PIGAFETTA, who was born in Vicenza not long after 1490, was accordingly from twenty-five to thirty years old when he accompanied Magellan.[1611] He kept a diary of the voyage, a copy of which he gave to the Emperor; and later, in Italy, he wrote out a more extended account, copies of which he gave to distinguished persons. Of this ampler narrative four separate texts, in as many manuscripts, are preserved to us.
No. 1 is in French, Navigation et descouvrement de la Indie superieure faicte par moi Antoine Pigafete, Vincentin; on paper, in the National Library at Paris. It gives the full vocabulary of the Giants’ language, which is also reprinted in Amoretti. Students engaged in the study of the geography of the East Indies should not be satisfied with the few copies given by Amoretti of the maps and representations of the islands there. In this copy, which is divided throughout into short chapters, there are many more of these maps than have been engraved. It is impossible to look at them without believing that they give some idea of the size and even the shape of the islands visited. Charton calls this paper manuscript the oldest of those in France. No one can decide such a question. The illustrations in the vellum manuscript certainly seem to be nearer the originals than those in this coarser paper one.
No. 2 is a richly illuminated vellum document, with a text somewhat softened in the coarse parts. This may have been the copy known to have been given to Louise of Savoy by Pigafetta. This manuscript is also in the Paris library. The writing is elegant, and the maps are very prettily done in body color. They are much more elegant than the maps in the paper manuscript, which are in rough water-color by some one of no great artistic skill. The representations given by Amoretti of a few of the designs are sufficiently good for all practical purposes. But the picture of the boat with outriggers, illustrating the customs of the Ladrone Islands, is much more artistic in the vellum manuscript than it is in Amoretti’s engraving.
No. 3, the most complete, was owned by M. Beaupré, at Nancy, in 1841, when Thomassy described it; was sold in the Potier sale in 1851 (no. 506), and passed into the Solar Collection, and in 1861 (Solar sale, no. 3,238) it was bought by a London dealer, and reached finally the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, who bought it at the Libri sale (no. 1,139) in 1862. It is a question with critics whether Pigafetta composed his work in French or in Italian; for there is also a manuscript (no. 4) in the later language, poorly conceived, however, and mixed with Spanish, preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. This was the manuscript published by the Abbé C. Amoretti; it is written in the character known as cancelleresco, on paper folios, of which the handwriting is of the time of Pigafetta; and it was once owned by the Cardinal Frederic Borroméo. Raymond Thomassy[1612] gives several reasons for believing that the French text is the original, but we have not been satisfied that it was so.[1613]
In the earliest edition of Pigafetta which we have,—one without date, and in French, edited by Antoine Fabre,—the text is represented as being a translation from the Italian. It is possible that, being an abridgment, it might have followed some abstract which had been made in that language, possibly an account which in 1524 Pigafetta asked permission to print,[1614] of the Doge and Council of Venice. This original French edition is called Le Voyage et Navigation faict par les Espaignolz es isles de Mollucques; and is usually thought to have been printed in 1525. It is in Gothic type, except the last four leaves, which are in Roman, as are all the notes.[1615] Harrisse cites[1616] an Italian edition of Pigafetta with the letter of Maximilian, as published at Venice in 1534;[1617] but there is little reason to believe such an edition to exist.
The earliest undoubted Italian edition was printed, however, in 1536, and it was professedly a translation from Fabre’s French text, and there is reason to believe that Ramusio may have been instrumental in its publication.[1618] It has the name neither of author nor of printer, but is supposed to have been issued at Venice. It is called Il Viaggio fatto da gli Spagnivoli a torno a’l mondo.[1619]
Amoretti published the Ambrosian manuscript (no. 4, above) in 1800, at Milan, under the title of Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo ossia ragguaglio della navigazione alle Indie orientali d Magaglianes, 1519-1522. Pubblicato per la prima volta da un codice manuscritto della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, e corredato di note da C. Amoretti con un transunto del Trattato di navigazione dello stesso autore. Milano, 1800.[1620]
About a month after the return of Del Cano in the “Victoria,” Maximilian Transylvanus (a son-in-law of Cristóbal de Haro, who had been a chief advocate of the voyage at the Spanish Court) wrote to the Cardinal Archbishop of Salzburg a brief account of the voyage, in a letter dated at Valladolid, Oct. 24, 1522;[1621] and when it was printed at Cologne in January, 1523, as De Moluccis insulis, and in the following November and again in February, 1524, at Rome, as De Hispanorum in orientem navigatione, its text constituted the earliest narrative of the voyage which was given in print.[1622] It was afterward printed in connection with the earliest Italian edition of Pigafetta; and the English reader will find it in the volume on Magellan published by the Hakluyt Society.
Ramusio also tells us that Peter Martyr wrote an account of Magellan’s voyage, gathered from the lips of the survivors, which he sent to Rome to be printed, but that in the sack of that city by the Constable de Bourbon it disappeared. We have but one point of this Martyr narrative preserved to us, and that is the loss of one day which the “Victory” had experienced in her westering voyage,—when arriving in Seville on the 6th of September, 1522, as her crew supposed, they found the Sevillians calling it the 7th.[1623]