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Antonio Pigafetta

Antonio Pigafetta was an Italian scholar and explorer from Venice who served as an assistant to Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on the first circumnavigation of the world from 1519-1522. During the expedition, Pigafetta kept an accurate journal documenting details of the places and people they encountered. He was one of only 18 survivors who returned to Spain with Juan Sebastián Elcano after Magellan's death. Pigafetta's journal provided important first-hand accounts that helped historians understand the historic voyage.

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281 views2 pages

Antonio Pigafetta

Antonio Pigafetta was an Italian scholar and explorer from Venice who served as an assistant to Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on the first circumnavigation of the world from 1519-1522. During the expedition, Pigafetta kept an accurate journal documenting details of the places and people they encountered. He was one of only 18 survivors who returned to Spain with Juan Sebastián Elcano after Magellan's death. Pigafetta's journal provided important first-hand accounts that helped historians understand the historic voyage.

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Florie May Sayno
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Antonio Pigafetta ( c. 1491 – c. 1531) was an Italian scholar and explorer from the Republic of Venice.

He
traveled with the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew by order of the King Charles I of
Spain on their voyage to the Indies. During the expedition, he served as Magellan's assistant and kept an
accurate journal which later assisted him in translating one of the Philippine languages, Cebuano. It is
the first recorded document concerning this language.

Pigafetta was one of the 18 men who returned to Spain in 1522, out of the approximately 240 who set
out three years earlier. The voyage completed the first circumnavigation of the world; Juan Sebastián
Elcano served as captain after Magellan's death. Pigafetta's journal is the source for much of what we
know about Magellan and Elcano's voyage.

At least one warship of the Italian Navy, a destroyer of the Navigatori class, was named after him in 1931.

Return

Pigafetta was wounded on Mactan in the Philippines, where Magellan was killed. Nevertheless, he
recovered and was among the 18 who accompanied Juan Sebastián Elcano on board the Victoria, on the
return voyage to Spain.

Upon reaching port in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Province of Cadiz) in September 1522, three years after
his departure, Pigafetta returned to the Republic of Venice. He related his experiences in Relazione del
primo viaggio intorno al mondo (Report on the First Voyage Around the World), which was composed in
Italian. Although parts were published in Paris in 1525, the manuscript was not published in its entirety
until the late eighteenth century. The original document was not preserved.

It was not through Antonio Pigafetta's writings that Europeans first learned of the circumnavigation of
the globe. Rather, it was through an account written by Maximilianus Transylvanus, which was published
in 1523. Transylvanus had been instructed to interview some of the survivors of the voyage when
Magellan’s surviving ship Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522. After Magellan's voyage,
Pigafetta utilized the connections he had made prior to the voyage with the Knights of Rhodes to achieve
membership in the order.

Voyage
In Seville, Antonio Pigafetta heard of Magellan's planned expedition and elected to embark, accepting
the title of sobrasaliente (supernumerary) and a modest salary of 1,000 maravedís. During the trip,
Pigafetta collected extensive data concerning the geography, climate, flora, fauna and the inhabitants of
the places that the expedition visited. His meticulous notes were invaluable to future explorers and
cartographers, mainly due to his inclusion of nautical and linguistic data, and to latter-day historians
because of its vivid, detailed style. The only other sailor to maintain a journal during the voyage was
Francisco Albo, last Victoria's pilot, who kept a formal logbook.

Youth

Pigafetta belonged to a rich family of Vicenza. In his youth he studied astronomy, geography and
cartography. He served on board the ships of the Knights of Rhodes at the beginning of the 16th century.
Until 1519, he accompanied the papal nuncio, Monsignor Chieregati, to Spain.

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