Pigafetta was an ‘embedded’ journalist
Posted on April 4, 2008 - Filed Under History
Enumerable articles and quite a few books have been written about Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, including his supposed ‘discovery’ of an archipelago that subsequently became known as the Philippines. Most of the eyewitness accounts are attributed to Antonio Pigafetta.
But would you believe that Pigafetta was practically a glorified tourist? At best, the adventurous Italian may have been one of the world’s first embedded journalists because he is known to have paid to be on Magellan’s last voyage. In fact, of the 18 men . . . out of a crew that had originally numbered some 270 sailors . . . who eventually made their way back to Seville in 1522, Pigafetta (alias Antonio Lombardo) was listed as a supernumerary. Sabit lang, ‘ika nga, in Pinoyese.
Since Pigafetta was not an official member of the expedition and therefore not accountable to either Magellan or the Spanish monarch, there’s every possibility that the Italian may have embellished his diary entries. Which may be the reason why 2 years passed before he might have mustered enough courage and published portions of his literary and cartographic efforts . . . which he had originally composed in Italian . . . in France, of all places. In fact, for some reason, Pigafetta’s full manuscript did not see print until the eighteenth century.
Small wonder that respected present-day historians like Vicente de Jesus seem to rely more on the version of events as seen by Gines de Mafra, another explorer who holds the distinction of having been a bona fide member of both Magellan’s ill-fated expedition in 1521 and a similar one headed by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos that reached our shores in 1542.
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