It can be said that Magellan’s do-or-die emphasis on conversion interfered with precious cultural traditions, but he saw matters quite differently: He was engaged in a mission to rescue a benighted people from barbarism in this world and perdition in the next. In contrast to his pragmatic crew members, who considered themselves travelers through an alien landscape, Magellan conducted himself as if he were an instrument of the Lord. He believed that Providence had sent him to the Philippines to bring Christianity to the heathen and considered the local customs as grave social ills. In Magellan’s mind, Christianity offered the best, and the only cure.
Magellan found that the Cebuans were organized and skillful in their barter practices; they relied on a remarkably accurate system of weights, measures, balances, and scales. Accordingly, he ordered his men to bring ashore their merchandise and open up for business. The Europeans offered their usual assortment of metal and glass objects, knives and beads and nails, and the islanders rushed to offer gold in return. However, “The Captain General did not wish to take too great a quantity of gold, so that the sailors might not sell their share in the merchandise too cheaply, because of their lust for gold, and he should therefore be constrained to do the same with his merchandise, for he wished to sell it at as high a price as possible.”
Meanwhile, Pigafetta recorded the local language. The Cebuan dictionary he compiled was even more detailed and thorough than his primitive effort with the Patagonian giants. He took the trouble to include Cebuan names for parts of the body, the sun and stars, common plants and objects, and, for the first time, numerals. As before, Pigafetta worked in a vacuum, guided by the dictates of his intuition and common sense, since there was very little precedent and absolutely no professional standard for the ambitious task of writing down words and definitions for an entire oral tradition. Despite the obstacles, he managed to devise a phrase book that might be useful for subsequent expeditions that happened to pass through Cebu.
The man . . . lac. The woman . . . perampuan. The youth . . . benibeni. The married woman . . . babai. The chin . . . silan. The spine . . . lieud. The navel . . . pussud. Gold . . . boloan. Silver . . . pilla. Pepper . . . malissa. Cloves . . . chiande. Cinnamon. . . . manna. A ship . . . benaoa. A king . . . raia.
On Sunday morning, April 14, King Humabon’s baptismal ceremony unfolded with all the pageantry that Magellan could muster. The day before, crew members had constructed a platform in the village square, festooned with palm branches and other decorative vegetation. A complement of forty seamen, including Pigafetta, clambered into the longboats. Two wore gleaming armor and stood just behind the king of Spain’s banner as it waved benignly in the gentle ocean breeze. Once again, Magellan planned to fire his artillery, but this time he took the precaution to explain to the king that “it was our custom to discharge them at our greatest feasts.” Having given fair warning, the crew fired their weapons at the moment they disembarked, marking the formal commencement of the event.
Magellan appeared, Humabon approached, and as the two embraced, the Captain General revealed that he had bent the rules of protocol in the king’s favor. “The royal banner was not to be taken ashore except with fifty men armed as were those two, and with fifty musketeers; but so great was his love for him that he had thus brought the banner.” Pigafetta wrote little about this banner, but it was probably the Royal Standard of the Catholic Kings, in use since 1492, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It featured the eagle of Saint John with inverted wings, and it might have included symbols of the kingdoms of Spain—León, Aragón, Castile, Sicily—as well as arrows and possibly a scroll. The reverence that Magellan accorded the flag, along with his familiarity with exactly how it was to be displayed—accompanied by fifty soldiers in armor and fifty musketeers—showed his devotion to King Charles, even here, on these distant shores, and how misplaced were the long-standing suspicions that he remained secretly attached to Portugal.
Once the priest baptized Humabon, the king took the name of Charles, after Magellan’s sovereign. Next, the king of Limasawa took the name of John. Even the Siamese merchant was swept up in the religious fervor and decided that he would convert, too, taking the name of Christopher. The baptism was more successful than Magellan had dared to hope.
“Then all approached the platform joyfully,” Pigafetta wrote. “The Captain General and the king sat down on chairs of red and violet velvet, the chiefs on cushions, and the others on mats. The Captain General told the king through the interpreter that he thanked God for inspiring him to become a Christian; and that he would more easily conquer his enemies than before.” The king declared that although he wished to become a Christian, his chieftains still resisted the idea.
The Captain General instantly summoned the recalcitrant chieftains and, as Pigafetta tells it, warned that “unless they obeyed the king as their king, he would have them killed, and would give their possessions to the king.” This was a nearly complete reversal of Magellan’s earlier declaration, when he insisted that no one would be forced to become a Christian, though he might give preferential treatment to the converts. This declaration ran contrary to the Church’s doctrines concerning the baptism of adults; they were supposed to be voluntary, for one thing, and, more important, based on faith, not fear. Magellan might have been bluffing so that the conversion could proceed rapidly; it is difficult to imagine him, or his men, staging a massacre of the generous and good-natured islanders they had just befriended. In any event, the chieftains swiftly agreed to obey Magellan and converted.
Gratified, Magellan announced that when he returned from Spain, he would bring so many soldiers with him that the king would be recognized “as the greatest king of those regions, as he had been the first to express a determination to become a Christian.” Swept along by Magellan’s fervor, the king lifted his hands to the sky, profusely thanked the Captain General, and even asked that some of his sailors stay behind to instruct the others in Christianity. This time Magellan relented and said he would appoint two men to stay here with the king, but in return, he wished to take “two children of the chiefs with him” to visit Spain, learn Spanish, and describe the wonders of that country on their return to Cebu.
At last the general baptism was ready, and Magellan, dressed in splendid white apparel, presided over the throng. “A large cross was set up in the middle of the square. The Captain General told them that if they wished to become Christians as they had declared on the previous days, they must burn all their idols and set up a cross in their place. They were to adore that cross daily with clasped hands, and every morning after their custom, they were to make the sign of the cross (which the Captain General showed them how to make); and they ought to come hourly, at least in the morning, to that cross, and adore it kneeling.” Magellan also explained that he was dressed in white “to demonstrate his sincere love toward them”—his recent threat to kill them notwithstanding. He continued to bestow Christian names on the converts. “Five hundred men were baptized before mass,” Pigafetta reports.