We had a great time in Cebu as well. We went to visit the magellan’s cross at Sto. Nino church in Cebu. We lighted candles and attended masses. We also went to the guitar factory and would love to go back there to buy one for me. Cebu is a big City and lots of scenery that all tourists would enjoy. They also have those walking under water wearing the scuba diving suit and feed the fishes under water. It is a very nice place also to visit and lots of interesting historic monument and churches.
Magellan's Cross, on the Island of Cebu
Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to come to the Philippines in 1521. Also known as Fernao Magalhaes or Fernando Magallanes, he was a Portuguese navigator working for the King of Spain in search of the spice islands (now part of Indonesia, known as Maluku or Moluccas islands). When he and his crews landed on Cebu island, a native chief, Rajah Humabon, met and befriended him. Rajah Humabon, his wife and hundreds of his native warriors agreed to accept Christianity and were consequently baptized.
Magellan planted a cross to signify this important event about the propagation of the Roman Catholic faith in what is now Cebu, in central Philippines. The original cross is reputedly encased in another wooden cross for protection, as people started chipping it away in the belief that it had miraculous healing powers. This prompted the government officials to encase it in tindalo wood and secured it inside a small chapel called "kiosk." Some say, however, that the original cross was actually destroyed. The Magellan cross displayed here is said to be a replica of such cross. It is housed in a small chapel located in front of the present city hall of Cebu, along Magallanes Street (named in honor of Magellan).
Sadly, Magellan met his death under the hands of another Visayan chief, Lapu-Lapu, when he went to the nearby island of Mactan. Mactan is also part of today's Metropolitan Cebu. There, both the statues of Magellan and Lapu-Lapu proudly stand to commemorate the tragic meeting of east and west in this part of the world.
It took another 45 years (1565) before Cebu was visited again by another European. Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, under orders from King Philip of Spain, came and made Cebu the first capital of the Spanish colony known as Las Islas Filipinas.
Was Magellan the first European to reach Philippines?
ReplyDeletePortuguese were first to reach Philippine archipelago Conventional wisdom tells us the first Europeans to reach our archipelago were those in the Armada de Molucca under Fernao de Magalhaes (Ferdinand Magellan) in March 1521.
But this is now open to question as old materials are viewed in a new light. There's evidence the Portuguese, about eleven of them, reached Philippine shores nine years before Magellan and his international crew of about 150 who were Genoese, Sevillian, Castilian, Flemish, British, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Sicilian, Greek, Aragonese, German, Irish, Azorean, Brazilian, Aragonese, incldg. two non-Europeans, Jorge “Morisco,” a page to the Captain-General, thought to be Indian, and , Henrich or Enrique, either Sumatran or Malaccan.
There are two documents attesting to the little known incident of 1512 when a boatload of Portuguese sailors and soldiers of fortune came to Mindanao, most probably in Sulu. These documents are written in the Portuguese language although one was written in Italian by a Genoese but what survives is the Portuguese translation. One document explicitly states the Portuguese reached Mindanao, while the other recounts an episode where Suluans told Magellan they had already seen men like them prior to the arrival of the Spanish armada.
The definitive document was written by Antonio Galvao, Portuguese governor of the Moluccas, 1536-1540, who is known to history as “the founder of historical geography.” He is as well famously called “apostle of the Moluccas” for his energetic missionary work including putting up a seminary school at Ternate to instruct would-be priests. The title of his work is as formidable as it is kilometric, Tratado dos descobrimentos, antigos, e modernos, feitos ate a era de 1555. Com os nomes particulars das pessos as que os fiserao: e em que tempos, e as suas alturas, e dos desvairado caminhos por onde a pimento, e especiaria veyo da India as nossas, partes, obra certo muy notavel, e copiosa. Lisbon, 1555. (The English translation usually abbreviates this to The Discoveries of the World, From Their First Original Unto the Year of Our Lord 1555) Richard Hakluyt’s English translation came out in 1601 and is published on the World Wide Web at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWcMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA2&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0#PRA1-PA118,M1.
The other account that has not been used even now to corroborate Galvao’s assertion is credited to “The Genoese Pilot” and is entitled “Navegacam e vyagem que fez Fernando de Magalhaes de Seuilha pera Maluco no anno de 1519 annos.” It was published in a book, Colleccao de noticias para a historia e geografia das nacoes ultramarinas, que vivem nos dominios Portuguezes, ou lhes sao visinhas. Lisboa, 1826. Pp. 151-176. Lord Stanley of Alderley came out with the English translation in his book The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. London, 1874. Pp. 1-29. See Pages 10 and 11, http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=sea;cc=sea;sid=424383ff2ffa1020e1afb760b0fe4109;rgn=full%20text;idno=sea061;view=image;seq=299).
Galvao relates the coming of nine or ten Portuguese under the command of Francisco Serrao, friend and comrade-in-arms of Fernao de Magalhaes while still under the employ of the king of Portugal. This episode is part of the first reconnoitering expedition by the Portuguese to the Spice Islands which was ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque, Viceroy of India. This happened almost right after the sacking of Malacca and its occupation by the Portuguese in August 1519. The squadron of three ships with Antonio d’Abreu as head who commanded Santa Catalina, with Francisco Serrao commanding another ship, Sabaia, and a third ship, a caravel, under Simao Afonso Bisagudo. This squadron reached the Moluccas, more specifically the islands of Ambon and Banda. A 17th century chronicler, Bartolome Juan de Argensola y Leonardo, without citing any source or authority, claimed the third ship was commanded by Magellan. This assertion is the basis for the notion Magellan had circumnavigated the globe. The argument is that when he reached Cebu he would have rounded the globe. Actually, if Magellan was in the d’Abreu expedition, it would not be in Cebu where Magellan would have achieved his fame as first circumnavigator, but in Mazaua island which is at longitude 125° E. Magellan at Mazaua would have overlapped Ambon by 3 degrees, Banda by 5 degrees if he had been with the d’Abreu squadron.
If!
In any case, the d’Abreu’s flotilla left Malacca sometime in November 1511. There were two Malay pilots and three Portuguese pilots including pilot-cartographer, Francisco Rodriguez. The squadron sailed along the coast of Sumatra to the northern coasts off Java, Bali, Lombok, the Lesser Sunda Islands, to Pulau-pulau Barat Daja, Pulau Gunungapi, Buru, Ambon, and reached Ceram. It proceeded to Banda but before reaching it, Serrao’s vessel, a Cambay ship taken at the siege of Goa, had to be abandoned. At Banda they bought a junk for Serrao. The ships left Banda fully loaded with mace, clove, and mace. As fate would have it, Serrao’s junk got separated during a storm and soon struck a reef and was wrecked somewhere in Lucapinho, according to Galvao, Lucipara Islands according to Dr. Donald D. Brand (”Geographical explorations of the Portuguese.” In: The Pacific Basin, A History of Its Geographical Explorations. Herman R. Friis (ed.). New York. 1967, Pp. 145-150.).
F.H.H. Guillemard wrote this was Schildpad Islands at latitude 5 deg. 30′ South, longitude 127 deg. 40′ East, about 140 miles west southwest of the Banda islands. (Francis Henry Hill Guillemard. The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe: 1480-1521. New York, 1890). Lucipara then was notorious as the haunt of “pirates and wreckers.” Serrao is quoted by a contemporary Portuguese historian as saying that “if they met not their death from thirst and hunger, they might expect it from these corsairs.” Serrao’s string of bad luck made a turnaround this time. Pirates in a ship, seeing the wreck, landed to hunt down the survivors. Serrao and his men, having seen the pirate ship well in advance, hid among the bushes and while the pirates were on the prowl they stealthily took possession of the pirates’ ship. The pirates, knowing of certain death if left in the island, begged for mercy, which was granted on condition they repair Serrao’s junk.
Vicente Calibo de Jesus
ginesdemafra@gmail.com
I have learned a lot also from what you've wrote. I did some research and this is what I got.
ReplyDeletePhilippine history, many argue, did not began with the coming of Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Rather, it began in the 13th century, when 10 datus from Borneo, each with a hundred of his kinsmen, landed in what is now known as Panay Island in the Visayas.
Yet, it was Magellan, and succeeding expeditions from Spain, who put the Philippine archipelago on the map of the world. The intrepid Magellan was dubbed as the discoverer of the Philippines after he landed in Homonhon Islet, near Samar, on March 17, 1521. He was later killed in Mactan Island of Cebu in a clash with native warriors led by a chieftain named Lapu-Lapu.