One in a million Meridian

I remembered in one of our discussion in my classes in Masters regarding the contention of the 1^st mass in the Philippines. There are 2 camps regarding this contention. One is the Masao, Butuan and the other is the Limasawa, Leyte. The Pro-Masao argue that Limasawa cannot be the site of the 1^st mass because Limasawa’s population at the time of Magellan’s arrival is not that sufficient and inhabitants are spread all over the island. But the Pro-Limasawa countered that the name of Limasawa and its pronunciation was corrupted by the explorers from “Limasawa” to “Mazaua” thus sounding like “Masao”.

But in 1998, during the Philippine Centennial Commission Reading, a surprise came when the original logbook of the Magellan voyage was presented. There in the logbook was a complete log of coordinates of the voyage. And as it seems to put the issue to rest, the coordinates fit exactly at Limasawa! Problem solved…not.

How can we be sure it was really Limasawa and not Masao? We forgot one thing that cartography is also in contention before…the Prime Meridian.

The Prime Meridian we know and use today is the Greenwich Prime Meridian. But during the Exploration Age, this is non-existent and in fact each European country had Prime Meridian different from one another. Perhaps the most famous of these Prime Meridians is the Paris Meridian. It was used in France and its territory from its foundation in 1667 up to 1914!

As a historian, we had to consider these small details especially regarding cartography since there are many maps and coordinates that are not creating in uniforms. The question now is, if we were to plot the said coordinates USING the Greenwich Meridian, this might not be the actual coordinates of the 1^st mass in the Philippines. With this we come to a question on what Meridian did the Magellan Expedition used to plot their coordinates

For sure the Paris and the Greenwich Meridian is out of the question. The Paris Meridian will only come during the 1667 while the Greenwich Meridian will only be adapted in 1884. Was it the Seville Meridian? It is possible because Seville is an important city in Spain during the Magellan Expedition and the Primate of all Spain. Another possible Meridian used by the Expedition was either the Pisa or Rome Meridian. This is also possible because sophisticated cartography centers are in Italy and Magellan’s chronicler is an Italian, Antonio Pigafetta. So, what Meridian did Magellan use? Can this solve the on-going contention of Masao and Limasawa debate?

(Blogger’s note: Images are taken from www.wikipedia.org)