Talk:Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas

Herrera, the hidden piece in a geographical jigsaw puzzle
In the entire literature of Mazaua historiography pertaining to an episode in Magellan's circumnavigation, which entered worldwide notice only when this was discussed in a paper read before The Society for the History of Discoveries on October 13, 2000 at the U.S. Library of Congress click www.xeniaeditrice.it for revised edition), there's one central figure who remains hidden.

This is Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. His central role is not seen by anyone yet his "signature" is omnipresent and has been in plain view all the time. It is so palpably obvious, but seemingly irrelevant, no one sees it.

His "signature", the hidden clue that is unnoticed but is obtrusively and glaringly self-evident, is the word "masaua" found in the place name "Limasawa" which points to a tiny isle at the southern tip of Leyte, west of Panaon island. Limasawa Is. is at latitude 9° 56' N and longitude 125° East. Its northernmost tip is at latitude 9° 59' N.

In the story of Herrera, based on the now lost papers of Andrés de San Martín, chief pilot-astrologer of the Armada de Molucca, "Mazagua", Hispanicized spelling of a Butuanon word, "masawa", was the anchorage of Magellan's fleet in March-April 1521. In that isle an Easter mass was held Sunday morning of March 31, 1521. One Spanish Jesuit, Fr. Francisco Colín, put a Bisayan prefix "di" meaning "no" or "not" and added Herrera's "masaua" to create a name that intends to say, "This island [the tiny isle in Leyte] is not where an Easter mass was celebrated which happened elsewhere, in Butuan." Colín's view of the incident was formed by his main source, the mistranslation by Giovanni Battista Ramusio of Antonio Pigafetta's account of Magellan's travel. Ramusio wrote the event occurred in Butuan.

"Limasawa" on the other hand is another neologism, a clever invention whose roots are again found in Herrera's "masaua" and a prefix whose provenience is not traceable to any language, local or European. The inventor, Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J., could not adopt Colín because his version of Ramusio does not mention a mass anywhere. He therefore saw no reason to negate what did not occur. His Ramusio may have been a result of the fire that occurred in the publishing house of T. Giunti in November 1577 where the templates of Vol. I of Ramusio's Delle navigationi e viaggi... were damaged. In reconstructing Antonio Pigafetta's article, "La Detta navigatione per messer Antonio Pigafetta Vicentino", the Easter mass got expunged. It's also possible this alteration occurred in the French translation of Vol. I prepared by Jean Temporal in 1556 and published at Lyons. Most likely this was a product of the work of the renegade Jesuit Richard Willes, literary executor of Richard Eden who translated Ramusio into English in 1555. Willes made a number of changes in his 1577 edition of Eden's translation, removed a number of items. Whatever the case, what got to the hands of Combés was an altered Ramusio where the mass had been excised.

In fairness, John N. Schumacher, S.J., one of the more known historiographers to have joined the dialogue on what is popularly referred to in the Philippines as the search for the site of the "First mass in the Philippines", does make a significant remark on Herrera. He notes in his article “The First Mass in the Philippines,” Kasaysayan 6, 1981: Pp. 8-19, that "Herrera is the only historian prior to the time of the 19th century publication of Pigafetta, who correctly put the first Mass in 'Mazagua'." He failed to pursue the point which is to point out that Herrera's "Mazagua" is the source of Colín's "Dimasaua" and Combés's "Limasaua."

This article gives the first analytical study of Herrera's critical role in a great puzzle that has involved many disciplines,e.g., geography, historiography, geomorphology, cartography, archaeology, nuclear science, etc. My analysis shows the improbability of Limasawa being Herrera's Mazagua and the certainty Mazaua is something else. (What Mazaua is I was able to establish in a Table of Correspondence which is an inventory of its properties as described the five eyewitness accounts. The Table is on Page 20 of my paper at www.xeniaeditrice.it.mazaua.pdf) It also demonstrates one can prove Limasawa is not Mazaua by a simple historiographical analysis.--Vicente Calibo de Jesus (talk) 08:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

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