Limasawa Jesuit

LIMASAWA, an invented word?
Limasawa, an invented word? The word Limasawa is not found in any of the over 100 languages of the Philippines. It is not found in any of the eyewitness reports that mention the episode of March 28-April 4, 1521 as written by Antonio Pigafetta, Gines de Mafra, Martinho de Aiamonte, Francisco Albo, and The Genoese Pilot.

In fact, it was invented in 1667 by a Jesuit historian who had not read any of those accounts. Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J., had read three works that refer to the Mazaua episode, by Gian Battista Ramusio who said the port was Butuan and this Combés adopted, Antonio de Herrera who said it was Mazaua which Combés rejected, and Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J., who said the island was Butuan. Colín pointed to another island he called Dimasaua to signify it is not (di is Bisaya for not) the isle where an Easter mass was celebrated.

The island is Pigafetta's Gatighan. In the case of Combés, who wrote five years after Colín, he did not adopt Dimasaua because his story does not mention any mass at all. Creator of grand geographical illusion Even while it is so poorly regarded Amoretti's work has left an enduring geographical puzzle--an invalid geographical assertion--which has only been recently detected. In two footnotes on pages 66 and 72, Amoretti surmised that Magellan's port, which he named Massana and appears otherwise as Mazaua or Mazzaua in the clear calligraphic writing of the Beinecke-Yale codex, where the Armada de Molucca anchored from March 28 to April 4, 1521, this port may be the Limassava in Jacques N. Bellin's map of the Philippines. Bellin's map is a perfect copy of a chart made by Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, S.J., of the Philippines in 1734. Murillo's map was such a brilliant and beautiful map many European mapmakers plagiarized it outright. To the credit of Bellin, he cites Murillo as his authority; he corrects the longitude which followed the erroneous entries of Pigafetta. The French Bellin was hydrographer to the king of France and one of the greatest and most important French cartographers of the mid-18th century. His works were of such excellence as to set a high standard and were widely copied throughout Europe. His map of the Philippines came out the same year that Murillo's map came out.In any case, Amorettti offers one proof in support of his guess: the latitude of Limassava is at Pigafetta's latitude for Mazaua at 9°40' North. He was mistaken on two counts, Limasawa is at 9°56' North while Mazaua had three latitude readings by three members of the Armada, 9°40' N by Pigafetta, 9°20' N by Francisco Albo, and 9° N by the Genoese Pilot.Mazaua was the port where Magellan's fleet anchored for one week. It was also the port where 22 years later, Ginés de Mafra, revisited, the only crewmember of the Armada to do so. There are other visits by Spanish and Portuguese during the entire Age of Sail, the last notable one a few months before the 1565 arrival of the Legazpi expedition being a Portuguese squadron that virtually wiped out the entire population of the isle except for one native who was able to hide. The enduring significance of Mazaua was, for the Philippines, the Easter mass which was held by Magellan and his men on 31 March 1521 and a huge cross they planted west of the island on the same day. Mazaua is therefore an icon of the Christianization of the Philippine archipelago.

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