The Forum is publishing today a photographic reproduction of a letter by Philippine historian Vicente C. de Jesus way back on April 7, 1998 thanking Dr. Samuel K.Tan, then the Chairman and Executive Director of the Philippine National Historical Institute, for furnishing him a copy of the Gancayco Panel Resolution that officially accepted with finality the island of Limasawa in Leyte as the site of the very first Holy Mass in the Philippine Archipelago officiated on March 31,1521 or over 500 years ago.
De Jesus rued the Gancayco Panel's decision: "We offered new proofs, documents and arguments crucial to Mazzaua. Our study cover[ed] historiography, linguistics, hydrography, calligraphy, paleography, celestial navigation, and others...[T]he body accepted without question the Gines de Mafra eyewitness account and other documents...that Magelan's fleet anchored west of the isle, that Mazzaua is below Butuan separated from it by 15 leguas, that the isle's size is 3 to 4 leguas. All these make it physically impossible for Limasawa to be Mazzaua...
"Limasawa was an honest error by well-intentioned historians victimized by a conspiracy of circumstances. In excluding Gines de Mafra particularly, I am afraid a lie is being foisted on the Nation..."
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*
legua (plural
leguas) - a traditional Spanish unit of distance equivalent to about 4.2 km
Below is the de Jesus letter in full:
This is apropos to "Historian's commentary on Gines de Mafra's account of the Magellan expedition" as posted in the Forum by Dr. Jorge Mojarro Romero, Ph.D, on March 9, 2021.
Mafra’s account of the Magellan expeditionBy Dr. Jorge Mojarro Romero, Ph.DThis commentary on the eyewitness accounts of Gines de Mafra and Antonio Pigafetta--they were a crewmember and the official chronicler, respectively, of the Magellanic Fleet and its landmark sojourn in the Philippine archipelago 500 years ago--came out in the Opinion section of the March 9, 2021 issue of
The Manila Times. The Spanish historian Dr. Jorge Mojarro expressed the hope that this brief reminder about Gines de Mafra's eyewitness account of the Magellanic expedition will highlight the necessity to read the original sources critically and to compare the different versions of events to arrive at a more accurate and truthful reconstruction of the past.
https://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=8340.0
