Infinitum

Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas

Biography

His father, Roderigo de Tordesillas, and his mother, Agnes de Herrera, were both of good family. After studying for some time in his native country, Herrera proceeded to Italy, and there became secretary to Vespasian Gonzago, with whom, on his appointment as viceroy of Navarre, he returned to Spain. Gonzago, sensible of his secretary’s abilities, commended him to Philip II of Spain; and that monarch appointed Herrera first historiographer of the Indies, and one of the historiographers of Castile.

Placed thus in the enjoyment of an ample salary, Herrera devoted the rest of his life to the pursuit of literature, retaining his offices until the reign of Philip IV, by whom he was appointed secretary of state very shortly before his death.

The Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos

Of Herrera’s writings, the most valuable is his Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano (Madrid, 1601-1615, 4 vols), a work which relates the history of the Spanish-American colonies from 1492 to 1554. The author’s official position gave him access to the state papers and to other authentic sources not attainable by other writers, while he did not scruple to borrow largely from other manuscripts, especially from that of Bartolomé de Las Casas.

He used his facilities carefully and judiciously; and the result is a work on the whole accurate and unprejudiced, and quite indispensable to the student either of the history of the early colonies, or of the institutions and customs of the aboriginal American peoples. Although it is written in the form of annals, mistakes are not wanting, and several glaring anachronisms have been pointed out by MJ Quintana. “If,” to quote Dr Robertson, “by attempting to relate the various occurrences in the New World in a strict chronological order, the arrangement of events in his work had not been rendered so perplexed, disconnected and obscure that it is an unpleasant task to collect from different parts of his book and piece together the detached shreds of a story, he might justly have been ranked among the most eminent historians of his country.”

This work was republished in 1730, and has been translated into English by J Stevens (London, 1740), and into other European languages.

Work’s value in solving puzzle on Mazaua, Magellan’s lost port

Unknown to Magellan scholars and navigation historians, Herrera’s work is central to a geographical conundrum related to Ferdinand Magellan’s travel in Philippine waters. It’s only now, in the 21st century, that this fact has surfaced.

Herrera, with Andrés de San Martín as authority, wrote Magellan’s fleet had anchored at an isle named “Mazagua“, an exact equivalent of a Butuanon word in that locality, “masawa”, meaning bright light. The “gu” is the Spanish equivalent of w which is absent in the Spanish alphabet. He wrote a mass was celebrated at that port on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1521. Also a cross was planted at the isle’s highest hill. Herrera’s account is faithful to the actual incident and coincides with the reports of eyewitnesses Antonio Pigafetta, Ginés de Mafra, Francisco Albo, Martín de Ayamonte, and The Genoese Pilot.

Herrera also provides an information found only in one other document in the entire Magellanic literature, the Ginés de Mafra account, that the rulers of Cebu, Mazaua and Butuan are blood relatives. The papers of San Martín were in the possession of de Mafra, entrusted to him by the astrologer before May 1, 1521 when San Martín is presumed to have died during the massacre of Magellan’s crew at Cebu.

Sole published work that has word Mazaua since 1521 to 1890

Herrera’s work is the only published document from the time of the 1521 anchorage at the tiny isle until publication of F.H.H. Guillemard’s biography of Magellan in 1890 that has the real name of the isle, Mazaua. Guillemard spelling was “Mazzava”–the spelling found in the three extant French manuscripts of Pigafetta, the Beinecke-Yale codex, Ms f. 5650, and Ms f. 24224. In that whole period, published works used the name popularized by Maximilianus Transylvanus, “Messana” and “Massana.”

Two 17th century Spanish Jesuit missionaries wrote an epitome–three paragraphs at most for each–of Magellan’s travel in the Surigao Sea. They used Herrera’s “Mazagua” ironically to negate Herrera’s account of the anchorage at the tiny isle. They Fr. Francisco Colín and Fr. Francisco Combés. The first coined a name, “Dimasaua”, a combination of a Bisayan prefix, “di” meaning “no” or “not” added to Herrera’s “Mazagua.” Colín’s “Dimasaua” means “not Mazaua“, pointing to an isle in southern Leyte at f9° 56′ N, 125° 35′ E. Four years later, Combés renamed the isle “Limasaua” which the isle retains to this day.

Two friars use Herrera’s Mazagua to negate Mazaua

Colín invented the name in the context of the Easter Sunday mass which his other source, the garbled Italian translation of Pigafetta by Giovanni Battista Ramusio, said took place at Butuan on March 31, 1521. Colín had correctly assumed Pigafetta being an eyewitness would be more accurate; what he didn’t know was that Ramusio had replaced Mazaua with Butuan. In the case of Combés, he got hold of another edition of Ramusio that still had the anchorage at Butuan but did not mention any mass there. While Combés adopts the solution of Colín of using Herrera’s “Mazaua”, he rejected the prefix “di” since he wasn’t dismissing a non-existent Easter mass in his Ramusio. He instead used a mystifyingly unknown prefix, “Li” which is unknown in Philippine languages and is neither Spanish or Portuguese or perhaps French, added before Herrera’s “Mazagua.”

At the beginning of the 19th century, an authentic Pigafetta account was published based on the transcription of a paleologist-scientist, the Augustinian Carlo Amoretti of the Ambrosiana library in Milan. In two footnotes Amoretti turned truth on its head. He said the word “Limasava” (as spelled) in a map of Jacques N. Bellin may be the Messana/Massana in Pigafetta. As proof he said both isles are found in the same latitude, 9° 40′ N. In reality Limasawa is in 9° 56′ N while Mazaua has been variously located at two other latitudes, 9° 20′ N by Francisco Albo and 9° N by The Genoese Pilot.

Coming full circle

The craft of history entails putting together pieces left by a past incident. The Mazaua conundrum has been unravelling first with the “discovery” of the little known Ginés de Mafra whose account turns out to be a mirror of the insights of the Renaissance navigation genius, Andrés de San Martín, who was in turn the authority of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas for his Mazaua story. In connecting the three, the truth of Herrera’s Mazagua has gone full circle.

Herrera’s main works

Herrera’s main published works are the following:

• Historia de lo sucedido en Escocia a Inglaterra en quarenta y quatro annos que vivio la reyna Maria Estuarda (Madrid, 1589)
• Cinco libros de la historia de Portugal, y conquista de las isles de los Acores, 1582-1583 (Madrid, 1591)
• Historia de lo sucedido en Francia, 1585-1594 (Madrid, 1598)
• Historia general del mundo del tiempo del rey Felipe II, desde 1559 haste su muerte (Madrid, 1601-1612, 3 vols)
• Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano (Madrid, 1601-1615, 4 vols)
• Tratado, relation, y discurso historico de los movimientos de Aragon (Madrid, 1612)
• Comentarios de los hechos de los Españoles, Franceses, y Venecianos en Italia, etc., 1281-1559 (Madrid, 1624, seq.).

Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Antonio_de_Herrera_y_Tordesillas&oldid=267288885 (last visited Apr. 28, 2009).

Tags: 16th Century, Magellan, Spain

Kubla Kahn

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

    But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
    Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
    A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
    As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
    And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
    As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
    A mighty fountain momently was forced :
    Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
    Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
    Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
    And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
    It flung up momently the sacred river.
    Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
    Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
    Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
    And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
    And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
    Ancestral voices prophesying war !

    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves ;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw :
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
    Could I revive within me
    Her symphony and song,
    To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1797

Tags: Antartica, Hollow Earth, Hyperborea

Henry the Navigator

The Infante Henrique, Duke of Viseu (Porto, March 4, 1394 – Sagres, November 13, 1460); pron. IPA: [ẽ'ʁik(ɨ)]), was an infante (prince) of the Portuguese House of Aviz and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire, being responsible for the beginning of the European worldwide explorations. He is known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator or the Seafarer (Portuguese: o Navegador).

Prince Henry the Navigator was the third child of King John I of Portugal, the founder of the Aviz dynasty, and of Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt. Henry encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian peninsula, with profound consequences on Henry’s worldview: Henry became aware of the profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes that terminated there and became fascinated with Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade.

It is a common conception that Henry gathered at his Vila on the Sagres peninsula a school of navigators and map-makers. He did employ some cartographers to help him chart the coast of Mauritania in the wake of voyages he sent there, but for the rest there was no center of navigational science or any supposed observatory in the modern sense of the word, nor was there an organized navigational center. In “Crónica da Guiné” Henry is described as a person with no luxuries, not avaricious, speaking with soft words and calm gestures, a man of many virtues that never allowed any poor person leave his presence empty handed.

Resources and income

On May 25, 1420, Henry gained appointment as the governor of the very rich Order of Christ, the Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar, which had its headquarters at Tomar. Henry would hold this position for the remainder of his life, and the order was an important source of funds for Henry’s ambitious plans, especially his persistent attempts to conquer the Canary Islands, that the Portuguese claimed having discovered before the year 1346.

Henry also had other resources. When John I died, Henry’s eldest brother, Duarte became head of the castles council, and granted Henry a “Royal Flush” of all profits from trading within the areas he discovered as well as the sole right to authorize expeditions beyond Cape Bojador. He also held various valuable monopolies on resources in the Algarve. When Duarte died eight years later, Henry supported his brother Pedro for the regency during Afonso V of Portugal’s minority, and in return received a confirmation of this levy. Henry also promoted the colonization of the Azores during Pedro’s regency (1439–1448).

Until Henry’s time, Cape Bojador remained the most southerly point known to Europeans on the unpromising desert coast of Africa, although the Periplus of the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator described a journey farther south about 2,000 years earlier.

As a second fruit of this work João Gonçalves Zarco, Bartolomeu Perestrelo and Tristão Vaz Teixeira rediscovered the Madeira Islands in 1420, and at Henry’s instigation Portuguese settlers colonized the islands.

In 1427, one of Henry’s navigators, probably Gonçalo Velho, discovered the Azores. Portugal soon colonized these islands in 1430.

Gil Eanes, the commander of one of Henry’s expeditions, became the first European known to pass Cape Bojador in 1434. This was a breakthrough as it was considered close to the end of the world, with difficult currents that did not encourage commercial enterprise.

Henry also continued his involvement in events closer to home. In 1431 he donated houses for the Estudo Geral to reunite all the sciences — grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music and astronomy — into what would later become the University of Lisbon. For other subjects like medicine or philosophy, he ordered that each room should be decorated according to each subject that was being taught.

He functioned as a primary organizer of the Portuguese expedition to Tangier in 1437. This proved a disastrous failure; Henry’s younger brother Fernando was given as a hostage to guarantee that the Portuguese would fulfill the terms of the peace agreement that had been made with Çala Ben Çala. The agreement was first broken by the Moors, who attacked the Portuguese and captured the Portuguese wounded when they were being carried to the ships, killing those who tried to resist. The Archbishop of Braga and the count of Arraiolos refused to approve the terms in the reunion of the Portuguese Cortes, thus condemning Fernando to remain in miserable captivity until his death eleven years later. Henry for most of his last twenty-three years concentrated on his exploration activities, or on Portuguese court politics.

Using the new ship type, the expeditions then pushed onwards. Nuno Tristão and Antão Gonçalves reached Cape Blanco in 1441. The Portuguese sighted the Bay of Arguin in 1443 and built an important fort there around the year 1448. Dinis Dias soon came across the Senegal River and rounded the peninsula of Cap-Vert in 1444. By this stage the explorers had passed the southern boundary of the desert, and from then on Henry had one of his wishes fulfilled: the Portuguese had circumvented the Muslim land-based trade routes across the western Sahara Desert, and slaves and gold began arriving in Portugal. By 1452, the influx of gold permitted the minting of Portugal’s first gold cruzado coins. A cruzado was equal to 400 reis at the time. From 1444 to 1446, as many as forty vessels sailed from Lagos on Henry’s behalf, and the first private mercantile expeditions began.

Alvise Cadamosto explored the Atlantic coast of Africa and discovered several islands of the Cape Verde archipelago between 1455 and 1456. In his first voyage, which started on March 22 1455, he visited the Madeira Islands and the Canary Islands. On the second voyage, in 1456, Cadamosto became the first European to reach the Cape Verde Islands. António Noli later claimed the credit. By 1462, the Portuguese had explored the coast of Africa as far as present-day nation Sierra Leone. Twenty-eight years later, Bartolomeu Dias (can be spelt Diaz) proved that Africa could be circumnavigated when he reached the southern tip of the continent. This is now known as the “Cape of Good Hope.” In 1498, Vasco da Gama was the first sailor to travel from Portugal to India.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator

Tags: 15th Century, Maps, Navigator, Portugese

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo) (1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean—funded by the Spanish crown—led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Though not the first to reach the Americas from Afro-Eurasia — preceded some five hundred years by Leif Ericson, and perhaps by others — Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. With his several hapless attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he personally initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the “New World.” (The term “pre-Columbian” is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.)

His initial 1492 voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. In this sociopolitical climate, Columbus’s far-fetched scheme won the attention of Queen Isabella of Spain. Severely underestimating the circumference of the Earth, he hypothesized that a westward route from Iberia to the Indies would be shorter and more direct than the overland trade route through Arabia. If true, this would allow Spain entry into the lucrative spice trade — heretofore commanded by the Arabs and Italians. Following his plotted course, he instead landed within the Bahamas Archipelago at a locale he named San Salvador. Mistaking the North-American island for the East-Asian mainland, he referred to its inhabitants as “Indians”.

Tags: 15th Century, Explorer, Maps, Navigator, Spain