Dimasaua facts for kids

Dimasaua, also spelled Dimasawa and Dimasava, is a name invented by a Spanish missionary named Fr. Francisco Colín in the 1600s. He used this name to refer to a tiny island in southern Leyte. According to Colín, the chief of this island was very helpful to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew when they were at the port of Butuan in March–April 1521.

This story comes from a historical book called Labor evangelica obreros de la compañia de Jesus en las islas Filipinas, published in 1663. It briefly describes Magellan's journey in the Philippines.

Where Did the Magellan Story Come From?

Fr. Colín said his main source for this story was Antonio Pigafetta's account, which was edited by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. Ramusio was a famous travel writer during the Renaissance. He translated a French version of Pigafetta's story about Magellan's voyage back into Italian. The original Italian text is now lost.

Ramusio's work, titled Viaggio attorno il mondo scritto per M. Antonio Pigafetta...tradotto di lingua francese nella Italiana, was part of a collection of travel stories published in 1563. This translation had appeared earlier in 1536 without an author's name.

How Ramusio's Story Changed Pigafetta's Account

Ramusio's translation of the incident is quite mixed up compared to Pigafetta's original story. In Pigafetta's real account, the port where Magellan landed was not Butuan. Butuan is not an island. Instead, it was an island called Mazaua, pronounced "masawa." This word "masawa" is found only in the Butuanon and Tausog languages, not in the other 200+ Philippine languages.

In Ramusio's changed story, Magellan and his crew celebrated an Easter Sunday mass at Butuan on March 31, 1521. They also put a large cross on top of the tallest hill that same afternoon. Ramusio's story then says they sailed from Butuan to Cebu, passing "Zeilon, Bohol, Messana..."

Interestingly, Ramusio mentions "Messana." This was the name given to Mazaua in 1522 by Maximilianus Transylvanus. "Messana" sounded familiar to Europeans because it was the name of an Italian port where the bubonic plague started. Because of this, "Messana" often replaced the true name, Mazaua. Even in 1894, when scholar Andrea da Mosto carefully copied Pigafetta's original manuscript, he still used Transylvanus' "Mazana."

Ramusio's timeline is confusing. He says Magellan's fleet stayed at Butuan from March 28 to April 4, 1521. Then, they sailed for Cebu but suddenly appeared at "Messana." In the real story, the fleet actually anchored at "Mazaua" during those dates. Ramusio wrongly replaced Mazaua with Butuan and the stopover island, Gatighan, with "Messana." It's important to remember this mix-up to understand which island Colín's "Dimasaua" refers to in the true story.

The accurate story, as told by Antonio Pigafetta and other witnesses, is that the fleet anchored at a tiny island-port called Mazaua. This island was about 3,930 hectares, according to Ginés de Mafra. The Genoese Pilot said Mazaua was at 9° north latitude, placing it in Mindanao. From Mazaua, the fleet sailed to Cebu in the Visayas, passing a small island called Gatighan first. By following this route, we can see that Colín's "Dimasaua" is actually Pigafetta's "Gatighan."

Another Important Source: Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas

Colín also used the writings of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. Herrera's story about the incident came from the papers of Andrés de San Martín, Magellan's chief pilot and astrologer. These papers were taken from Ginés de Mafra, who had them after San Martín entrusted them to him in Cebu in April or May 1521.

Herrera's version accurately describes the event at Mazaua. He mentions the fleet anchoring at the island, which he spells "Mazagua." This name sounds exactly like the Butuanon word "masawa." Herrera's "gu" is how the Spanish wrote the "w" sound, which isn't in their alphabet. His account also says a cross was planted on the tallest hill, with Magellan, his men, and the chiefs of Mazagua and Butuan taking part.

Herrera's version was the true account of the incident. His name for the port, "Mazagua," was the only correct one published from 1521 until 1890. In 1890, the same name, spelled "Mazzava," appeared in a book about Magellan by English geographer Dr. Francis H.H. Guillemard.

Why Colín Invented "Dimasaua"

Fr. Colín faced a problem: which story should he believe, Ramusio's or Herrera's? He thought Ramusio's version was the real Pigafetta account, which would be more important since Pigafetta was an eyewitness. So, Colín wrote that Butuan was the port where the Easter mass happened.

After deciding that, he looked at Herrera's story about Mazaua. Since he had already said the mass was in Butuan, he couldn't use Ramusio's "Messana" (the fleet's second stop in Ramusio's story). The name "Messana" sounded like "missa na" in Bisaya, meaning "mass already." This would create a contradiction in Colín's story.

So, Colín came up with his invented name, "Dimasaua." The word combines the Bisaya prefix "di," meaning "not," with Herrera's name for the port, "Mazagua." His "Dimasaua" basically means "this is not Herrera's site of the first mass, Mazagua (pronounced 'masawa'), which I have already placed at Butuan."

How "Dimasaua" Became "Limasaua"

Five years after Colín's book, another Spanish missionary, Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J., wrote about the Mazaua incident in his book Historia de las islas de Mindanao. Progresos de la religion (1667). He used the same sources: Ramusio, Herrera, and Colín.

Combés had a different version of Ramusio's story. His version didn't say a mass was held at Butuan on March 31, 1521, though it did mention a cross being planted on a hill.

Combés followed Colín's way of solving the problem between Ramusio's and Herrera's conflicting stories. However, he didn't use Colín's name for the stopover island, Pigafetta's Gatighan. Since his Ramusio version didn't mention an Easter mass, he didn't need to deny a mass happening somewhere else. He invented a new prefix, "Li," which is not found in any Philippine language or in French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese. "Li" has no meaning related to Magellan's journey or Philippine languages.

So, Combés invented the name "Limasawa," which is what the tiny southern Leyte island is called today. Following the route, this name points to Pigafetta's Gatighan. Francisco Albo, the pilot who brought Magellan's ship Victoria back to Spain, located Gatighan at 10° north latitude, just a little north of today's Limasawa. On Pigafetta's map and other maps of the Philippines, it's the island between Bohol and Panaon.

How "Limasaua" Became More Famous Than "Dimasaua"

In 1734, another Spanish Jesuit missionary, Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, created a map of the Philippines. This map was the first to show the name "Limasava." He later made a revised edition where he wrote that Magellan visited Butuan and an Easter mass was held there on March 31, 1521. So, his "Limasaua" didn't quite match Combés's story, which didn't mention a mass.

Murillo later wrote that the Leyte island had two names: "Dimasaua" and "Limasaua." It seems he just picked the name he liked at the moment he made the map, not realizing it might contradict his own story.

This map became very popular in Europe, and many mapmakers copied it. Only Jacques N. Bellin honestly gave credit to Murillo. Bellin published his own version in 1734, correcting some of Murillo's longitudes and latitudes.

In 1798, Carlo Amoretti, a scholar at the Ambrosiana library in Milan, found the lost Italian manuscript of Antonio Pigafetta. He copied it and published his version two years later. In his notes, Amoretti guessed that "Messana" in Pigafetta's text might be the "Limassava" shown on Bellin's map. Amoretti and Bellin hadn't read the books by Combés and Colín or Murillo's revised map. So, they didn't know that the name "Limasaua" actually denied Herrera's correct account of the Mazaua event.

Historians Often Repeat Each Other

The saying "history repeats itself" is not as true as "historians repeat one another." Western historians and Magellan scholars began a tradition of repeating Amoretti's idea. For example, Lord Stanley of Alderley (1874), F.H.H. Guillemard (1890), Jose Toribio Medina (1888), Andrea da Mosto (1894), James Alexander Robertson (1906), J. Denuce (1911), and even Laurence Bergreen (2003) all did this. No one really questioned Amoretti's statement.

Religious writers in the Philippines also continued the trend of inventing names, following Colín and Combés. They gave the island other names: Limasaba (Fr. Gaspar de San Agustin, 1698); Bimasaua (Fr. Juan Francisco de San Antonio, 1738); Simasaua (F. Redondo, 1886). No one explained why these names were used; they were just stated as facts.

Only one Western maritime historian, the French Léonce Peillard, disagreed with Amoretti. In his 1991 book, Le premier tour du monde de Magellan, Peillard stated that Mazaua was at 9° north latitude, as calculated by The Genoese Pilot. He also said that Mazaua was actually part of Mindanao.

In the Philippines, historians made the issue more confusing by not mentioning Amoretti as the source for the Limasaua=Mazaua idea. They also reframed the incident as a religious event, like Colín and Combés did. While Westerners focused on it as an anchorage point, Philippine scholars saw Mazaua as the "site" where the First mass in the Philippines was held. Most Philippine historians still see it this way.

Even now, it hasn't been widely noticed that the names "Limasaua" and "Dimasaua" actually deny Herrera's "Mazagua." These two names suggest that the mass was not held at the island-port of Mazaua, as Herrera's story claimed.

The important role of Herrera's "Mazagua" was not deeply analyzed until Vicente Calibo de Jesus presented his paper in 2007. John N. Schumacher, S.J. did mention Herrera, noting that "Herrera is the only historian prior to the time of the 19th century publication of Pigafetta, who correctly puts the first Mass in 'Mazagua' which is simply a Hispanicization of Pigafetta's Italian form 'Mazaua' or 'Mazzaua'." However, Schumacher didn't realize the influence of Andrés de San Martín or that "Dimasaua" and "Limasaua" were denials of Herrera's account. De Jesus's paper is the only work that explores Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas's importance in this topic.

This analysis has been ignored by the National Historical Institute (NHI), a Philippine government agency that helps solve historical questions. The NHI has stated many times that Mazaua and Limasawa are the same place, even though one name denies the story of Mazaua by Herrera and the Easter mass there. In a decision in March 1998, the NHI wrongly dismissed the Ginés de Mafra account as fake, even though it is genuine. De Mafra's account placed Mazaua south of 1521 Butuan, about 45 nautical miles (83 km) away, at 9° north, which is the exact latitude for Magellan's port given by The Genoese Pilot. The Institute, knowing its method was wrong, has turned an honest mistake into what some call the Limasawa hoax.

See also

• Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas
• Carlo Amoretti
• First mass in the Philippines
• Francisco Combés
• Gatighan
• Ginés de Mafra
• Limasawa
• Rajahnate of Butuan