MAXIMILIANUS TRANSYLVANUS’S LETTER ABOUT MAGELLAN

Turnbull Library Record, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 March 1967, Page 20

MAXIMILIANUS TRANSYLVANUS’S LETTER ABOUT MAGELLAN

By Andrew Sharp

Among the Alexander Turnbull Library’s rare books is a copy of the printed publication in Latin in Rome in November 1523 of a letter from Maximilianus Transylvanus to the Cardinal of Salzburg giving an account of Magellan’s expedition. One of the ships of the expedition, the Victoria, completed the first circumnavigation of the world, in what was perhaps the greatest voyage in history. Maximilian was secretary to the Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain) who sent out the expedition. The survivors who returned with the Victoria were summoned by Charles to his Court, at Valladolid in Spain, and Maximilian says in his letter: ‘I have taken care to have everything related to me most exactly by the captain and by the individual sailors who have returned with him.’ Maximilian’s account, when compared with first-hand accounts by members of the expedition, proves to be far from exact, being garbled in a way which one might expect from a person relying on oral discussions who did not know the geography of the areas traversed or the precise course and events of the expedition. That defect, however, is inseparable from the charm of Maximilian’s account, which throws light on Maximilian as a child of his age, in which enlightenment competed with fancy.

What may be described as the classical English translation of Maximilian’s letter is that by Mr James Baynes of the British Museum in the Hakluyt Society’s volume The First Voyage Round the World, by Magellan, edited by Lord Stanley and published in London in 1874. It is not the purpose of this article to summarise Maxmilian’s account, but rather to quote and comment on some of its high lights. Maximilian starts off with a graceful summation of the purpose of the expedition, to find the Spice Islands which were known to the Portuguese but only indirectly to the Spanish: ‘One of those five ships has lately returned which Caesar [the Emperor] sent in former years, when he was living at Saragossa, to a strange, and for so many ages, an unknown world, in order to search for the islands where spices grow. For though the Portuguese bring a great quantity of them from the Golden Chersonesus, which we now suppose to be Malacca, yet their own Indies produce nothing but pepper. Other spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, and the nutmeg, which we call muscat, and its covering (mace), which we call muscat flower, are brought to their own Indies from distant islands till now only known by name, and in ships which are fastened together not by iron but by palm leaves. The sails of these ships are round and woven,

too, of the palm-fibre. This sort of ships they call junks, and they only use them with a wind fore and aft.’

The Spice Islands were the Moluccas, a few small islands in the eastern sector of the East Indies. Later in his letter Maximilian says that ‘Magellan had a slave, born in the Moluccas, whom he had bought in Malacca some time back; this man was a perfect master of the Spanish language’. But Magellan himself did not see the Moluccas or have the opportunity of using his slave as interpreter there, for he died in the Philippines as the result of his own foolhardiness: ‘The King of Mauthan [Mactan], seeing our men coming, draws up about three thousand of his subjects in the field, and Magellan draws up his on the shore, with their guns and warlike engines, though only a few; and though he saw that he was far inferior to the enemy in number, yet he thought it better to fight this warlike race, which made use of lances and other long weapons ... So, having charged the enemy, both sides fought valiantly: but, as the enemy were more numerous, and used longer weapons, with which they did our men much damage, Magellan himself was at last thrust through and slain.’

In a memorable passage, Maximilian testifies to the banishment of superstition by the experiences of the men of the Victoria: ‘They seemed not only to tell nothing fabulous themselves, but by their relation to disprove and refute all the fabulous stories which have been told by old authors. For who can believe that these were Monosceli, Scyopodae, Spitamei, Pygmies, and many others, rather monsters than men ... it must be believed that the accounts of them are fabulous, lying, and old women’s tales, handed down to us in some way by no credible author.’ After Magellan’s death his men visited Borneo, and eventually reached the Moluccas, where they were on the whole well received. ‘Having, therefore, loaded the ships with cloves, and having received letters and presents for Caesar from the kings, they made ready for their departure. The letters were full of submission and respect. The gifts were Indian swords, and things of that sort. But, best of all, the Mamuco Diata; that is, the Bird of God, by which they believe themselves to be safe and invincible in battle. Of which five were sent, and one I obtained from the captain, which I send to your reverence, not that your reverence may think yourself safe from treachery and the sword by means of it, as they profess to do, but that you may be pleased by its rareness and beauty. I send also some cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, to show that our spices are not only not worse, but more valuable than those which the Venetians and Portuguese bring, because they are fresher.’ Another touch of realism in Maximilian’s account is his telling of how the time-honoured notion of the Alexandrine geographer Ptolemy that a great tongue of land extended north and south to the east of Africa was refuted by the voyage of the Victoria: ‘So the ship sailed again from

Thedori [Tidore in die Moluccas], and, having gone twelve degrees on the other side of the equinoctial line [12 0 south of the equator], they did not find the Cape of Cattigara, which Ptolemy supposed to extend beyond the equinoctial line; but when they had traversed an immense space of sea, they came to the Cape of Good Hope.’ Maximilian concludes his account with a deserved tribute to the achievement of the crew of the Victoria : ‘Worthier, indeed, are our sailors of eternal fame than the Argonauts who sailed with Jason to Colchis. And much more worthy was their ship of being placed among the stars than that old Argo; for that only sailed from Greece through Pontus, but ours from Hispalis [Seville] to the south; and after that, through the whole west and the southern hemisphere, penetrating into the east, and again returned to the west.’

One does not need to be an experienced bibliophile to savour the thrill of holding in one’s hands a book printed over four centuries ago. The Alexander Turnbull Library copy of the Rome 1523 edition of Maximilian’s letter the edition has a long descriptive title in Latin is cased in a green morocco binding which cannot be regarded as contemporary with the original appearance of the edition. Attached to its flyleaf is an extract from the 1923 catalogue of the Scheepvaart Museum, Amsterdam, describing that Museum’s copy of the Rome 1523 edition, with the statement that the edition was the first printed book about Oceania. But whereas this edition is dated November 1523, an edition of the letter dated January 1523 was published at Cologne. The aforesaid catalogue of the Scheepvaart Museum mentions this, saying that the date of its publication was actually January 1524, the basis given for this being that the Julian calendar differed from the Gregorian calendar. This reasoning does not appear to make sense, since the Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1582, and the difference between it and the Julian calendar could not in any case make the difference of a year in the date. It would seem, therefore, that the claim that the Rome 1523 edition was the first printed book about Oceania is highly dubious. The Alexander Turnbull Library also has a copy of the Rome 1524 edition.