The title of this book, An Island they Called Mazaua, reflects the spirit and sense of discovery in Antonio Pigafetta's native Italian language--"e se chiama Mazaua"--as he recalled his having set foot on an island-kingdom adjacent to Butuan where the Magellan expedition held the first Holy Mass in our shores in 1521. Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar who accompanied the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan as the fleet's voyage diarist, wrote that passage in a very detailed running journal in Italian, the original manuscript of which had unfortunately been lost. But between 1522 and 1525, Pigafetta again wrote his account of that voyage, also in Italian, and its manuscript has survived to this day along with the manuscripts of three translations in French.

2023/718pp
Hardbound
Updated Edition