The God Culture: 100 Lies About The Philippines: #10 Pigafetta is the Only Eyewitness to Magellan's Journey
Welcome back to 100 lies The God Culture teaches about the Philippines. Today's lie concerns Timothy Jay Schwab's claim that Pigafetta's journal is the only eyewitness account to Magellan's arrival in the Philippines.
This lie leads Tim into several major errors as we shall see in future articles.
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2:00 The problem is well, they ignore history, real history, about as valid as you get such as Pigafetta's journal, the only eyewitness account of Magellan's arrival in the Philippines. That would be a DUH!
That is wrong on so many levels and reveals the total ignorance of Timothy Jay Schwab and his alleged research team. It is once more confirmation that there is no research team and that Tim is acting all on his own. The fact is while Pigafetta's journal is a main source of information about the first voyage around the world there are other eyewitness accounts. Does Tim even know that Pigafetta omitted crucial information about the attempted mutiny in South America?
Volume one of Blair and Robertson's The Philippine Islands gives a brief resumé of these eyewitness accounts to Magellan's voyage.
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| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.afk2830.0001.001&view=1up&seq=259&skin=2021&q1=resume |
That testimony and a complete description of the voyage can be read in volume 4 of the Colección de los viages y descubrimientos.
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| https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=jccLAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false |
However, this material is only available in Spanish.
In the May 1st, 1971 issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review Martin Torodash gives an excellent summary and overview of all the available contemporary and primary sources regarding Magellan and his voyage. He begins by stating:
The Magellan historiographer must commence his research with Navarrete in whose Colección, especially the fourth volume, primary source material is contained in abundance. Hundreds of documents concerning discoveries by Spaniards in both the Atlantic and Pacific make this work absolutely indispensable, the very basis of modern historical writing on the discovery period.
https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/51/2/313/152610/Magellan-Historiography
No where in his books or videos does Tim reference this collection of documents and it's a good bet Tim is not proficient enough in Spanish to read any of its contents. Once again we see he is a very poor researcher who neglects foundational and vital information through ignorance and deceit.
Back in Spain the surviving crew were subject to interrogation. Maximilianus Transylvanus, a courtier of Emperor Charles V, actually interviewed the surviving crew members and wrote a summary of the voyage.
Now, the book of the aforesaid Peter having disappeared, Fortune has not allowed the memory of so marvellous an enterprise to be entirely lost, inasmuch as a certain noble gentleman of Vicenza called Messer Antonio Pigafetta (who, having gone on the voyage and returned in the ship Vittoria, was made a Knight of Rhodes), wrote a very exact and full account of it in a book, one copy of which he presented to His Majesty the Emperor, and another he sent to the most Serene Mother of the most Christian King, the Lady Regent.
As this voyage may be considered marvellous, and not only unaccomplished, but even unattempted either in our age or in any previous one, I have resolved to write as truly as possible to your Reverence the course (of the expedition) and the sequence of the whole matter. I have taken care to have everything related to me most exactly by the captain and by the individual sailors who have returned with him. They have also related each separate event to Cæsar and to others with such good faith and sincerity, that they seemed not only to tell nothing fabulous themselves, but by their relation to disprove and refute all the fabulous stories which had been told by old authors.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Voyage_Round_the_World/Letter_of_Maximilian,_the_Transylvan
In his introduction Maximilianus recognizes the importance and worth of Pigafetta's published journal and tells us that what is to follow was related to him by the surviving crew members.
Another writer who interviewed surviving crew members was Peter Martyr d'Anghiera. He writes about Magellan's voyage in the fifth decade of his book De Orbo Novo.
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| De Orbo Novo, Vol 2, pg 159 |
I have asked those who returned to Spain, and especially a young Genoese, Martin de Judicis, who witnessed all these events, what crime provoked the King of Zubo to commit this vile action; the Spaniards think it was on account of women, for the islanders are jealous.
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| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Voyage_Round_the_World |
This book has ten contemporary accounts of Magellan's voyage.
The second source Tim uses is Charles Nowell's Magellan's Voyage Around the World: Three Contemporary Accounts. It's right there in the title!
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| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822013755558&view=1up&seq=9 |
Keep in mind that Tim tries to pass himself off as some great researcher who has done more true actual research on the Philippines than actual Philippines scholars yet here we see he ignores what is right under his nose. That is not the work of an honest man nor is it the work of a team. He passes by all these contemporary accounts of Magellan's voyage and sticks only with Pigafetta because they do not further his false history of the Philippines. As I noted at the beginning of this article this ignorance will lead him into several errors.
“This lie leads Tim into several major errors as we shall see in future articles.” And that’s why he rejects them.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it Tim rejects? He says quite plainly that Pigafetta is the ONLY eyewitness to Magellan's landing in the Philippines and he has never corrected that statement or used any of the other eyewitness accounts.
DeleteWhat matters is that it leads him into the “several major errors” you speak of. My point is it’s intentional, an assumption.
Delete