Just before departure, in August, 1519, the officers
and crew of the five ships commanded by Ferdinand Magellan attended a mass at
Santa Maria de la Victoria, located in Triana, the sailors’ district in Seville.
Among those in attendance that day was a Venetian scholar named Antonio
Pigafetta who had spent long years in the service of Andrea Chiericati, an
emissary of Pope Leo X. When the pope appointed Chiericati ambassador to King
Charles, Pigafetta, who was about thirty years old at the time, followed the
diplomat to Spain. By his own description, Pigafetta was a man of learning (he
boasted of having ‘read many books) and religious conviction, but he also had a
thirst for adventure, or, as he put it, ‘a craving for adventure and glory.’
Learning of Magellan’s expedition to the Spice Islands, he felt destiny calling, and excused himself from the diplomatic circles to seek out the renown navigator, arriving in Seville in May 1519, in the midst of feverish preparations for the expedition. During the next several months, he helped to gather navigational instruments and ingratiated himself into Magellan’s trust. Pigafetta quickly came to idolize the Captain General, despite their different nationalities, and was awestricken by the ambitiousness and danger of the mission. Nevertheless, Pigafetta decided he had to go along. Although he lacked experience at sea, he did have funds and impeccable papal credentials to recommend him. Accepting a salary of just 1,000 maravedis, her joined the roster as a sobrasaliente, a supernumerary, receiving four months of his modest pay in advance.
Magellan, who left nothing to accident, had an assignment for Pigafetta; the young Italian diplomat was to keep a record of the voyage, not the dry, factual pilot’s log, but a more personal, anecdotal, and free-flowing account in the tradition of other popular travel works of the day; these included books by Magellan’s brother-in-law, Duarte Barbosa; Ludovico di Varthema, another Italian visitor to the Indies; and Marco Polo, the most celebrated Italian traveler of them all. Making no secret of his ambition to take his place in letters beside them, Pigafetta accepted the assignment. His loyalties belonged to Magellan alone, not to Cartagena or to any other officers. For Pigafetta, the Armada de Molucca was the tangible result of Magellan’s daring, and if the expedition succeeded, it would be a result of Magellan’s skill and God’s will – of that Pigafetta was quite certain.
[This was a typical ‘Conquistador’ operation. Though formally under a single command, authorized by the King, it was composed of numerous factions with family connections, or individuals from the same towns, regions or nations, former ‘comrades in arms’ or patrimonial associations, led by ambitious men eager to grab the glory and spoils of risk and adventure for themselves. When the few survivors returned to Seville after three years of hardship and toil- much of their time and energy was consumed in finding the food, water and fuel which allowed them to continue- they still had to face an inquisition in the interests of those patrons whose expectations of profit and glory had been disappointed and often languished in jail until their cases were settled.
The Chinese had been trading peacefully in the eastern pacific archipelago for four centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish. Even when this trading was for a brief time a state enterprise, the Chinese never embroiled themselves in local contests, evangelized their religions or attempted to conquer. Magellan’s mandate from the King did not include conversion of natives or conquest; that Magellan ignored his instructions and attempted both was his downfall. He was cut to pieces in the surf on the island Mactan in the Philippines for his efforts. His body was never recovered but the spot where he was killed has a monument and an annual celebration of his demise. The majority of survivors- 22 out of 260- were ordinary seamen with no special claim to distinction and were allowed to keep whatever modest personal spoil that they managed to accumulate.]
From the moment the fleet left Seville, Pigafetta kept a diary of events that gradually evolved from a routine account of life at sea to a shockingly graphic and candid diary that serves as the best record of the voyage. He took his role as the expedition’s official chronicler seriously, and his account is bursting with botanical, linguistic, and anthropological detail. It was also a humane and compassionate record written in a distinctive voice, naïve yet cultivated, pious yet bawdy. Of the handful of genuine chronicles of foreign lands available at the time, only Pigafetta’s preserved moments of self-depreciation and humor; only his betrayed the realistic fears, joys and ambivalence felt by the crew. His narrative anticipates a modern sensibility, in which self-doubt and revelation play roles. If Magellan was the expedition’s hero, its Don Quixote, a knight wandering in the world in a foolish, vain, yet magnificent quest, Pigafetta can be considered its antihero, its Sancho Panza, steadfastly loyal to his master while casting a skeptical, mordant eye on the proceedings. His hunger for experience makes it possible to experience Magellan’s voyage as the sailors themselves experienced it, and to catch this extraordinary navigator straining against the limits of knowledge, his men’s loyalty, and his own stubborn nature. . . .
After arriving back in Seville, Pigafetta headed directly for Valladolid, where he present the young King of Spain with ‘neither gold nor silver, but the things very highly esteemed by such a sovereign Among other things, I gave him a book, written by my hand, concerning all that had occurred day to day during our voyage.’ Pigafetta’s diplomatic background served him well, because he then succeeded in giving his account to sovereigns who were often bitter enemies of one another: ‘After this I left for Portugal, where I gave an account to King Joao of all that I had seen. Passing again through Spain, I also went to present some rare objects from the other hemisphere to the very Christian King Francois. Finally, I went to Italy, to the very industrious lord, Philippe Villiers de l’Isle- Adam, a worthy grandmaster of Rhodes, and placed at his disposal my person and services of which I would be capable.’ Pigafetta’s thorough and even-handed distribution of his account ensured Magellans’s leadership role in the adventure for posterity – and, not so incidentally, his own. ‘I made the voyage and saw with my eyes the things hereafter written,’ Pigafetta vowed, ‘that I might win a famous name.’
After traveling across Europe, Pigafetta arrived in Venice, his home, and immediately caused astir. ‘There came into the college a Venetian who had been appointed a knight errant, the brother of the Order of Rhodes, who had been three years in India,’ wrote Marin Sanudo on November 7, 1523, of Pigafetta’s visit. ‘And all the college listened to him with great attention, and he told half of his voyage . . .and after dinner also he was with the doge, and related those things in detail, so that his Serenity and all who heard him were rendered speechless over the things of India.’
In August of the following year, Pigafetta, by this time settled in Venice, requested that the doge and the city council allow him to print his sensational account. His request met with a favorable response, and he was granted the privilege that ‘no other except himself be allowed to have it printed for twenty years.
The first copies of Pigafetta’s ‘relation,’ the ones he brought with him to the courts of Europe, were lavish handwritten manuscripts illustrated with maps of his own devising, items literally fit for a king. It is believed that Pigafetta wrote his ‘relation’’ in the Venetian dialect, mixed with Italian and Spanish, but the original has been lost. Instead, four early versions produced by expert scribes have come down over the centuries, one in Italian and three in French. By general agreement the most handsome, complete, and extravagantly illustrated resides today in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. To read his memoir, and to turn its ancient vellum pages, is to be transported instantly five hundred years into the past. Although Pigafetta tells his story more or less in chronological order, he has not constructed a linear narrative; rather, it is a compilation of events, illustrations, translations of foreign tongues, prayers, descriptions, epiphanies, and bawdy asides, all of them heavily- cross-referenced and color coded in brilliant inks of black, blue and red. Yet it is also a personal document, unusual for that time, when the idea of an individual consciousness was just beginning to take root. The reader of Pigafetta’s chronicle hears his voice, alternatively bold, astonished, devastated, fascinated, and, in the end, amazed to be alive in the cruelly beautiful world of his time.
Learning of Magellan’s expedition to the Spice Islands, he felt destiny calling, and excused himself from the diplomatic circles to seek out the renown navigator, arriving in Seville in May 1519, in the midst of feverish preparations for the expedition. During the next several months, he helped to gather navigational instruments and ingratiated himself into Magellan’s trust. Pigafetta quickly came to idolize the Captain General, despite their different nationalities, and was awestricken by the ambitiousness and danger of the mission. Nevertheless, Pigafetta decided he had to go along. Although he lacked experience at sea, he did have funds and impeccable papal credentials to recommend him. Accepting a salary of just 1,000 maravedis, her joined the roster as a sobrasaliente, a supernumerary, receiving four months of his modest pay in advance.
Magellan, who left nothing to accident, had an assignment for Pigafetta; the young Italian diplomat was to keep a record of the voyage, not the dry, factual pilot’s log, but a more personal, anecdotal, and free-flowing account in the tradition of other popular travel works of the day; these included books by Magellan’s brother-in-law, Duarte Barbosa; Ludovico di Varthema, another Italian visitor to the Indies; and Marco Polo, the most celebrated Italian traveler of them all. Making no secret of his ambition to take his place in letters beside them, Pigafetta accepted the assignment. His loyalties belonged to Magellan alone, not to Cartagena or to any other officers. For Pigafetta, the Armada de Molucca was the tangible result of Magellan’s daring, and if the expedition succeeded, it would be a result of Magellan’s skill and God’s will – of that Pigafetta was quite certain.
[This was a typical ‘Conquistador’ operation. Though formally under a single command, authorized by the King, it was composed of numerous factions with family connections, or individuals from the same towns, regions or nations, former ‘comrades in arms’ or patrimonial associations, led by ambitious men eager to grab the glory and spoils of risk and adventure for themselves. When the few survivors returned to Seville after three years of hardship and toil- much of their time and energy was consumed in finding the food, water and fuel which allowed them to continue- they still had to face an inquisition in the interests of those patrons whose expectations of profit and glory had been disappointed and often languished in jail until their cases were settled.
The Chinese had been trading peacefully in the eastern pacific archipelago for four centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish. Even when this trading was for a brief time a state enterprise, the Chinese never embroiled themselves in local contests, evangelized their religions or attempted to conquer. Magellan’s mandate from the King did not include conversion of natives or conquest; that Magellan ignored his instructions and attempted both was his downfall. He was cut to pieces in the surf on the island Mactan in the Philippines for his efforts. His body was never recovered but the spot where he was killed has a monument and an annual celebration of his demise. The majority of survivors- 22 out of 260- were ordinary seamen with no special claim to distinction and were allowed to keep whatever modest personal spoil that they managed to accumulate.]
From the moment the fleet left Seville, Pigafetta kept a diary of events that gradually evolved from a routine account of life at sea to a shockingly graphic and candid diary that serves as the best record of the voyage. He took his role as the expedition’s official chronicler seriously, and his account is bursting with botanical, linguistic, and anthropological detail. It was also a humane and compassionate record written in a distinctive voice, naïve yet cultivated, pious yet bawdy. Of the handful of genuine chronicles of foreign lands available at the time, only Pigafetta’s preserved moments of self-depreciation and humor; only his betrayed the realistic fears, joys and ambivalence felt by the crew. His narrative anticipates a modern sensibility, in which self-doubt and revelation play roles. If Magellan was the expedition’s hero, its Don Quixote, a knight wandering in the world in a foolish, vain, yet magnificent quest, Pigafetta can be considered its antihero, its Sancho Panza, steadfastly loyal to his master while casting a skeptical, mordant eye on the proceedings. His hunger for experience makes it possible to experience Magellan’s voyage as the sailors themselves experienced it, and to catch this extraordinary navigator straining against the limits of knowledge, his men’s loyalty, and his own stubborn nature. . . .
After arriving back in Seville, Pigafetta headed directly for Valladolid, where he present the young King of Spain with ‘neither gold nor silver, but the things very highly esteemed by such a sovereign Among other things, I gave him a book, written by my hand, concerning all that had occurred day to day during our voyage.’ Pigafetta’s diplomatic background served him well, because he then succeeded in giving his account to sovereigns who were often bitter enemies of one another: ‘After this I left for Portugal, where I gave an account to King Joao of all that I had seen. Passing again through Spain, I also went to present some rare objects from the other hemisphere to the very Christian King Francois. Finally, I went to Italy, to the very industrious lord, Philippe Villiers de l’Isle- Adam, a worthy grandmaster of Rhodes, and placed at his disposal my person and services of which I would be capable.’ Pigafetta’s thorough and even-handed distribution of his account ensured Magellans’s leadership role in the adventure for posterity – and, not so incidentally, his own. ‘I made the voyage and saw with my eyes the things hereafter written,’ Pigafetta vowed, ‘that I might win a famous name.’
After traveling across Europe, Pigafetta arrived in Venice, his home, and immediately caused astir. ‘There came into the college a Venetian who had been appointed a knight errant, the brother of the Order of Rhodes, who had been three years in India,’ wrote Marin Sanudo on November 7, 1523, of Pigafetta’s visit. ‘And all the college listened to him with great attention, and he told half of his voyage . . .and after dinner also he was with the doge, and related those things in detail, so that his Serenity and all who heard him were rendered speechless over the things of India.’
In August of the following year, Pigafetta, by this time settled in Venice, requested that the doge and the city council allow him to print his sensational account. His request met with a favorable response, and he was granted the privilege that ‘no other except himself be allowed to have it printed for twenty years.
The first copies of Pigafetta’s ‘relation,’ the ones he brought with him to the courts of Europe, were lavish handwritten manuscripts illustrated with maps of his own devising, items literally fit for a king. It is believed that Pigafetta wrote his ‘relation’’ in the Venetian dialect, mixed with Italian and Spanish, but the original has been lost. Instead, four early versions produced by expert scribes have come down over the centuries, one in Italian and three in French. By general agreement the most handsome, complete, and extravagantly illustrated resides today in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. To read his memoir, and to turn its ancient vellum pages, is to be transported instantly five hundred years into the past. Although Pigafetta tells his story more or less in chronological order, he has not constructed a linear narrative; rather, it is a compilation of events, illustrations, translations of foreign tongues, prayers, descriptions, epiphanies, and bawdy asides, all of them heavily- cross-referenced and color coded in brilliant inks of black, blue and red. Yet it is also a personal document, unusual for that time, when the idea of an individual consciousness was just beginning to take root. The reader of Pigafetta’s chronicle hears his voice, alternatively bold, astonished, devastated, fascinated, and, in the end, amazed to be alive in the cruelly beautiful world of his time.
No comments:
Post a Comment