Elcano’s testimony was sufficiently dexterous to exculpate himself from royal disfavor or worse. And his two companions, giving answers remarkably similar to Elcano’s, achieved the same result. By the time the inquiry ended, King Charles and his advisers were reminded that the survivors had brought them a fortune in spices, a claim to the Spice Islands themselves, a new water route to the islands, and an unequaled mastery of the ocean—all of it priceless, no matter how underhanded they had been in getting it.
In the end, King Charles waived the royal duties on the spices the men brought home for their personal enrichment and offered a quarter of his own proceeds from the voyage to the three survivors who had testified in Valladolid. Elcano’s bonus included even more: an annual pension of five hundred ducats, a knighthood, and a coat of arms befitting the mariner who had sailed around the world. It depicted a castle, spices, two Malay kings, a globe, and the legend:
Primus circumdedesti me
Thou first circled me.
Of equal importance, Elcano received a royal pardon for his role in the failed mutiny against Magellan’s command. Elcano insisted on having the document published, making his exoneration complete. He would now be qualified to lead future expeditions for Castile.
With all his new riches, Elcano acquired two mistresses, one of whom bore him a daughter, the other a son, but he lived with neither.
The other survivors of the expedition received similar marks of royal favor. Martín Méndez, Victoria’s accountant; Hernando Bustamente, the barber; Miguel de Rodas, the master of Victoria; and Espinosa each received individualized coats of arms commemorating their accomplishments. (Meanwhile, the coat of arms for the Magellan family remained defaced and dishonored, as it had been since Magellan left Portugal to serve the king of Spain—the king who had all but forgotten him now.)
The men who had mutinied against Magellan—an entire ship filled with them—were freed from prison and absolved of their crimes. Álvaro de Mesquita, who had served as captain of San Antonio until the mutineers overwhelmed him, had languished in jail ever since 1521, when his ship returned to Seville. With Victoria’s survivors corroborating his story, the diehard Magellan loyalist was also freed in a general amnesty designed to end lingering controversy about the voyage. Having had enough of Spanish justice, he fled home to Portugal.
Despite Elcano’s skill at self-promotion, and King Charles’s endorsement, a different interpretation of the voyage emerged soon after Victoria’s return. Maximilian of Transylvania, a secretary to King Charles, pounced on Elcano, Albo, and Bustamente at Valladolid, interviewed them all at length, and very likely talked to Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s official chronicler, as well. Within a month of Victoria’s return to Seville, he delivered his lengthy report to King Charles.
In his account, Maximilian saw past the expedition’s internal power struggles to emphasize how it changed the way the entire world would be seen from this time forth. “I have resolved to write as truly as possible,” he remarked. “I have taken care to have everything related to me exactly by the captain and by the individual sailors who have returned with him.” These men were so sincere that it was apparent to Maximilian that “they seemed not only to tell nothing fabulous themselves, but by their relation to disprove and refute all the fabulous stories which had been told by ancient authors.”
By far the most authoritative and eloquent chronicle of the first voyage around the world flowed from the pen of Antonio Pigafetta, who had faithfully maintained his diary throughout the entire expedition. To counter what he expected would be Elcano’s self-serving distortions of the events that had occurred at sea, Pigafetta immediately set about writing his own impassioned plea for Magellan’s valor and loyalty to the king and the Church. He provided eloquent eyewitness testimony about how Magellan had died and more important, how he had lived. He revealed Magellan as the fearless disprover of long-standing myths and overturner of tenacious fallacies.
Leaving Seville, Pigafetta headed directly for Valladolid, where he presented the young monarch with “neither gold nor silver, but things very highly esteemed by such a sovereign. Among other things, I gave him a book, written by my hand, concerning all the matters that had occurred day to day during our voyage”—the most important account of distant lands to appear since The Travels of Marco Polo.
Pigafetta’s diplomatic background served him well, because he then succeeded in giving his account to sovereigns who were often bitter enemies of one another: “After this, I left for Portugal, where I gave an account to King João of all that I had seen. Passing again through Spain, I also went to present some rare objects from the other hemisphere to the very Christian King François. Finally, I went to Italy, to the very industrious lord, Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, a worthy grandmaster of Rhodes, and placed at his disposal my person and services of which I would be capable.” Pigafetta’s thorough and even-handed distribution of his account ensured Magellan’s leading role in the adventure for posterity—and, not so incidentally, his own. “I made the voyage and saw with my eyes the things hereafter written,” Pigafetta vowed, “that I might win a famous name.”
After traveling across Europe, Pigafetta arrived in Venice, his home, and immediately caused a stir. “There came into the college a Venetian who had been appointed a knight errant, a brother of [the Order of] Rhodes, who has been three years in India,” wrote Marin Sanudo on November 7, 1523, of Pigafetta’s visit. “And all the college listened to him with great attention, and he told half of his voyage . . . and after dinner also he was with the doge, and related those things in detail, so that his Serenity and all who heard him were rendered speechless over the things of India.”
In August of the following year, Pigafetta, by this time settled in Venice, requested that the doge and city council allow him to print his sensational account; he supplied two reasons, the overwhelming importance of the events recorded, and Pigafetta’s singular authority in relating them:
Most Serene Prince and your Excellencies:
Petition of me, Antonio Pigafetta, Venetian knight of Jerusalem, who, desiring to see the world, have sailed, in past years, with the caravels of his Caesarean Majesty [Charles V], which went to discover the islands of the new Indies where the spices grow.
On that voyage, I circumnavigated the whole world, and since it is a feat that no man had accomplished, I have composed a short narration of the entire voyage, which I desire to have printed. For that purpose, I petition that no one may print it for twenty years, except myself, under penalty to him who should print it, or who should bring it here if printed elsewhere, of a fine of three lire per copy, besides the loss of the books. [I petition] also that the execution [of the penalty] may be imposed by any magistrate of this city who shall be informed of it; and that the fine be divided as follows: one-third to the arsenal of your Highness, one-third to the accuser, and one-third to those who shall impose it.
I humbly commend myself to your kindness.
Pigafetta’s request met with a favorable response, and he was granted the privilege that “no other except himself be allowed to have it printed for twenty years.”
The first copies of Pigafetta’s “relation,” the ones he brought with him to the courts of Europe, were lavish handwritten manuscripts illustrated with maps of his own devising, items literally fit for a king. It is believed that Pigafetta wrote his “relation” in the Venetian dialect, mixed with Italian and Spanish, but the original has been lost. Instead, four early versions produced by expert scribes have come down over the centuries, one in Italian and three in French. By general agreement, the most handsome, complete, and extravagantly illustrated version resides today in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. To read this memoir, and to turn its ancient vellum pages, is to be transported instantly five hundred years into the past. Although Pigafetta tells his story more or less in chronological order, he has not constructed a linear narrative; rather, it is a compilation of events, illustrations, translations of foreign tongues, prayers, descriptions, epiphanies, and bawdy asides, all of them heavily cross-referenced and color-coded in brilliant inks of black, blue, and red. Yet it is also a personal document, unusual for that time, when the idea of an individual consciousness was just beginning to take root. The reader of Pigafetta’s chronicle hears his voice, alternately bold, astonished, devastated, fascinated, and, in the end, amazed to be alive in the cruelly beautiful world of his time.