Dimasaua

In 1798, paleographer-conservator Carlo Amoretti of Ambrosiana library in Milan discovered the lost Italian manuscript of Antonio Pigafetta which was written in Renaissance longhand.

Colín pointed to another island he called Dimasaua to signify it is not (di is Bisaya for not) the isle where an Easter mass was celebrated.

This map became a sensation among European cartographers and was shamelessly plagiarized by them except Jacques N. Bellin who had the intellectual honesty to cite Murillo as his authority.

From Butuan the fleet sailed for Cebu making a brief stop at a way station he called "Dimasaua", an invented word meaning "this is not the Mazagua of Antonio de Herrera where supposedly an Easter Sunday mass was held which I already said happened in Butuan."

Limasawa

Dimasaua

Dimasaua, also spelled Dimasawa and Dimasava, was the invented name created by 17th-century Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J., pointing to a tiny isle in southern Leyte whose chief, according to Colín, "gave the most signal service" to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew at the port of Butuan in March–April 1521.

Dimasaua, also spelled Dimasawa and Dimasava, was the invented name created by 17th-century Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J., pointing to a tiny isle in southern Leyte whose chief, according to Colín, "gave the most signal service" to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew at the port of Butuan in March–April 1521.

Dimasaua, also spelled Dimasawa and Dimasava, was the invented name created by 17th-century Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J., pointing to a tiny isle in southern Leyte whose chief, according to Colín, "gave the most signal service" to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew at the port of Butuan in March–April 1521. In the authentic account of Pigafetta, the port was not Butuan, which was and is not an island, but an island named Mazaua, pronounced "masawa", a word found only in Butuanon and a derivative language, Tausog, and in no other of over 200 Philippine languages and dialects.

Colín identified his principal source for his reconstruction of the above episode as Antonio Pigafetta as edited by Giovanni Battista Ramusio.

Colín identified his principal source for his reconstruction of the above episode as Antonio Pigafetta as edited by Giovanni Battista Ramusio.

In the authentic account of Pigafetta, the port was not Butuan, which was and is not an island, but an island named Mazaua, pronounced "masawa", a word found only in Butuanon and a derivative language, Tausog, and in no other of over 200 Philippine languages and dialects.

In the authentic account of Pigafetta, the port was not Butuan, which was and is not an island, but an island named Mazaua, pronounced "masawa", a word found only in Butuanon and a derivative language, Tausog, and in no other of over 200 Philippine languages and dialects.

From Butuan, so Ramusio's story goes, they sailed for Cebu passing "Zeilon, Bohol, Messana..."

Tantalizingly, Ramusio then talks of the fleet being at "Messana" which was the name given by Maximilianus Transylvanus in 1522 to Mazaua.

But, as Ramusio wrongly relates, the real port, Mazaua, is supplanted by Butuan, and Gatighan, the waystation, supplanted by "Messana." Following the route earlier traced, the placename points to Pigafetta's Gatighan which is located by Francisco Albo, the pilot who brought Victoria back to Seville, at 10° north latitude just one nautical mile (1.9 km) above the tip of today's Limasawa.

The precise story, as told by Antonio Pigafetta and the other witnesses, is the fleet had anchored at a tiny — about 3,930 hectares according to Ginés de Mafra - island-port named Mazaua which The Genoese Pilot said was at latitude 9° north, locating the skerry in Mindanao.

The precise story, as told by Antonio Pigafetta and the other witnesses, is the fleet had anchored at a tiny — about 3,930 hectares according to Ginés de Mafra - island-port named Mazaua which The Genoese Pilot said was at latitude 9° north, locating the skerry in Mindanao.

Colín's other source was Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas whose story of the above incident was taken from the papers of Andrés de San Martín, the chief pilot-astrologer (cosmographer) of Magellan's fleet.

Colín's other source was Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas whose story of the above incident was taken from the papers of Andrés de San Martín, the chief pilot-astrologer (cosmographer) of Magellan's fleet.

Following the route earlier traced, the placename points to Pigafetta's Gatighan which is located by Francisco Albo, the pilot who brought Victoria back to Seville, at 10° north latitude just one nautical mile (1.9 km) above the tip of today's Limasawa.

In the Philippines itself, historians obscured the issue by failing—either deliberately or unintentionally—to cite Amoretti as authority for the Limasaua=Mazaua notion, and reframing the way they looked at the incident back to its religious context as Colín and Combés viewed it. Whereas it was viewed by Westerners in terms of anchorage, the Philippine scholars framed Mazaua as "site" where the First mass in the Philippines was held.

Five years later after Colín's book had been published, another Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J., revisited the Mazaua incident in his book on evangelization of Mindanao, ''Historia de las islas de Mindanao.

They were detected by the boats of Rajah Kolambu who was visiting Mazaua, who later guided them to Cebu, on April 7.