Biography of Antonio Pigafetta

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 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 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 traveled by land from France to finally return to Italy in 1523.
He 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 took notes
daily, as he mentioned when he realizes his surprise at Spain and see that he 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 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
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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.
Bibliography
Sources
Le voyage et navigation faict par les Espaingnols es Isles de Mollucques. Paris,
1525 (?). The Voyage of Magellan.The Journal of Antonio Pigafetta. Navigation et
Inde Supérieure descouvrement et isles of Mollucques, printed in facsimile with
English translation as Magellan completo de Voyage: A Narrative Account of the
First Circumnavigation, ed. dir. by R. A. Skelton, 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1969. Primo viaggio intorno globe... ora publicato per prima volta da a
codice ms. della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano e prefabbricated di note da
Carlo Amoretti... Milan: Galeazzi,
First Voyage Around the World by Antonio Pigafetta
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.
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First Voyage Around the World

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