Anthony Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta or of Pigafetta (Vicenza, Italy, c. 1480 - ib., c. 1534) was an Italian Renaissance nobleman who served as an explorer, geographer, and chronicler in the service of the Republic of Venice. He was a knight of the Order of San Juan.
Accompanying Francesco Chiericati, he moved to Spain in 1518. There he took part in Magellan's expedition, which would culminate in the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522, carried out aboard the ship Victoria, the only who returned to Spain. Pigafetta was one of the 18 men who survived the voyage and returned on the ship, out of the 265 initial crew.
His account of the events is entitled Account of the First Voyage Around the World (1524), also known as the Account of Pigafetta. This story is the main source of information about the journey of Magellan and Elcano, and of Pigafetta's own life. For the first time, a European recounted the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, where the navigable passage to the Pacific Ocean (a body of water known since 1513 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who called it the "South Sea"), Patagonia or the first document available about the Cebuano language, from the Philippines.
A member of his family, Filippo Pigafetta (1533-1604), traveled to Africa in the 16th century and was Known for his book about his trip to the Congo.
Biography
Early Years
Pigafetta, who describes himself in his book as a Vincentian gentleman, belonged to a wealthy family in Vicenza, in the Republic of Venice. He was born between 1480 and 1491. Little is known about his life and that little with insecurities. It is known that his father was Giovanni Antonino Pigafetta. Although it is unknown who his mother was, Giovanni Antonio is documented to have had relationships with at least three women, first with Castellana Terrenato da Caltrano, then with Lucia Muzan da Malo, and later with Angela dalla Zoga. He was probably in good health and robust., being one of the few survivors who managed to go around the world for the first time.
It is said that he was known from his youth for his studies in astronomy, geography and cartography, knowing the astrolabe or the use of the magnet as a compass. Rome of Pope Leo X. He studied general knowledge and probably French.
Around 1518 he accompanied the apostolic nuncio Chiericati to Spain where he was presented to Emperor Charles I. Later he settled in Barcelona.
Voyage of circumnavigation
Pigafetta already in Spain, learned about the project of the Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magallanes to open a route to the Indies and became interested in it. The Portuguese had already failed to expose his plans to the King of Portugal and decided to go to Spain to present his daring project to the young King Carlos I, who he accepted. The intention was to find a maritime passage to the territories of the East Indies and to look for the road that, always traveling through Castilian seas (according to the Treaty of Tordesillas), would reach the islands of the Spices (the Moluccas), which was the so-called route westward. Something that Christopher Columbus had already searched for without success.
Pigafetta was a man steeped in renaissance, humanism and achieving glory. It was the time of the discovery of America, with the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Américo Vespucci and Vasco de Gama, and he himself writes:
In the year of 1519 I was found in Spain in the court of Carlos V, King of Romans, in the company of Monsignor Chericato, Protonotario Apostolico then and preacher of Pope Leo X, of holy memory, who by his merits was elevated to the dignity of Bishop and Prince of Teramo. Now, as for the books I had read and for the conversations I had held with the sages that frequented the house of this prelate, I knew that sailing in the ocean is observed admirable things, I determined to make sure by my own eyes of the truth of all that was told, in order to be able to make others the relationship of my journey, both to entertain them and to be useful and to create a name, at the same time.A. Pigafetta
Supplied with letters of recommendation, he went to Malaga by ship, and to Seville by land, where he waited three months before the squadron was in a position to depart. The fleet consisted of five ships and more than two hundred men. He was admitted on board as a supernumerary, a position normally reserved for young men from noble families who volunteered in search of adventure or military experience. His name was recorded as "Antonio Lombardo", "Antonio de Lombardía", assigned to the ship Trinidad , captained by Magellan. Despite initial difficulties with Magellan, he managed to win his trust and served him as a linguist and cartographer.
The expedition reached the mouth of the Río de la Plata with great care, then skirted the low coasts of Patagonia, examining all the bays, always believing to find the strait so desired. On October 18, he reached the entrance to the strait. Three weeks later, Magellan noted the presence of "Cabo Deseado", which marked the end of the road, and was sailing through the Pacific Ocean, thus being the first to find the way to the West Indies.
The hardships of the voyage across the Pacific are told with violent realism:
Wednesday, November 28th, we went through the Strait to enter the great sea, to which we immediately gave the name of Pacific, and in which we sailed during the space of three months and twenty days, without trying a fresh food. The biscuit that we ate was no longer bread, but a powder mixed with worms that had devoured all its substance, and that also had an unbearable stench to be impregnated with rat pee. The water we were forced to drink was equally rotten and fed. In order not to starve, we were still forced to eat pieces of cow leather with which the big cock had been lined to prevent the wood from destroying the ropes. This leather, always exposed to water, the sun and the winds, was so hard that it was necessary to immerse it for four or five days in the sea to soften it a little; to eat it we put it on the coals. Often we were still reduced to fed serrin, and even rats, so repellent for man, had become such a delicate food that was paid half ducat for each. However, this was not all. Our greatest misfortune was to be attacked by a kind of disease that made gums swell to the extreme of overcoming teeth in both jaws, making the sick could not take any food. Of these died nineteen and among them the giant Patagonian and a Brazilian who drove with us. In addition to the dead, we had twenty-five sick sailors who suffered pains in the arms, legs and some other parts of the body, but who finally healed.A. Pigafetta
In the battle of Mactan (Philippines) in which Magellan lost his life, Pigafetta was also wounded. However, he managed to recover and continue the journey until he reached the Moluccas. Subsequently, Pigafette was part of Juan Sebastián Elcano's crew aboard the Victoria on the return to Seville. It is here that he finished his notes, on Monday, September 8, 1522. Two days earlier, the ship had arrived at the Cádiz port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda when the voyage had completed three years.
After the trip
According to his own account, the survivors of the expedition kept their promise to worship the Virgen de la Antigua and the Virgen de la Victoria in Seville. Then Pigafetta leaves for Valladolid where he meets with Carlos I and gives him one of the copies of his travel diary. He goes to Portugal to see King Juan I and from there he goes through Spain again until he reaches France where he meets with the regent queen Luisa de Saboya. Finally, according to the version of the story, he gives a last copy to the Grand Master Philippe Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and retires to Italy.
On Tuesday we all went down to the ground in a shirt and barefoot, with a candle in the hand, to visit the church of Our Lady of Victory and that of Santa Maria the Antigua, as we had promised to do in the moments of distress.From Seville I left for Valladolid, where I presented the Sacred Majesty of Don Carlos, not gold or silver, but things that were in his eyes much more precious. Among other objects, I gave him a book written by my hand, in which he had pointed out every day everything that had happened to us during the journey. Abandoné Valladolid as soon as it was possible and I went to Portugal to make connection to King Don Juan of the things he had just seen. After passing through Spain I went to France, where I gave some things from the other hemisphere to Madama the Regent, the mother of the very Catholic king Francis I.
I returned to Italy, where I consecrated myself forever to the very excellent and very illustrious Mr. Felipe Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, great master of Rhodes, whom I also gave the relationship of my journey.A. Pigafetta
Upon returning to Italy, in 1523 Clement VII was elected pontiff, highest representative of Catholicism, and received one of the copies of his travel diary, as referred to in the prologue:
On my return to Italy, his holiness the Sovereign Pontiff Clement VII, before whom I had the honour to present myself in Monterosi and to refer to him the adventures of my journey, welcomed me with kindness and told me that it would be very nice to have a copy of the diary of my journey; therefore, it was a duty to defer the best I could to the wishes of the Holy Father, despite the little time I had then.A. Pigafetta
Even so, it was not through Pigafetta's writings that Europeans first heard of the circumnavigation of the globe. Rather, it was through an account written by Maximiliano Transilvano, published in 1523. Transilvano had been instructed to interview some of the survivors of the voyage when the ship Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522.
Her past, after her last lines in her diary, is unknown for certain. Some sources cite that Grand Master Philippe Villiers de l'Isle-Adam named him a Knight of Rhodes on October 3, 1524. Later he wrote his work and for this reason the title of knight is placed on she.
He died in his native country on an unknown date, some versions allude to his intervention against the Ottoman Empire in 1536 and a subsequent retirement in his hometown and others that he died on the island of Malta between 1534 and 1535.
His work
He recorded his experiences in the Relazione del primo viaggio around the mondo, a work in Italian published in Venice in 1536. This work is often referred to as the Relation of Pigafetta, or as The first trip around the globe. The original is not preserved. It was the only known narrative work of his, and he produced it during the voyage and afterwards.
Content
Pigafetta collected numerous data about the geography, climate, flora, fauna and indigenous inhabitants of the places traveled; His detailed account was a document of great value, especially for his notes on navigation and linguistics. Without his diary, the information on Magellan's voyage would be very incomplete. He started writing the day he left and finished three years later, the same day he returned to Spain.
Pigafetta, for example, collected vocabulary samples from some of the indigenous peoples they encountered as the first words in the Cebuano language. From Brazil, for example, some like: rey, cacich; well, tum; house, bou; bed, hammac; comb, chipag; knife, tarse; rattles, hanmaraca; scissors, pyrame; hook, pinda; ship, canee; millet, corn; flour, hui; etc.
Discover the Magellanic penguin, the sea lion and the guanaco:
Always putting this land to the Antarctic pole, we stopped on two islands that we found only populated by penguins and sea lions. The first exist in such abundance and are so meek that in one hour we took abundant provision for the crews of the five ships. They are black and seem to have the whole body covered with small feathers, and the wings devoid of the necessary to fly, as in fact they do not fly: they feed on fish and are so fat that to sprinkle them we were forced to remove their skin. His beak resembles a horn.The sea lions are of different colors and more or less the size of a calf, to which they also look in the head. They have short and round ears and very long teeth; they lack legs, and their legs, which are glued to the body, are quite similar to our hands, with small nails, although they are palped, that is, they have fingers attached to each other by a membrane, like the slopes of a duck. If these animals could run, they would be very fearsome because they manifested themselves to be very ferocious. They swim quickly and only live with fish.
(..)
This animal has the head and ears of mule, the camel body, the legs of deer and the horse tail, whose relinquishment imitates.A. Pigafetta
Traveling the world, Magellan and his crew deepened their knowledge of the southern hemisphere sky. Antonio describes, in particular, a cloud of mist that now bears the name of the Magellanic Clouds.
Editions
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In addition to his travel diary, according to his original notes, he left a detailed account that could be believed to have been lost until Carlo Amoretti discovered a complete copy in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in 1800. From there Amoretti would publish a complete edition in Italian and a year later one in French.
From this French translation, the Chilean historian José Toribio Medina made the first translation into Spanish published in 1888, included by him in the Collection of unpublished documents for the history of Chile.
Structure
Antonio Pigafetta writes a personal diary of his trip that he later turns into a travel book as he writes a later prologue for the reader where he explains his reasons for the trip. This is where, in addition to justifying his work to entertain, he also wants to reach posterity. Travel books in the Renaissance are highly influenced by authors such as Marco Polo, Américo Vespucci, Suetonius, or the Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder.
The trip is the plot line of the diary, sometimes in the form of an epic, with shipwrecks, storms or the appearance of omens such as Saint Elmo's fire, supernatural events become manifestations of divine will. It is the influence of his time, the projection of the Christian faith, one of the bases for the settlement of the age of discovery.
Ferdinand Magellan is presented as the hero of the work, following the canons of chivalrous literature.
General Captain Fernando de Magallanes had decided to take a long journey through the Ocean, where the winds blow with fury and where the storms They are very common. It had also resolved to open a path that no sailor had known until then; but it was well kept to make known this daring project, fearing that efforts should be made to deter it in view of the dangers to run and to discourage the crews. To the natural hazards inherent in this company, it was still a disadvantage for him, and it was that the commanders of the other four ships, which were to be found under his command, were his enemies, for the simple reason that they were Spanish and Portuguese Magellan.A. Pifafetta
However, Juan Sebastián Elcano, who would take charge of the expedition after Magellan's death, is not mentioned once. In fact, Pigafetta does not mention any of the companions who completed the circumnavigation, nor those who remained in the Moluccas trying to return to the Trinidad; he only mentions the dead.
Honors
In 1929 the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy) began building a Navigatori-class destroyer, launched under the name Antonio Pigafetta on May 1, 1931. During World War II she was one of the most successful and active units, it was bombed in Tunisia in 1943. On September 10, to prevent its use by the Germans, it was sabotaged. Despite this the Germans were able to capture the destroyer and upgrade the ship they called T.A. 44. Still under the German flag, she suffered a bombardment on February 17, 1945, sinking her in the port of Trieste, Italy.