Carlo Amoretti
Amoretti was an Encyclopedist whose mind encompassed theology, physics, geology, paleography, geography, and art history.
He translated scientific works, published or republished many rare books and manuscripts noteworthy of these being the extant codex of Antonio Pigafetta's relation of the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan's fleet.
Baldassare Oltrocchi gia Prefetto della stessa Biblioteca scritte dal suo successore Pietro Cighera (Milan, 1804) which is considered to be the first modern biography of Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1797 Amoretti discovered at the Biblioteca the lost Italian manuscript of Pigafetta on Magellan's voyage, considered by most Magellan scholars as the oldest of four extant manuscripts and the most complete, although there is consensus among paleographic scholars this and all surviving codices are mere copies of an original or originals now deemed forever lost.
He published his edition of Pigafetta in 1800 under this most formidable title Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo ossia ragguaglio della navigazione alle Indie orientali per la via d'occidente fatta dal cavaliere Antonio Pigafetta patrizio vicentino sulla squadra del capit.
Navigation historians and Magellan scholars, among them James Alexander Robertson, Donald D. Brand, and Martin Torodash, fault Amoretti's edition for taking liberties with Pigafetta's text.
Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (The First Voyage Around the World, (1519-1522), An Account of Magellan's Expedition by Antonio Pigafetta, New York: 1995) called Amoretti's edition as having "bowdlerized the text in an effort to 'exposit with the necessary decency the account of some strange customs written by him [Pigafetta] in frank terms which would offend the delicacy and modesty of the reader of good taste."
In two footnotes on pages 66 and 72, Amoretti surmised that Magellan's port—which he named Massana and appears otherwise as Mazaua or Mazzaua in the clear calligraphic writing of the Beinecke-Yale codex, where the Armada de Molucca anchored from March 28 to April 4, 1521—may be the Limassava in a map of the Philippines by French cartographer Jacques N. Bellin.
He was mistaken on two counts, Limasawa is at 9°56' North while Mazaua had three latitude readings by three members of the Armada, 9°40' N by Pigafetta, 9°20' N by Francisco Albo, and 9° N by the Genoese Pilot.
Colín pointed to another island he called Dimasaua to signify it is not (di is Bisaya for not) the isle where an Easter mass was celebrated.
In the case of Combés, who wrote five years after Colín, he did not adopt Dimasaua because his story does not mention any mass at all.
Amoretti had not read Colín and Combés and was unaware that their Dimasawa and Limasawa were born of ignorance of the true Mazaua episode.
Amoretti also had not read the French manuscripts of Pigafetta which described Mazaua, Magellan's lost harbor, as having plenty of gold mines, and the other firsthand accounts by de Mafra, Albo, the Genoese Pilot, and Ayamonte.
Guillemard, Andrea da Mosto, Charles McKew Parr, James Alexander Robertson, down to the latest authors like Laurence Bergreen.
This incredible phenomenon may be explained by the practice or non-practice of modern historiography which is marked by a strict if not reverential respect for authorship.
De Mafra described a port that was in the Genoese Pilot's 9°N; at this location, all the other's testimonies converged, harmonized to create a unified whole and a consistent truth.
