above was told me by the pilot, Johane
Carnagio, who came with us, and who had lived in that land for four years. Those people paint the whole body
and the face in a wonderful manner with fire in various fashions, as do the women also.
The men are [are: doublet in original manuscript] smooth shaven and have no beard, for they pull it out. They
clothe themselves in a dress made of parrot feathers, with large round arrangements at their buttocks made from
the largest feathers, and it is a ridiculous sight.
Almost all the people, except the women and children, have three holes pierced in the lower lip, where they
carry round stones, one finger or thereabouts in length and hanging down outside. Those people are not entirely
black, but of a dark brown color. They keep the privies uncovered, and the body is without hair, while both men
and women always go naked. Their king is called cacich [i.e., cacique].
They have an infinite number of parrots, and gave us 8 or 10 for one mirror: and little monkeys that look like
lions, only [they are] yellow, and very beautiful. They make round white [loaves of] bread from the marrowy
substance of trees, which is not very good, and is found between the wood and the bark and resembles
buttermilk curds.

They have swine which have their navels [lombelico] on their backs, and large birds with beaks like spoons and
no tongues.

The men gave us one or two of their young daughters as slaves for one hatchet or one large knife, but they
would not give us their wives in exchange for anything at all. The women will not shame their husbands under
any considerations whatever, and as was told us, refuse to consent to their husbands by day, but only by night.
The women cultivate the fields, and carry all their food from the mountains in panniers or baskets on the head
or fastened to the head. But they are always accompanied by their husbands, who are armed only with a bow of
brazil-wood or of black palm-wood, and a bundle of cane arrows,
doing this because they are jealous [of their wives]. The women carry their children hanging in a cotton net
from their necks. I omit other particulars, in order not to be tedious. Mass was said twice on shore, during which
those people remained on their knees with so great contrition and with clasped hands raised aloft, that it was an
exceeding great pleasure to behold them. They built us a house as they thought that we were going to stay with
them for some time, and at our departure they cut a great quantity of brazil-wood [verzin] to give us. It had been
about two months since it had rained in that land, and when we reached that port, it happened to rain,
whereupon they said that we came from the sky and that we had brought the rain with us.
Those people could be converted easily to the faith of Jesus Christ.

At first those people thought that the small boats were the children of the ships, and that the latter gave birth to
them when they were lowered into the sea from the ships, and when they were lying so alongside the ships (as is
the custom), they believed that the ships were nursing them. One day a beautiful young woman came to the
flagship, where I was, for no other purpose than to seek what chance might offer. While there and waiting, she
cast her eyes upon the master’s room, and saw a nail longer than one’s finger. Picking it
up very delightedly and neatly, she thrust it through the lips of her vagina [natura], and bending down low
immediately departed, the captain-general and I having seen that action.

Translation by James Alexander Robertson (Blaire & Robertson, 1906)

Retrieved from: Ettore, A., Ettore, A. E. A., Ettore, A., Ettore, A., Forrester School of Creative Writing,
Giovanni Tranchida Editore Publishing House, … Giovanni Tranchida Editore Publishing House. (2017,
September 26). First Voyage Around the World by Antonio Pigafetta. Retrieved from
https://www.inkroci.com/culture_movie/review-from-the-world/literatures-from-the-world/first-voyage-around-
the-world-by-antonio-pigafetta.html.

August 10, 500 years ago: Pigafetta and an unresolved issue

Buddy Gomez -- Cyberbuddy
Posted at Aug 17 2019 10:34 AM

First of two parts

World history’s most significant achievement in sea exploration and discovery and alongside as well, the fate
and future of us -- the Philippines and the Filipinos -- was launched five hundred years ago, last Saturday.

Five hundred years ago, August 10 was a Monday. It was San Lorenzo’s Day when the 5-galleon fleet of
Ferdinand Magellan set sail from the port of Seville, Spain through the river Quadalquivir, (once named Betis),
double-checked travel preparations and requirements at San Lucar de Barrameda. On September 20, 1519, the
expedition sailed out into the Atlantic for the unchartered beyond, with imprecise expectations but inspired by
faith, heart, hope, fame and profit.

The date might as well, also, mark the countdown to our national celebration of the dawn of the Filipino’s
avowed tandem of Christianity and Western civilization, which set us apart from the rest of our archipelagic
vicinity. Indeed, that European discovery will always be an indispensable component in any celebration of who
we have become and who we are, since.

To the largest of extent, our knowledge about this adventure and who we were comes from the travel journal of
one Antonio Pigafetta. This young Venetian, then in his late 20s, from a noble family through whose
connections, was able to enlist himself as chronicler of the voyage.

Anchoring in the port of Seville on September 8, 1522, an almost decrepit Victoria completed the very first
circumnavigation of the globe in 1124 days, with only 18 survivors, our chronicler Antonio Pigafetta being one
of them. The five galleons had a combined crew numbering anywhere from 235 to 280, depending on which
archival sources researchers would cite. The traditional textbook count was 237.

Copious notes meticulously taken down by Pigafetta recorded for the first time our flora and fauna, manners
and customs including sexual norms, languages and geography, never before known to the Western world.
Words in Visayan were first introduced to European intelligentsia through Pigafetta’s published journal.

For the information of Philippine history buffs and aficionados, especially those who are only now getting
enthused into knowing much more of our past beyond classroom textbooks as a retirement engagement and
pastime, there is the principal all-time reliable Pigafetta’s “Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo” (The First
Voyage Around the World) originally written in Italian which was published in Rome in 1525. Volumes
XXXIII and XXXIV of the famed Blair & Robinson (B&R) 55-volume series “The Philippine Islands” (1903-
09) has an English translation alongside the Italian original.

This is now available electronically aside from available reprints, which are sometimes pricey. The
accompanying “Notes” in the B&R are indispensable. For example, names, nationalities and
occupations/shipboard assignments of the crew distributed on a per galleon basis. As it turns out, Magellan’s
crew was multinational: British, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Black African, Basque, aside from Spanish and
Portuguese. And of course we cannot omit Enrique from Malacca.

The first complete English edition of Pigafetta was published in London in 1874 for the Hakluyt Society, a
British institution devoted to recording historic voyages of exploration, translated by Lord Stanley Alderly. (My
copy is a “print-on-demand,” a facility now available through the internet.)

In 1969, the Yale University Press produced in high quality a 2-volume, presentation style set in book slipcase,
another English translation. This time, the endeavor was based on one of the earlier single-issue editions
handwritten in French. Scholars have found that there were three French translations prepared by Pigafetta for
the more important of the Magellan voyage patrons. The principal and most important one was, of course, the
one in Italian.

Regardless of the first person recollection by one of the 18 survivors of the Magellan expedition, the Pigafetta
journal was actually not the first documentation to see print. Pigafetta’s came in 1525. There is Maximillianus
Transylvanus, the son of the Archbishop of Salzburg, who interviewed Victoria’s captain, Sebastian Elcano, the
pilot Francisco Albo and another survivor. The reportage by Transylvanus started out as letter to his father, the
Cardinal-Archbishop of Salzburg. This was before the end of 1522, when much talk in Spain centered upon the
Magellan discoveries. This letter saw its printed publication in Rome, January 1523. It was titled “De Moluccis
Insulis.” An English translation appears in Volume I of Blair and Robertson.

To complete our resources, there is also the very essential “The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First
Circumnavigation of the World” by Francis H.H. Guillemard, printed in London 1890. And lastly, in my pile, I
have “So Noble a Captain …. the Life and Times of Ferdinand Magellan” by Charles Matthew Parr, New York
in 1953.

As the country prepares for the 500th anniversary of the arrival of the first Europeans and the introduction of
Christianity, the better way to participate and celebrate in this historic observation, is naturally, to know of and
to understand more of Pigafetta.

Might it not be desirable then, and it is so suggested, for friendship gatherings, socials andeven tertulias over
cocktails to dwell upon the events surrounding March 16 and 17, 1521 and the immediate thereafter?

Just to clear up an earlier mix-up contained in our history textbooks, March 16, 1521 (a Saturday) was only the
“sighting’ of Samar, from around the isle of Suluan, where the Magellan party bivouacked afloat overnight. It is
therefore not the date of “discovery.” March 17, the following day, Sunday, was actually the landing, the going
ashore for the very first time. And that was in Homonhon, where the party sojourned for eight days before
sailing on.

Much of the attention is naturally being devoted to the Christianity aspect of the event. Indeed much ado has
been devoted to what was, once upon a not too distant past, the celebration of the “First Mass” in the
Philippines. Out of this arose intellectual controversies with some counterclaims and not without elements of
acrimony, either! An attempt to resolve the issue was launched.

Sometime in 1996, the National Historical Institute (NHI) attempted to “resolve a very sensitive historical issue
facing our country and our people.” And after almost two years, the NHI panel concluded that “the first-ever
Christian mass on Philippine soil on March 31, 1521 was celebrated in the island of Limasawa” shoring up their
conclusion by claiming to have undertaken a “rigorous evaluative analysis and appraisal of primary sources” --
none other than “the most complete and reliable account of the Magellan expedition,” the chronicles of Antonio
Pigafetta.

Notwithstanding, there is still an on-going debate between Southern Leyte where Limasawa is an island
municipality and Butuan City which is in Agusan del Norte province with reference to the definitive venue of
that Easter Sunday Mass on March 31, 1521. The historical record from Pigafetta simply says “a mass in
Limasawa on that Easter Sunday.” [B&R translation] The Butuanons claim that that site was actually “Masaua”
which is in Agusan.

There has been a noticeable change in the arguments, however. Respected historians have shied away from
referring to that eucharistic celebration of March 31, 1521 as the “First Mass,” as we were taught in school.
Now in more frequent use is the more realistic, and simply “Easter Mass.”

I have argued in the past that to solve the impasse, one has to accept that the issue ought not be anchored on
geography but sensibly, upon chronology, whenever any one wishes to speak authoritatively of the “First
Mass,” specifically as to venue because, indeed, there was a “First Mass” celebrated on Philippine soil. And it is
neither in Butuan’s Masaua nor in Southern Leyte’s Limasawa.

Chronology will conclusively define geography of the venue of the celebration of the First Mass. Next week I
will explain why.

Retrieved from: Gomez, B., & Cyberbuddy. (2019, August 17). August 10, 500 years ago: Pigafetta and an
unresolved issue. Retrieved from https://news.abs-cbn.com/blogs/opinions/08/17/19/august-10-500-years-ago-
pigafetta-and-an-unresolved-issue.

Biography of Antonio Pigafetta (ca. 1490-ca. 1534)

Famous Italian traveller born in Vicenza around 1490 and died in the same city in 1534, who is also known by
the name of Antonio Lombardo or Francisco Antonio Pigafetta. Initially linked to the order of Rhodes, which
was Knight, went to Spain in 1519, accompanied by Monsignor Francisco Chiericato, and was made available
from Carlos V to promote the company initiated by the Catholic Monarchs in the Atlantic. Soon he/she became
a great friendship with Magallanes, who accompanied, together with Juan Sebastián Elcano, in the famous
expedition to the Moluccas begun in August of 1519 and finished in September 1522. He/She was wounded at
the battle of the island of Cebu (Philippines) in which Magellan found death. The output of Seville made it
aboard of the Trinity; the return, along with a handful of survivors (17 of the 239 who left this adventure), in
victory, ship that entered in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) on September 6, the designated year. In the last
years of his life, he/she traveled by land from France to finally return to Italy in 1523. He/She wrote the relation
of that trip, which was the first around the world, Italian and with the title of Relazioni in lathe to the primo
viaggio di circumnavigazione. Notizia del Mondo Nuovo with figure you dei paesi scoperti, which was
published posthumously, in 1536.

The account of Pigafetta is the single most important source about the voyage of circumnavigation, despite its
tendency to include fabulous details. He/She took notes daily, as he/she mentioned when he/she realizes his
surprise at Spain and see that he/she had lost a day (due to its driving direction). Includes descriptions of
numerous animals, including sharks, the Storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus), the pink spoonbill (Ajaja ajaja)
and the Phyllium orthoptera, an insect similar to a sheet. Pigafetta captured a copy of the latter near Borneo and
kept it in a box, believing a moving blade who lived in the air. His report is rich in ethnographic details. He/She
practiced as an interpreter and came to develop, at least in two Indonesian dialects.

The geographical impact of the circumnavigation was enormous, since the Magallanes-Elcano expedition
overturned many of the conventions of traditional geography. It provided a demonstration of the sphericity of
the Earth and revolutionized the solid belief, so influential in the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, that the
Earth's surface was covered for the most part by the continents.Pigafetta also wrote a treatise of navigation
mainly Ptolemaic inspiration, but that contains the description of three methods to determine the length,
probably derived from the Francisco Faleiro. These methods were: 1) by calculating the distance from a point of
known length by observation of the distance of the Moon from the ecliptic; 2) by observation of the conjunction
of the moon with a star or planet, and 3) through the use of the compass. Pigafetta also describes how to take the
altitude of the pole star to determine latitude, know the wind direction and other minor navigation problems.
Mistakenly believed that the direction of the compass coincided with the meridian of iron island. His
description of the trip also includes details of the own navigation, as the description of the Sun at the Zenith,
and forwards to readers interested in his own treatise on navigation and Aristotle.
Retrieved from: TheBiography.us. (n.d.). Biography of Antonio Pigafetta (ca. 1490-ca. 1534). Retrieved from
https://thebiography.us/en/pigafetta-antonio.

Pigafetta was born into a wealthy Vicenza family, and studied navigation among other things. He served
on board the galleys of the Knights of Rhodes, and accompanied the papal nuncio, Monsignor Chieregati,
to Spain. Later, he joined the Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan and his Spanish crew on their trip
to the Maluku Islands. While in the Philippines Magellan was killed, and Pigafetta was injured.
Nevertheless, he recovered and was among only 18 of Magellan’s original crew who, having completed
the first circumnavigation of the world, returned to Spain on board another vessel, the Victoria. Most
importantly, Magellan kept a journal of his voyage, and this is a key source for information about
Magellan’s famous journey.

About the diary: The version used here is The First Voyage Round the World by Antonio Pigafetta, translated
by Lord Stanley of Alderley as reproduced in Wikisource.

The Journal of Pigafetta begins with this introduction:

Anthony Pigapheta, Patrician of Vicenza, and Knight of

Rhodes, to the very illustrious and very excellent

Lord Philip de Villiers Lisleaden, the famous

Grand Master of Rhodes, his most

respected Lord.[1]

Since there are several curious persons (very illustrious and very reverend lord) who not only are pleased
to listen to and learn the great and wonderful things which God has permitted me to see and suffer in the
long and perilous navigation, which I have performed (and which is written hereafter), but also they
desire to learn the methods and fashions of the road which I have taken in order to go thither, [and who
do] not grant firm belief to the end unless they are first well advised and assured of the commencement.
Therefore, my lord, it will please you to hear that finding myself in Spain in the year of the Nat ivity of our
Lord, one thousand five hundred and nineteen, at the court of the most serene king [2] of the Romans, with
the reverend lord, Mons. Francis Cheregato, [3] then apostolic proto-notary, and ambassador of the Pope
Leon the Tenth, who, through his virtue, afterwards arrived at the bishoprick of Aprutino and the
principality of Theramo, and knowing both by the reading of many books and by the report of many
lettered and well-informed persons who conversed with the said proto-notary, the very great and awful
things of the ocean, I deliberated, with the favour of the Emperor and the above-named lord, to
experiment and go and see with my eyes a part of those things. By which means I could satisfy the desire
of the said lords, and mine own also. So that it might be said that I had performed the said voyage, and
seen well with my eyes the things hereafter written.

For the entries, reference has also been made to Magellan Fleet Timeline, by John Woran. Reference was also
made to A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea Or Pacific Ocean by James Burney. For
the purpose of providing contemporary equivalents to some of Pigafetta’s place-names, this list by Carlos
Quirino was consultedl, as was Early Mapping of Southeast Asia: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers by
Thomas Suarez. Other accessible online publications of other translations of Pigafetta can be found
in Magellan’s Voyage, American Heritage, Vol. 20, Issue 6, October, 1969, and in The Philippine Islands,
1493-1898, Volume XXXIII, 1519-1522.

From Blair & Robertson, the following chronology may be useful to readers:

Magellan arrives at Seville October 20 1518

Magellan’s fleet sails from Seville Monday,[25] August 10, 1519

Magellan sails from San Lucar de Barrameda, Tuesday, September 20, „

„ arrives at Tenerife September 26, „

„ sails from Tenerife Monday, October 3, „

„ arrives at Rio de Janeiro December 13, „

„ sails from Rio December 26, „

„ sails from Rio de la Plata February 2, 1520

„ arrives at Port St. Julian March 31, „

Eclipse of Sun April 17, „

Loss of Santiago

„ Magellan sails from Port St Julian August 24, „

„ sails from river of Santa Cruz October 18, „

„ makes Cape of the Virgins, entrance of Straits October 21, „

„ Desertion of San Antonio November „

Magellan issues from Straits into the Pacific, Wednesday, November 28, „

„ fetches San Pablo Island January 24, 1521

„ fetches Tiburones Island February 4, „

„ reaches the Ladrone Islands, Wednesday, March 6, „

„ reaches Samar Island of the Philippines Saturday, March 16, „

„ reaches Mazzava Island, Thursday, March 28, „

„ arrives at Sebu Island April 7, „

Death of Magellan at Matan Saturday, April 27, „

Burning of Conception May, „

Arrival of San Antonio at Seville May 6, „

Arrival of Victoria and Trinity at Tidore, Friday, November 8, „

Victoria sails from Tidore December 21, „

„ discovers Amsterdam Island, Tuesday, March 18, 1522

„ doubles the Cape of Good Hope May 18,[26] „

„ arrives at Cape Verde Islands, Wednesday,[27] July 9, „

„ arrives at San Lucar Saturday,[27] September 6, „

„ casts anchor at Seville Monday,[27] September 8, „

Thanksgiving at Church of Our Lady of Victory Tuesday,[27] September 9, „

Retrieved from: About Antonio Pigafetta. (2019, March 22). Retrieved from
https://philippinediaryproject.com/about-the-philippine-diary-project/about-the-diaries/about-antonio-
pigafetta/

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.

Pigafetta’s journal became the basis for his 1525 travelogue, The First Voyage Around the World. According to
scholar Theodore Cachey Jr., the travelogue represented “the literary epitome of its genre” and achieved an
international reputation (Cachey, xii-xiii). One of Pigafetta’s patrons, Francesco Chiericati, called the journal “a
divine thing” (xl), and Shakespeare himself seems to have been inspired by work: Setebos, a deity invoked in
Pigafetta’s text by men of Patagonia, makes an appearance in The Tempest (x-xi).

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" (10).

And yet, the very newness that can give travel writing so much of its power creates problems of its own. For the
travel writer there is, on the one hand, the authority of his or her observational eye, and on the other, the call for
humility in confronting the unknown. Pigafetta, encountering a new people, tries to earn his authority through a
barrage of detail. He attempts to reconstruct their world for us--what they look like, where they live, what they
eat, what they say--he gives us pages and pages of words, from Patagonia, from Cebu, from Tidore. But there is
little humility, and one can hardly expect there to be so, not early in sixteenth century, a few decades after the
Pope had divided the unchartered world between Spain and Portugal,and certainly not on this expedition, where
Magellan and his partners have been promised, in a contract agreement with the Spanish monarchy, the titles of
Lieutenants and Governors over the lands they discover, for themselves and their heirs, in perpetuity. And cash
sums. And 1/20th of the profits from those lands.

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.

So in that first moment of contact, Magellan and his starving crew retaliated. They went ashore and burned, by
Pigafetta's account, forty to fifty houses. They killed seven men. Mutual astonishment at the new and the
wondrous took a dark turn:

“When we wounded any of those people with our crossbow shafts, which passed completely through their loins
from one side to the other, they, looking at it, pulled on the shaft now on this and now on that side, and then
drew it out, with great astonishment, and so died; others who were wounded in the breast did the same, which
moved us to great compassion. [...] We saw some women in their boats who were crying out and tearing their
hair, for love, I believe, of their dead.”(27)

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.

I suppose this is what great travel writing gives us: a way to wholly enter a moment, a feeling, a body. A way to
be changed. I can be my father, marveling at his country, our country, transformed by its vast expanse. I can be
Pigafetta, on the deck of the Trinidad, moved to write from shock and wonder. And I can be the woman on a
boat in the Marianas, crying out of love for the dead.

Retrieved from: Bernice. (1970, January 1). Antonio Pigafetta's First Voyage Around the World: A Travelogue.
Retrieved from https://www.essaydaily.org/2013/11/antonio-pigafettas-first-voyage-around.html.