Your enormous and absolutely impressive body of work on Ferdinand Magellan’s ‘discovery’ of the Philippines should leave no doubt that Mazaua . . . certainly not Limasawa . . . is indeed the real birthplace of Christianity in the country.

The clincher for me was your detailed chronology from 1521 to 2001 that cites Dr. Ricarte Javellosa’s fairly recent research findings.

Although I was a temporary Butuanon from the late ‘50s to the mid-60s when my late father was based in Agusan, nobody in the area would have thought that Pinamanculan was once an island offshore from Butuan to which it is now fused. It also seemed odd to me that none of the royals whom Imelda Marcos could have claimed as part of her family tree were at the first Mass . . . if it was really held on Limasawa Island.

On our country’s ‘discovery’ itself, my lovely wife . . . a member of the Moran clan who’s more of a history buff than I can ever pretend to be . . . wishes to take issue with giving Magellan universal recognition as “the discoverer” of the Philippines.

How, indeed, could the Portuguese OCW hired by Spain claim that he was the first ever foreigner to have set foot on our shores when our forbears already had well-established trade relations with Arabs and the Chinese for centuries prior to the time he forgot to ask for directions to the Spice Islands and chanced upon Homonhon?

My study on Magellan’s lost port, Mazaua, points to the political entities Bgys. Pinamanculan and Bancasi being possibly the anchorage of the Armada de Molucca.

It can’t be Masao which has been seen by geologists and a gemorphologist as a mangrove not an island.

Magellan’s anchorage, Mazaua, was an island surrounded by sea water and had an excellent port west of it. Masao was never an island.

Limasawa is an invented word. It is not found in any Philippine language. And it is not found in any primary or secondary account of Magellan’s voyage.

Limasawa was a neologism of Fr. Francisco Combes, S.J., who had not read one single primary history of the circumnavigation. He read a secondary account by Antonio de Herrera who said the port was called Mazaua. Combes dismissed this. He opted for the story by the Italian Renaissance travel writer, Gian Battista Ramusio, who wrote the port was Butuan which even in 1521 and other Renaissance period histories was never an island.

If Combes’s Limasawa is not Magellan’s Mazaua, what is it then. It is Pigafetta’s Gatighan.

It might also surprise most Filipinos that nowhere in Combes’s account is there mention of a mass of whatever kind in any place in the archipelago on March 31, 1521.

I have a number of articles at Wikipedia explaining why Limasawa, which doesn’t have any anchorage anywhere west, east, north, south of the isle, became Mazaua, the port with an excellent anchorage. This was a wild guess of Carlo Amoretti who had not read any of the eyewitness account by Gines de Mafra, Francisco Albo, The Genoese Pilot, Martinho de Aiamonte. He only read the sole extant Italian account out of four surviving accounts. Amoretti said Mazaua may be the Limasawa in Jacques N. Bellin’s map, which was a copy of the map made by a Jesuit, Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, who himself had not read one account of Magellan’s voyage. Murillo’s Limasawa points to Antonio Pigafetta’s Gatighan. In one edition of Murillo’s map, the cartouche states Magellan held an Easter mass in Butuan on March 31, 1521.

Please go to the site of Italian nuclear scientist Dr. Vasco Caini for my full article, http://www.xeniaeditrice.it/mazaua.pdf . At Wikipedia you can read my articles on Carlo Amoretti at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Amoretti, on Gines de Mafra at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gines_de_Mafra, on Gatighan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatighan, and on Jacques N. Bellin at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_N._Bellin. These articles have been published on over 130 sites on the Web.

Vicente Calibo de Jesus
ginesdemafra@gmail.com