This assertion is part of the notion Magellan and his fleet went to Butuan in 1521. This notion stemmed from a false history of Magellan's voyage by Giovanni Battista Ramusio which got published around 1536.

This false history also spawned the erroneous notion the first mass was held at Butuan.

In fact the first mass in 1521 was not in Butuan

The Easter Sunday mass of March 31, 1521 was held at an island named Mazaua. Not Butuan, not Limasawa.

There is no primary (eyewitness) or secondary or even thirdhand account that says such a mass was ever held in 1521 Butuan. In fact Butuan was not visited at all by Magellan’s fleet.

All the eyewitness accounts are now published on the Internet. One can read the chronicles of Antonio Pigafetta, Gines de Mafra, Francisco Albo, The Genoese Pilot, and Martin de Ayamonte on the Net. This site, http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/p..., has the stories of Pigafetta, Albo, and The Genoese Pilot including the secondhand account of Maximilianus Transylvanus.

The account of Gines de Mafra is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gin%C3%A9s_de.... Martin de Ayamonte’s is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_de_Aya....

The secondhand relation by Antonio de Herrera, which is the first ever account that has a faithful story of the Mazaua episode, can be accessed at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/archivos2/pdfs/MC0... .

The notion Butuan is where Magellan landed and where an Easter mass was held comes, as earlier stated, from a false story of the Magellan circumnavigation by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The original Italian text of Ramusio is at http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/view?docId....

The English translation of Ramusio is at http://www.archive.org/details/firstthreeenglis.... It will be seen that Ramusio misplaced the port from Mazaua to Butuan.

It will be seen that the site of the first mass was Mazaua, not Butuan. Mazaua was an island. Ramusio’s Butuan of 1521 was not. And today’s Butuan is still not an island. It is a part of the “continental” island of Mindanao.

Where then is Mazaua today?

This is the paradox of Mazaua. Based on the combined insights of Pigafetta, Gines de Mafra, Albo, The Genoese Pilot, de Ayamonte, de Herrera, Maximilianus, I hypothesized that the island of Mazaua will be found at latitude 9 degrees North at longitude 125 deg. East. Thus, on October 13, 2000 before The Society for the History of Discoveries at the Library of Congress, Washington DC, U.S.A., I predicted an island will be found at that latitude and longitude and that this island is Mazaua.

Such an island was found in 2001 by a team of geologists and archaeologists led by the Philippines first geomorphologist, Dr. Ricarte Javelosa. Is it Mazaua? We yet don’t know. No comprehensive excavation has been done that would help determine if it’s Magellan’s port. Evidence that it is Mazaua would consist of authentic artefacts, scientifically dug up, that can be traced to Magellan as well as other European visitors to the port such as Gines de Mafra and his 90+ seamates who went to Mazaua in 1543, Bernardo de la Torre, and a number of Portuguese sailors.

If this island will be proven to be Mazaua, that still will not justify or validate the assertion that the first mass of 1521 March was held at Butuan.

The correct way of saying the geographical paradox is to say, “The first mass was held at a small island named Mazaua which mystifyingly we find today inside Mindanao, more precisely inside Butuan of today.”

It’s a confusing, if paradoxical, way of stating a truth that defies easy understanding and facile description.

VICENTE CALIBO DE JESUS
ginesdemafra@gmail.com