Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1534) was a Venetian scholar and explorer. In 1519, he joined the Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the world's first documented circumnavigation, and is best known for being the chronicler of the voyage. During the expedition, he served as Magellan's assistant until Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, and kept an accurate journal, which later assisted him in translating the Cebuano language. It is the first recorded document concerning the language.

Pigafetta was one of the 18 men who made the complete trip, returning to Spain in 1522, under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano, out of the approximately 240 who set out three years earlier. These men completed the first circumnavigation of the world while others mutinied and returned in the first year. Pigafetta's surviving journal is the source for much of what is known about Magellan and Elcano's voyage.

Early life Pigafetta was born to a prominent noble family in the city of Vicenza in northeast Italy. Recent archival research indicates that his father was Giovanni Pigafetta and his mother was a noblewoman named Lucia, daughter of Marco Muzan. The couple was married in March 1492, implying that Antonio was born sometime after that date. Details of his education are unknown but he later boasted of having "read many books".

There is a tradition that as a youth Pigafetta sailed the Mediterranean with the Knights of Rhodes but there is no record of such activity, only the observation that he later became a member of the order. At some point he entered into the service of papal ambassador Francesco Chiericati, an apostolic protonotary and a close associate of Pope Leo X. Like Pigafetta, Chiericati was also from Vicenza. In 1518, Leo X sent Chiericati to the royal court in Spain to serve as ambassador. Pigafetta accompanied the ambassador's retinue, first to Zaragoza for two months and then to Barcelona.

Voyage around the world

While in Spain, Pigafetta heard of Magellan's planned expedition to find a western route to the Spice Islands. The adventure appealed to him and he convinced Chiericati that his participation on this historic voyage would be advantageous for the Vatican. With the approval of the papal ambassador and King Charles, Pigafetta was provided with letters of introduction before he set out for Seville in May 1519. Magellan accepted his application to join the expedition and hired him for a modest monthly salary of 1,000 maravedís. He was enrolled under the name Antonio Lombardo and his position was described as one of the "servants of the captain and supernumeraries".

When the expedition set sail in August 1519, Pigafetta was assigned to the flagship Trinidad where he served Magellan and became his great admirer. Pigafetta did not appear to have any specific role except to keep a daily record of his observations, a task that he undertook with great diligence. He recorded extensive information concerning the geography, climate, and natural history of the places visited by the expedition. He was especially interested in the native inhabitants encountered along the way and took meticulous notes on their appearance, social customs and languages. In contrast to the accuracy of his personal observations, he had a tendency to accept even the most outrageous tales told to him about the lands they visited.

Pigafetta was wounded on Mactan in the Philippines, where Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan in April 1521. Nevertheless, he recovered and was among the 18 who accompanied Juan Sebastián Elcano on board the Victoria on the return voyage to Spain.

Return

Upon reaching port in Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the modern Province of Cadiz in September 1522, three years after his departure, Pigafetta returned to the Republic of Venice. He related his experiences in the "Report on the First Voyage Around the World" (), which was composed in Italian and was distributed to European monarchs in handwritten form before it was eventually published by Italian historian Giovanni Battista Ramusio in 1550–59. The account centers on the events in the Mariana Islands and the Philippines, although it included several maps of other areas as well, including the first known use of the word "Pacific Ocean" (Oceano Pacifico) on a map. The original document was not preserved.

However, it was not through Pigafetta's writings that Europeans first learned of the circumnavigation of the globe. Rather, it was through an account written by a Flanders-based writer, Maximilianus Transylvanus, which was published in 1523. Transylvanus had been instructed to interview some of the survivors of the voyage when Magellan's surviving ship, Victoria, returned to Spain in September 1522 under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano. After Magellan and Elcano's voyage, Pigafetta utilized the connections he had made prior to the voyage with the Knights of Rhodes to achieve membership in the order.

The Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo

Antonio Pigafetta penned a manuscript, in which a detailed account of the voyage was given. Although written in semi-chronological order, it does not read as a linear history of the voyage; rather, it is a collection of descriptions, events, translations, thoughts, and illustrations. It has been described by popular biographer and historian Laurence Bergreen as unusually personal for its time. An earlier suggestion appeared that the ISBN, for this volume, was . Barbara A. Shailor of Yale University, writing in the catalogue description of its copy of a French translation of the same (see following), dates that translation to "ca. 1525"—making the Pigafetta original of earlier date—and states that the original, "now lost", was "probably in Italian"; Bergreen states that it might have been written in the author's Venetian dialect, mixed with Spanish and Italian. The sources of Pigafetta's account of his voyage known in the late 19th century were extensively studied by Italian archivist Andrea da Mosto, who presented an edition and critical study of Pigafetta's book, Il primo viaggio intorno al globo di Antonio Pigafetta e le sue Regole sull'arte del navigare [The First Voyage Around the Globe by Antonio Pigafetta and His Rules on the Art of Navigation] in 1894. See also this link, for a searchable Google Books version of the same. Note, the 1894 Da Mosto volume is co-printed and bound with Girolamo Benzoni's Historia del Mondo Nuovo (Marco Allegri, translator). As of Triccani's 1935 Enciclopedia Italiana article on Antonio Pigafetta, those findings were viewed as corroborated by Jean Dénucé, in his work published in 1923.

As of the Triccani description in 1935, three printed editions and four manuscripts were known to survive—one of the three print editions was in French, while the remaining two were in Italian, all dating to the 16th century. Of the manuscripts, per that 1935 description, the two in French were in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and one was in Cheltenham—the latter, as of that date, describing the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, his so-called Bibliotheca Phillippica, which was later acquired by Edwin J. Beinecke (in 1964), and subsequently donated as Beinecke MS 351, along with other materials, to what became the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Note, the manuscript is dated by this catalogue description as "ca. 1525" and described as "the most complete and most handsomely produced manuscript of the four surviving witnesses to the text; the original, probably in Italian, is now lost." Finally, the location of the Italian manuscript was, as of Triccani's 1935 Enciclopedia Italiana article, in Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano. As Alberto Magnaghi states in that Tricanni article on Antonio Pigafetta,È escluso ormai che la prima redazione sia stata in francese, ad onta che la prima edizione a stampa, senza data, sia francese: manoscritti ed edizione francesi (quest'ultima soprattutto) risultano traduzioni incomplete per soppressione di qualche parte e spesso anche con termini errati per incomprensione del traduttore, di un originario manoscritto italiano.[It is now ruled out that the original draft was in French, despite the fact that the first printed edition, sans date, is in French; the manuscripts and [print] edition in French (especially the latter) turn out to be incomplete translations due to omission of some part of, and even, often, with use of incorrect terms due to translator misunderstanding, of an original Italian manuscript.] He goes on to state, "Dei manoscritti, il più completo e che si ritiene più vicino alla redazione originale, sebbene non sia autografo del P., è quello della Bibl[ioteca] Ambrosiana di Milano" [Of the manuscripts, the most complete and believed to be closest to the original version, even though not in P.'s own hand—is the one held by the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan]

This manuscript was found by Carlo Amoretti and was published in 1800 (as Primo viaggio intorno al globo terraqueo, ossia ragguaglio della navigazione alle Indie Orientali per la via d'Occidente fatta dal cavaliere Antonio Pigafetta patrizio vicentino, sulla squadra del capitano Magaglianes negli anni 1519-1522). Unfortunately, Amoretti modified many words and sentences in his printed edition, resulting in meanings that were uncertain; the original manuscript contained many words in Veneto dialect, and some Spanish words. The modified version published by Amoretti was then translated into other languages, translations that carried with them Amoretti's edits.

Andrea da Mosto critically analyzed the original version stored in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and published a rigorous version of Pigafetta's book in 1894. Jean Dénucé extensively studied the French versions of Pigafetta's book, and published a critical edition in 1923.

At the end of his book, Pigafetta stated that he had given a copy to Charles V. Pigafetta's close friend, Francesco Chiericati, also stated that he had received a copy and it is thought that the regent of France may have received a copy of the latter. It has been argued that the copy Pigafetta had provided may have been merely a short version or a draft. As of Triccani's 1935 Enciclopedia Italiana article, it was being reported that Pigafetta wrote his detailed account of the voyage in response to a request by the Marquis of Mantua in January 1523.

Recognition An exhibition on Pigafetta opened in 2019 in Madrid at the library of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

The Italian destroyer Antonio Pigafetta, of the Navigatori class, was named after him in 1931.

The bitypic genus of palms Pigafetta is named in his honor.

Works Antonio Pigafetta wrote at least two books, both of which have survived: Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (1524-1525); Regole sull'arte del navigare (1524-1525) (contained in ).

Gallery

References

Sources

Magellan's Voyage around the World by Antonio Pigafetta – The original text of the Ambrosian ms. translated by James Alexander Robertson, Cleveland : The Arthur H. Clark Company (1906); Vol 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3

Salonia, Matteo. (2022). Asian Ceremonies and Christian Chivalry in Pigafetta's The First Voyage around the World. In C.Mueller and M. Salonia (eds.), Travel Writings on Asia: Curiosity, Identities, and Knowledge across the East, c. 1200 to the Present (pp. 83–110).

External links