Once Magellan had alternately impressed and intimidated the Cebuans, relations between the two proceeded like a tale in a storybook. The king’s nephew came aboard Trinidad, accompanied by a retinue of eight chieftains, to swear loyalty. Holding court, Magellan played the part of a magnanimous potentate with gusto: “The Captain General was seated in a red velvet chair, the principal men of the ships on leather chairs, and the others on mats upon the floor. The Captain General asked them through an interpreter . . . whether that prince . . . had the authority to make peace. . . . The Captain General said many things concerning peace, and that he prayed to God to confirm it in heaven. They said they had never heard such words, but that they took great pleasure in hearing them. The Captain General, seeing that they listened and answered willingly, began to advance arguments to induce them to accept the faith.”
Rising from his special chair, Magellan abruptly changed the subject, wanting to know who would succeed the king after his death. “They replied that the king had no son, but many daughters, and that this prince who was his nephew had as wife the king’s eldest daughter, and for love of her he was called prince. And they said moreover that, when the father and the mother were old, no more account was taken of them, but the children commanded them.” This state of affairs struck Magellan as contradictory to the Commandments, and he proceeded to explain some basic tenets of the Bible. “God made the sky, the earth, the sea, and everything else and that He had commanded us to honor our fathers and mothers, and that whoever did otherwise was condemned to eternal fire; that we are all descended from Adam and Eve, our first parents; that we have an immortal spirit.” His oratory must have been highly persuasive because “all joyfully entreated the Captain General to leave them two men, or least one, to instruct them in the faith.” Magellan explained that he could not leave anyone behind with them, but if they wished, the armada’s priest, Father Valderrama, would gladly baptize the Cebuans, and when they returned, they would bring priests and friars to instruct them. Pigafetta reported that the chieftains, Magellan, and the onlookers all became so excited by the prospect that everyone “wept with great joy.” What significance the highly emotional baptismal rite held for the Filipinos can only be guessed, but it meant something very specific to Magellan. Baptism, a word derived from the Greek baptismos, meant immersion and carried with it the idea of cleansing the soul of sin and rebirth into the Christian faith.
Before he began in earnest, Magellan cautioned the Cebuans not to convert to Christianity simply to win his favor, and promised not to “cause any displeasure to those who wished to live according to their own law.” But, he said, the Christians would get preferential treatment. “All cried out with one voice that they were not becoming Christians through fear or to please us,” Pigafetta recorded, “but of their own free will.” Magellan was so encouraged by this response that he promised to leave behind a suit of armor—just one—in gratitude.
He also raised the highly sensitive subject of sex between his men and the Cebuan women. “We could not have intercourse with their women without committing a very great sin, since they were pagans; and he assured them that if they became Christians, the devil would no longer appear to them, except in the last moment at their death.” Magellan implied that it was a lesser sin to become intimate with Cebuan women who had been baptized, and the crew, as ravenous for sex as they were for food, immediately took advantage of the loophole. But there is no suggestion that he became intimate with any of the Cebuan women; he found fulfillment of a more spiritual nature. “The Captain embraced them weeping, and clasping one of the prince’s hands and one of the king’s between his own, said to them that he would give them perpetual peace with the king of Spain.”
After mutual assurances and reassurances had been exchanged, it was time for another feast. Once again, Magellan was the fortunate recipient of island hospitality in the form of “rice, swine, goats, and fowls,” all given with profuse apologies for their inadequacy.
The Cebuan women performed an elaborate consecration before slaughtering the hogs. The ceremony began with the sound of gongs, after which the celebrants appeared with three serving dishes, two holding rice cakes and roast fish wrapped in leaves, the other a coarse fabric made from palm trees. The women then spread the cloth on the ground, whereupon two elderly women, each holding a bamboo trumpet, wrapped themselves in it. “One of them puts a kerchief with two horns on her forehead, and takes another kerchief in her hands, and dancing and blowing on her trumpet, she thereby calls out to the sun. She with the kerchief takes the other standard, and lets the kerchief drop, and both blowing on their trumpets for a long time, dance about the bound hog.” The dancing and music continued for quite some time, until one of the old women, after taking ritual sips of wine with her artificial horn, sprinkled the residue on the hog. “She is given a lance, and while dancing and clasping a lighted torch in her mouth, thrusts the instrument four or five times through the heart of the hog, with sudden and quick strokes.” After the slaughter, the women unwrapped themselves, and, with other women they selected—no men allowed—devoured the contents of the three dishes. “No one but old women consecrate the flesh of the hog, and they do not eat it unless it is killed this way.”
In return for this elaborately consecrated food, Magellan conferred a bolt of white linen, a red cap, strings of glass beads, and a gilded glass cup on the prince. (“Those glasses are greatly appreciated in those districts,” Pigafetta commented.) There was more; Magellan asked Pigafetta to give Humabon a “yellow and violet silk robe, made in Turkish style, a fine red cap, some strings of glass beads, all in a silver dish, and two gilt drinking cups.” By the time the feast ended, the Cebuans regarded Magellan as something more than a man; he was a powerful and beneficent god. The adulation rubbed off on the volatile Captain General, who increasingly believed himself to be divinely inspired, his expedition a manifestation of God’s will. It was a dangerous delusion.
When Magellan finally left Trinidad to make his triumphal entry into Cebu, the occasion proved every bit as majestic as he could have wished. A delegation from the ships, including an excited Pigafetta, landed on Cebu to greet Humabon, dressed in regal splendor to greet his guests: “When we reached the city we found the king in his palace surrounded by many people. He was seated on a palm mat on the ground, with only a cotton cloth before his private parts, and scarf embroidered with the needle about his head, and necklace of great value hanging from his neck, and two large gold earrings fastened in his ears set round with precious gems. He was fat and short, and tattooed with fire in various designs. From another mat on the ground he was eating turtle eggs, which were in two porcelain dishes, and he had four jars full of palm wine in front of him covered with sweet-smelling herbs and arranged with four small reeds in each jar by means of which he drank. Having duly made reverence to him, the interpreter [Enrique] told the king that his master thanked him very warmly for his present, and that he sent this present not in return for his present but for the intrinsic love which he bore him. We dressed him in the robe, placed the cap on his head, and gave him the other things; then kissing the beads and putting them on his head, I presented them to him. He, doing the same, accepted them. Then the king had us eat some of those eggs and drink through those slender reeds. . . . The king wished to have us stay to supper with him, but we told him that we could not stay.”