Before Limasawa…

By Tomas Gomez III

(Retired business executive and government official, now residing in San Antonio, Texas, originally from Samar.)

A detail of Carlos V. Francisco’s First Mass in the Philippines painting

If it could be shown that the first mass in the Philippines was celebrated NOT on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1521 and NOT in either of the contending venues of Butuan City and Southern Leyte, then the long running historical controversy between the Masao District and Limasawa Island, each claiming bragging rights and celebratory fame, shall have been, indeed, for naught!!! Would you not agree?

It is my contention that there has been an evident failure in historiographic deduction and interpretation regarding the celebration of “a mass in Limasawa on that Easter Sunday” (which is a fact beyond quibble) to the neglect, exclusion and abandonment of Homonhon in Samar, (as a venue where the real first mass was indeed celebrated) Ferdinand Magellan’s first landfall in what eventually came to be known as Las Islas Filipinas. The attendant scholarship utilized in resolving this lingering cause célèbre in a teacup was inadequate and therefore, erroneous.  The “first” Christian mass in the Philippines, whether one regards the event as picayune or monumental, is actually an issue of chronology not of geography! Monumental if it feeds an intellectual famine or picayune as in “it will not even cook a pot of rice!”  Actually, it is neither. It is just a fun discussion. So, let us banter away!

In May of 1996, this controversy approached near acrimony. The National Historical Institute convened a panel “to resolve a very sensitive historical issue facing our country and our people.”  Sounds monumental! The panel was headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Emilio A.  Gancayco with Atty. Bartolome C. Fernandez and Dr. Ma. Luisa T. Camagay as members.

It is worth mentioning that my fellow Waray-waray, Dr. Rolando O. Borinaga, a historical researcher, UP Professor and a community journalist, has contributed extensively to the lively discussion of this issue. In his commentaries, he has consistently prefaced and qualified the phrase “the First Mass” with the word “recorded” (as in “the recorded First Mass”) implying, without so declaring, that there may have been an “unrecorded” first mass!

After almost two years of hearings, the panel concluded that “….the first-ever Christian mass on Philippine soil on March 31, 1521 was celebrated in the island of Limasawa, South of Leyte,”  and claimed “a rigorous evaluative analysis and appraisal of the primary sources,” utilizing “the most complete and reliable account of the Magellan expedition” as chronicled by Antonio Pigafetta. The Gancayco Panel declared the Pigafetta memoirs as “the only credible primary source that yields the best evidence of the celebration of the first Christian Mass on Philippine soil.” As well, it should really be. But as earlier indicated, this panel was wrestling with geography when it should have investigated chronology. The Panel also read into Pigafetta what Pigafetta himself never thought , said, or much less wrote!!! This creates a problem, one involving fidelity to fact and circumstance.

There is simply one inescapable, irrefutable fact: Pigafetta NEVER said that that Easter Sunday Mass in Limasawa was the “first.” Neither do any of the other Magellan expedition survivors who completed the circumnavigation along with the Basque mariner, Sebastian El Cano, make any such claim, much less put it on record when interviewed by Maximilianus Transylvanus who duly reported his findings to the Cardinal of Salzburg. The Transylvanus report which was prepared in Valladolid, Spain in 1522 antedates the Rome publication of Pigafetta’s chronicles and memoirs.

Inasmuch as neither Pigafetta nor Transylvanus mentioned the mass as a “first”, proclaiming that that mass in Limasawa as being “first” is plainly and simply a misinterpretation and an erroneous conclusion. It is an error committed by non-witness third parties writing about it more than a hundred and forty years after the event!!! These latter-day chroniclers are religious personages, chief among whom was Francisco Colin, SJ. He said in his Labor Evangelica (1663): “And the day of Pascua de Flores (Easter Sunday/March 31, 1521) was truly for the Philippines. Magellan consecrated them with the celebration of the First Mass that was said and heard in them.”

Colin’s piece was opinion, not fact, written 142 years after the actuality of a Christian mass having been celebrated in Limasawa, without the actual witnesses and first person chroniclers having even claimed that such was a “first”. This misinterpretation has since been carried forward and to this day remains an unresolved error. This erratic conclusion—-“the first”— has been compounded by repeated references to the event at issue, uncorrected and accepted as gospel, made by other later commentators, prominent among whom was the French travel writer Jean Mallat (1846). Evidently, the Colins and the Mallats had access to the same resources that the Gancayco Panel had but all merely read Pigafetta and/or Transylvanus focusing merely upon the Limasawa episode without counter referencing circumstancially “unrecorded” instances in other venues that can be gleaned by reading the totality of the memoir.

Additionally, even the Congress of the Philippines enacted Republic Act 2733 declaring the site in Limasawa Island as a National Shrine because it was there that “ the First Mass in the Philippines was held.” This was “Enacted without Executive approval, June 19, 1960.”  President Diosdado Macapagal must have had his own doubts as he merely allowed the bill to lapse into law!!!

This historical happenstance is not beyond repair. Continuing scholarship requires an open mind.

The circumstances surrounding this episode appear unimpeachable and therefore must hold.

Let us begin. Let us have fun.

Pigafetta, having the opportunity to continue jotting down entries in his travel journal upon arriving in the islands they called Saint Lazarus, noting the observance of a regularly recurring event like the liturgical mass—-the “recorded” Mass in Limasawa—, does not mean that such same regularly observed event was not also, actually celebrated elsewhere, earlier —- except that such earlier observances being of normally recurring nature were not written about nor recorded by him. Regarded perhaps as uneventful!

With priests and piety sailing along on this perilous journey, it is inconceiveable that masses were not said on many, many other unrecorded occasions during the voyage from San Lucar de Barrameda, while afloat over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while traversing the Patagonian straits, or on land and until after landfall in Homonhon but….. all before Limasawa.

It is fact that Pigafetta did not enter (or remember to write) in his journal all the masses said during the entire voyage of one year, six months and some weeks before arrival in Limasawa.  This does not mean that when unmentioned or unrecorded, masses were not in fact said. As we all know, masses are celebrated every Sunday, every mandated holiday in the Catholic liturgical calendar. And even on any other day when good intentions are offered for the living as well as for the dead……(with the proper sacerdotal fees paid in, of course!) More so for those who survived and lived after risking death in a voyage to and through the uncharted and the unknown.

It is fact that the Pigafetta records of the Magellan expedition (1519 to 1522) mention only five instances when masses were said. Would it not be preposterous to conclude that no other masses were said, before Limasawa, simply because they were not mentioned or because Pigafetta failed to mention an observance that normally, uneventfully, occurs every Sunday with regularity?

Before weighing anchor to proceed to Limasawa on Monday, March 25 the crew of Magellan spent a full eight days in Homonhon, sandwiching the entire stay between two Sundays. Samar was sighted at dawn of Saturday, March 16, 1521, the feast of St. Lazarus. Hence, the first European appellation to these islands being “ the archipelago of Saint Lazarus.” A cause for liturgical celebration, should it not have been? The following day they landed in an uninhabited Homonhon (Humunu as written down in Italian by Pigafetta) for security, to get water and much needed rest. Here they found two springs of the clearest water and named the island “Acquada da li buoni Segnalli.” “Watering place of good Signs.” This was March 17, a Sunday.  Should not that have called for a Te Deum, in the very least? It took until Monday, March 18 when contact was made with natives coming from the outlying islands by sea-going, oar- propelled vessels. And again on March 22, a Friday, for a return visit from the natives and for more social and cultural exchange.

The second Sunday in Homonhon was Palm Sunday, March 24. Pigafetta does not mention any mass being said on this day. What he mentions next is the mass celebrated on the following Sunday, Easter Sunday, March 31, already in Limasawa. Check it out with your Parish. Is Easter Sunday mass celebrated without being preceded by a mass on a Palm Sunday?

A year earlier, during lent, while the expedition was still within the Patagonian straits (later to bear the name of Magellan) in the port of San Julian where they lingered some seven months, Palm Sunday fell on April 1, 1520. Within a period of seven months, there would have been at least 28 Sundays and/or Holidays during which to celebrate Christian masses. Pigafetta wrote in his memoirs that on this particular Sunday, the captain general (Magellan) summoned all to go ashore to hear mass. There is however no mention of a mass being celebrated the following Sunday—an Easter Sunday, April 8, 1520. Does that mean that because Pigafetta failed to write it down, mass was not celebrated on that Easter Sunday? Again, check it out with your Parish.  Is Palm Sunday mass celebrated without being followed by the celebration of a mass on Easter Sunday?

Incidentally, the San Julian Palm Sunday mass of April 1, 1520 could easily have been interpreted as the first Christian mass celebrated in that part of the world but there are no records claiming such mass to have been a “first.” Just as in the case of Limasawa, Pigafetta does not make a claim of a “first” mass, but simply the fact that a mass was said, neither does Argentina make claims that port San Julian was the venue of the “first” Christian mass north of Tierra del Fuego!

A curious common thread among the very few celebrated masses remembered by Pigafetta in his journal or travel notes, throughout their viajes peligrosos, is that there was always a presence of heathens, indios as audience (—prospects for conversion to Christianity?—) to be divinely inspired by the attraction provided by the pomp and splendor of Roman Catholic rituals such as the liturgy, with heaven-ward gestures, colorful vestments, curious accoutrements and mumbled incantations. One can surmise why in 1521, Easter Sunday was recorded but Palm Sunday was not. In Limasawa there was present an audience of a non- Christian, non-European crowd to be awed and to be wowed, to be divinely inspired, as it were.

In Homonhon, there was none.

Amen.

[Unscholarly-like, I absented myself from the use of asterisks and ibids., etc. to authenticate my sources. Instead, I invite the converts and skeptics to wade through the following and enjoy the voyage! Sources and Bibliography for this essay are: Antonio Pigafetta ---Primo viaggio intorno al mondo, English translation from Italian—Blair & Robertson (1903-1909); First Voyage Round the Globe, Hakluyt Society English translation from French by Lord Stanley Alderley (1874); Maximilianus Transylvanus---De Moluccis Insulis, a report to the Cardinal of Salzburg (1522), found in both BR and Hakluyt Society; Francisco Albo, pilot, (also a survivor) --- logbook of the voyage with extracts from Hakluyt Society (1519-1522); FHH Guillemard---The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and The First Circumnavigation of the Globe, (London, 1890); Dr. Rolando O. Borrinaga---Leyte/Samar Shadows, (New Day, 2008); Navarette/Herrera…Notes to both BR & Hakluyt, Mutiny in Port San Julian, etc; and Jean Mallat---the Philippines (1846) from NHI English translation (1983).]