(From the book, The Encounter, by Fr. Jose Vicente Braganza, SVD, San Carlos Publications, 1965.)
first Mass in Limasawa
(Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 14, 2007.
A NEW TWIST IN AN officially settled historical dispute again requires action from authorities.
On March 31, the 486th anniversary of the recorded First Mass in the Philippines in 1521 was commemorated by two claimants — Limasawa town in Southern Leyte and Butuan City on behalf of its old Masao District.
The decades-old Limasawa vs Masao dispute was officially settled in March 1998 when the National Historical Institute (NHI) ruled for Limasawa. But this verdict did not deter the pro-Masao group from persisting with their claim and performing parallel ceremonies.
The NHI decision ignored another historical error by tacitly upholding the belief that the First Mass was held in the southeastern coast of Limasawa, in the vicinity of the present Barangay Magallanes.
Legacy
A legacy of this error, the new Shrine of the First Holy Mass — an edifice made of bricks and polished concrete that was inaugurated two years ago — sits on top of a hill overlooking the barangay.
Vicente C. de Jesus, an independent scholar who strongly supports the Butuan claim, has criticized the NHI commission that looked into the issue for allegedly dismissing an eyewitness account that implied a western site of the First Mass on the island recorded as Mazaua in 16th-century documents.
The witness was Gines de Mafra, a member of both the Magellan expedition in 1521 and the Villalobos expedition in 1543. He had dropped by Limasawa on both occasions. In 1543, he met again the same chief, presumably Rajah Kolambu, who received Magellan in 1521.
De Mafra’s account had remained hidden in a Madrid archive for 375 years before it was found and published in 1920. It mentioned that the Magellan fleet anchored in Mazaua at “a good harbor on its western side, and is inhabited.”
De Mafra’s claim is corroborated by a map made by Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler of the Magellan expedition, according to De Jesus. The map in the Nancy-Libri-Beinecke-Yale codex is said to show a cross in one of two hills facing the sea southwest of the island.
The Pigafetta map in the Beinecke manuscript shows the cross on the upper hill near the sea. The lower hill, drawn in the middle of the land mass at the bottom of the map, does not have the cross symbol.
Ships’ movement
A single sentence in the popular James Robertson translation of the Pigafetta account could give the First Mass event to western Limasawa. It said: “In the afternoon we went in the ships [and anchored] near the dwelling of the king.”
This meant sailing the ships from their initial anchorage off the southeastern coast and rounding the island at the south toward the acantilado (deep) waters of the western cove fronting Barangay Triana, the oldest settlement and present town proper of Limasawa.
Such overlooked movement of Magellan’s ships could corroborate De Mafra’s account.
The locals had always believed that Triana was a word play on Tirana, the name of the legendary Bisayan queen who was known as one of the five wives of Rajah Bankaw.
But Fr. Peter Schreurs, MSC, who had published two books that favor the Limasawa claim, told this writer in a 1999 letter that Triana was a suburb of the old Spanish capital of Seville, across the Guadalquivir River, in which main church Magellan was wedded to Beatriz Barbosa.
Thus, it now seems that it was Magellan himself who designated the name Triana to the settlement in Limasawa.
Affirmatory proof
An aerial photograph of Limasawa Island shows the two prominent hills that affirm the landmarks on Pigafetta’s map in the Beinecke manuscript. The hill on which Magellan and his crew erected a cross after the Easter Sunday Mass in 1521 was presumably the upper hill marked with a cross on the old map, and the one nearest to Triana and overlooks the present town proper from the north.
Perhaps now is the time for the NHI to consider issuing a complementary amendment to their verdict related to the First Mass being held in Limasawa. The supporting evidence strongly suggest that this event happened in the vicinity of the present Barangay Triana and not in Barangay Magallanes, and that the cross was erected on the hill overlooking Triana and nowhere near the present shrine southeast of the island.
With the official correction, it is hoped that the fifth centennial of the Limasawa event in 2021, or 14 years from now, could be celebrated in its right place on the island.