A World Lit Only by Fire

by William Manchester

But some natives, beaming with hospitality, crossed over from Suluan bringing quantities of oranges, palm wine, fowls, vegetables, and an abundance of two nutritious delicacies new to the Europeans: bananas and coconuts.

They were in the Visayan Islands, a part of the enormous Philippine archipelago which is linked, culturally and linguistically, with Sumatra and Malaya.

The significance of this incident was enormous. Enrique was merely happy, chattering away in Malayan, but Magellan was ecstatic. Both were back on familiar ground, which meant that by sailing westward they had returned to the lands where they had first met. Obviously Enrique was the first circumnavigator of the world. By completing the circuit of the globe, the expedition had provided the first empirical proof that it was a sphere.

He did attempt one corrective measure; on his orders the fleet chaplain, Pedro de Valderrama, denounced sexual intercourse with pagan women as a mortal sin. Unfortunately the only consequence of that was an irreverent farce; before mounting the girls, seamen baptized them, thus desecrating a holy rite and reducing the padre’s threat to a joke. The Filipino men, of course, did not find it laughable. Their pride was deeply wounded. As the debauchery continued, fathers and brothers decided that their hospitality was being exploited, and for husbands the humiliation was even greater. The writhing women in the bush were not only sisters and daughters; many were also wives. Some of the seamen were running amok in harems, where gifts of mirrors and bracelets were also appreciated. The situation was volatile, deteriorating, and building dangerously.

Other standing orders of the armada were being flouted, and by officers as well as men. Indeed, the worst offender was the capitán-general’s brother-in-law.

Private trade with the natives was forbidden to all members of the armada, yet some officers, Victoria’s skipper among them, were surreptitiously bartering iron, new to the islands and obviously useful, for gold and pearls, which, to

he confused evangelical zeal with colonial imperialism. Even as he converted Filipinos to Christianity, he also expected them to accept Spanish sovereignty.

Already Magellan was singling out influential chieftains for attention—men who, once they had accepted Christ, could rule in the king’s name until royal administrators arrived from Spain.

Only a few hundred came forward then, but by the end of the following week virtually every inhabitant of Cebu—a total of twenty-two hundred, according to one of the flota’s crew—had chosen Christ. The surge in conversions was a personal triumph for Magellan.