Antonio Pigafetta

and
Francisco Albo’s
Perspective about the
First Mass in the
Philippines
Antonio
Pigafetta
- was a young
Venetian, likely in
his 20s when he
arrived in the
Philippines as part
of Magellan’s crew
on March 17, 1521.
The geographer and scribe
of the group, he recorded
not only names of places
and the vocabulary of the
natives, but their food,
attire, customs, and
traditions, too. He described
historical events like the first
Easter Day Mass celebrated
in the Philippines and the
battle of Mactan, where
Magellan was killed by
Lapulapu’s men.
For instance, Pigafetta narrates that the
first Easter Day Mass was celebrated in
the Philippines in a place called
Limasawa. Despite a law in the 1960s
declaring that this happened in Limasawa
Island, Southern Leyte, there remain
adherents to the theory that the site was
Butuan, in a swampy area that had been
called Mazaua.
Pigafetta also relates the planting of a
cross in a mountain in Limasawa, and
days later, in Cebu, the bequeathal of a
statue of the baby Jesus to Juana, wife of
Pigafetta wrote that Magellan was killed, not necessarily by
Mactan ruler Lapulapu himself, but by a swarm of his men. After a
blow to his leg at the height of the battle, Magellan fell face down
in the water where he was besieged by Lapulapu’s men.

“Immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears
and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our
comfort, and our true guide,” wrote Pigafetta.

Magellan asked Zula and his men to stand back and watch the
battle, confident that the Europeans outmatched Lapulapu’s army.
The mistake cost him his life.
Apart from historical events, Pigafetta jotted down his
observations about even the mundane details of the lives of early
Filipinos.

He devotes paragraphs to describing Filipinos’ many uses of the

coconut – a source of liquor (“uraca”), oil, vinegar, bread, and
milk. He enthuses about how Butuan was full of gold “the size of
walnuts and eggs” and how its king, Rajah Colambo, was the
“finest looking man” they saw.

There are descriptions of the food served to them (roast pork,

roast fish, ginger, bananas), attire, drinking ceremonies, burial
rituals. Pigafetta speaks of the islanders’ habit of chewing a fruit
called “areca” with betel leaves because of its “cooling effect.”
In Pigafetta’s account,
Magellan and his crew scaled
a hill in the place where they
would later on hold the Mass
to see the entire island and its
surroundings. This is apart
from their other hike to plant a
cross after celebrating the
Easter Day Mass for the
newly-baptized islanders.
Francisco Albo
- a pilot of
Magellan’s
flagship, Trinidad,
and later on to
Victoria.
He did not mention the
first mass but he
writes that they
erected a cross on a
mountain which
overlooked three
islands, the West and
the Southwest.

Albo began keeping his own

diary- merely on a logbook on
the voyage out, while they
were sailing the South in the
Atlantic along the coast of
South America, off Brazil.
Thank you for
listening!
Almazar, Aljoer Vincent M.
BSAMT1-4