Getting our Philippine history right after 500 years – Part 17

Owing to a misreading of Antonio Pigafetta's chronicles of the Magellanic sojourn in Mindanao in 1521, this seriously garbled narrative became predominant in Europe for almost 300 years - that the Spanish Expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan was forced by bad weather to drop anchor "in the island of Butuan" and decided to hold a Holy Mass on its shore on March 31 that year.

This garbling of Pigafetta's narrative of the First Mass in Mazaua was done by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in his Italian translation, and it also showed up in Peter Martyr d'Anghiera's Latin anthology. Later, it also appeared in the English translation of Richard Eden in London and in even more garbled form in the English translation of Samuel Purchas in Glasgow.