Unit

4 “ONE PAST BUT MANY HISTORIES”: CONTROVERSIES AND CONFLICTING VIEWS

IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Demonstrate the ability to formulate arguments in favor or against a particular issue
using primary sources.
2. Use conflicting evidence in a paper or in other learning activities to achieve historical accuracy
3. Demonstrate the ability to evaluate and explain multiple, complex sources or ideas when explaining a
thesis statement or arguments
4. Demonstrate the ability to evaluate and explain multiple, complex sources or ideas when explaining a
thesis statement or arguments on the Nationwide Cry

In this Unit, four issues with different conflicting views and interpretations will be discussed.
Interpretations vary according to who reads the primary source, when it was read, and how it was read. As
history students, you must be trained and equipped to recognize different types of interpretations, and how
they differ from each other.
Historians use facts gathered from primary sources and then shape them so that their audience can
understand and make sense of them. This process is called as interpretation. In order to study interpretations
students need to be able to recognise different types of interpretations, know why they might differ, and how to
critically evaluate them. Moreover, it is also important that one should be able to grasp the idea of history as a
construct otherwise he will be unable to make sense of conflicting and competing accounts of the past which
present themselves in their daily lives.

PRETEST: Write T if the statement is correct and F in incorrect.

1. The first Christian Mass celebrated on the Philippine soil was made in an island which Pigafetta
called as “Mazaua.”
2.There is only one account of the First Catholic Mass in the Philippines.
3.The Cry of Pugadlawin marked the end of Bonifacio’s leadership on the KKK
4.The execution of Gomburza was a blunder on the part of the Spanish government.
5.The execution of GOMBURZA inspired Filipino patriots to call for reforms and eventually
independence.
6.Using primary and secondary sources, there were five places identified as the site of the Cry of the
Rebellion.
7.Cry of the rebellion happened in present-day Quezon City.
8. The document of the retraction of Jose Rizal is being hotly debated as to its authenticity.
9. Rizal retracted while he was in Dapitan.
10. The Cry of Pugadlawin was the beginning of the Philippine Revolution against the Spaniards.

Self-regulated Learning Module 1

LESSON 1: THE SITE OF FIRST MASS: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE

Butuan has long been believed as the site of the first Mass. This has been the case for three centuries,
culminating in the erection of a monument in 1872 near Agusan River, which commemorates the expedition’s
arrival and celebration of Mass on April 8, 1521. The Butuan claim has been based on a rather elementary
reading of primary sources from the event. It must be noted that there are only two primary sources that
historians refer to in identifying the site of the first Mass. One is the log kept by Francisco Albo, a pilot of one of
Magellan’s ship, Trinidad. The other and the more complete was the account by Antonio Pigafetta, First
Voyage Around the world. Pigafetta like Albo, was a member of the Magellan expedition and an eyewitness of
the events, particularly, of the first Mass.

READ the two articles.

1. Magellan never went to Butuan by Yen Makabenta
2. Butuan or Limasawa: The Site of the First Mass I the Philippines: A Re-examination
of the Evidence
(https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/budhi/article/view/582/579)

MAGELLAN NEVER WENT TO BUTUAN

Yen Makabenta
https://www.manilatimes.net/2019/01/31/opinion/columnists/topanalysis/magellan-never-went-to-
butuan/504604/

IN the book, The Great Island, Fr. Miguel Bernad, S.J., also included a long scholarly essay on the centuries-
old controversy regarding the site of the first mass celebrated in the Philippine islands, which has exercised
many Filipinos and scholars, including those of our present generation.
According to Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian chronicler of the Magellan expedition, the mass was held on Easter
Sunday, on an island called “Mazaua.” Two native chieftains were in attendance, the rajah of Mazaua, and the
rajah of Butuan.
After the mass, the party went up a little hill and planted a wooden cross upon its summit.”
The subject of controversy is the identity of Mazaua. There are two conflicting claims as to its identity. One
school of thought points to the small island south of Leyte, which on the map is called Limasawa. The other
school rejects that claim and points instead to the beach called ‘ao,’ at the mouth of the Agusan River in
northern Mindanao, near the village (now the city) of Butuan.
In his article, Fr. Bernad reexamines and assesses the evidence for these two claims. He gives each claim its
due and a hearing of whatever evidence are in its favor.
I should disclose here that I am not the first to take up this subject in the Manila Times. Just recently, a
colleague, Michael ‘Xiao’ Chua, in his column of Jan. 20, 2019 reported that a panel has been created to
review the Butuan claim to have been the site of the first mass.

The Butuan claim

Fr. Bernad’s presentation of the historical records and his assessment of the arguments speak eloquently for
itself. He backs up each finding with generous citations in his notes and a bibliography.
I was frankly surprised by Fr. Bernad‘s report that the Butuan claim has been the more ascendant and
persistent, reigning over public opinion for some three centuries, the 17th, the 18th and the 19th century.

Self-regulated Learning Module 2

On the strength of this tradition, a monument was erected in 1872 at the mouth of the Agusan River. The
monument was erected apparently at the instigation of the parish priest of Butuan, who at the time was a
Spanish friar of the Order of Augustinian Recollects. The date given for the first Mass was April 8, 1521, an
obvious error that may have been due to an anachronistic attempt to translate the original date in the
Gregorian calendar.
The monument is a testimonial to the Butuan tradition that remained vigorous until the end of the 19th century,
which held that Magellan and his expedition landed in Butuan, and celebrated there the first mass on Philippine
soil.
Because the Butuan tradition had already been established by the middle of the 17h century, it was accepted
without question by two Jesuit historians who got misled by their facts.
On historian was Fr. Francisco Colin, S.J. (1592-1660), whose Labor Evangelica was first published in Madrid
in 1663, three years after his death. He provided in the book an account of Magellan’s arrival and the first
mass.
The other Jesuit writer of the mid-17th century was Francisco Combes S.J. (1620-1665), who had lived and
worked as a missionary in the Philippines. His Historia de Mindanao y Jolo was printed in Madrid in 1667, four
years after Colin’s work was published.
Colin and Combes gave different accounts of the route taken by Magellan. But they asserted that Magellan
landed in Butuan and there planted the cross in a solemn ceremony.
Both Colin and Combes pictured Magellan as visiting both Butuan and Limasawa.
Both Colin and Combes agree that it was from Limasawa and with the help of Limasawa’s chieftain that the
Magellan expedition went to Cebu. Magellan arrived in Cebu on April 7, 1521, one week after the first mass.
In the 19th century, the Butuan tradition was taken for granted and it is mentioned by writer after writer, each
copying from the previous one, and being in turn copied by those who came after.
The accumulated errors of three centuries are found in the work of Dominican friar, Valentin Morales y Marin,
whose two-volume treatise on the friars was published in Santo Tomas in Manila in 1901.
As late as the 1920s, the Philippine history textbook used at the Ateneo de Manila used the Butuan tradition.

Opinion shifts to Limasawa

How did the shift in opinion from Butuan to Limasawa come about?
Blame was at first laid on the Americans Emma Blair and James Alexander Robertson, who authored the 55-
volume collection of documents on the Philippines Island that was published in Cleveland from 1903 to 1909.
The cause of the shift in opinion was the publication in 1894 of Pigafetta’s account, as contained in the
Ambrosian Codex.
Pigafetta was the chronicler of the Magellan expedition in 1521 that brought Europeans for the first time to the
archipelago.
Pigafetta’s narrative was reproduced with English translation, notes, bibliography and index in Blair and
Robertson’s The Philippine Islands, volumes 33 and 34.
Following the publication of the Pigafetta text in 1894, two Philippine scholars called attention to the fact that
the Butuan tradition had been a mistake. One of the scholars was Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera. The other was
the Spanish Jesuit missionary, Pablo Pastells, S.J.
Fr. Pastells prepared a new edition of Fr Colin’s Labor Evangelica, which was published in 1902, and which
contained a correction about the first mass.

Pastells‘ shift in opinion from Butuan to Limasawa was due to a rediscovery and a more attentive study of the
primary sources on the subject:
Pigafetta’s account and Francisco Albo’s log of the expedition. Pigafetta and Albo were eyewitnesses.

Self-regulated Learning Module 3

Pastells wrote:
“Magellan did not go to Butuan. Rather, from the island of Limasawa, he proceeded directly to Cebu.”
Among the Philippine scholars of the early 20th century who rejected the Butuan tradition in favor of Limasawa
was Jayme de Veyra.
Since then, the Limasawa opinion has been generally accepted, although there remains a small but vigorous
group determined to push the Butuan claim.

Fr. Bernad summarized the evidence for Limasawa as follows:

1. The evidence from Albo’s logbook
2. The evidence of Pigafetta
a. Pigafetta’s testimony regarding the route
b. The evidence of Pigafetta’s maps
c. The two native kings
d. The seven days at ‘Mazaua’
3. Confirmatory evidence from the Legazpi expedition.

Consequently, the Butuan claim as the site of the first Mass has no leg to stand on.
Ferdinand Magellan never visited Butuan.

The Resil Mojares panel has a huge mountain to scale in Fr. Bernad’s scholarly reexamination and analysis.

Self-regulated Learning Module 4