A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [136]
EASTER’S ARRIVAL on March 31, their first Sunday at Limasawa, had provided an opportunity which, the devout Magellan believed, was God-sent. He had seized it by entertaining his hosts on Limasawa with a theological version of bangles and beads—a flamboyant Mass. Padre Valderrama was asked to celebrate the services with flair, and the flota’s officers were ordered to provide him with every possible assistance. Their commander wanted a show, and he got it. An altar having been brought ashore, a glittering cross was attached to it. The priest, wearing his vestments, performed Eastertide rituals, after which the capitán-general and his men approached in twos, kissed the crucifix, and received the host while gunners aboard the ships fired volleys and all hands cheered.
The armada’s guests that morning had been Rajah Colambu, whose Mindanao jurisdiction included Suluan, and his brother Siaui. Already Magellan was singling out influential chieftains for attention—men who, once they had accepted Christ, could rule in the king’s name until royal administrators arrived from Spain. The Easter spectacle had served its purpose admirably. After Valderrama’s Mass the two guests of honor had knelt before the altar, imitated the movements of the supplicants who had preceded them, and then, according to one account, ordered native carpenters to build a cross so large that when it had been “set on the summit of the highest mountain in the neighborhood, all might see and adore it.” Before their departure, Magellan had told the brothers that if they should find themselves at war with other, pagan, natives, his men and ships would be at their disposal. If that force did not prove adequate, he would return from Spain with one which was.
On Cebu he stalked a more powerful figure, his majesty the rajah Datu Humabon, ruler of the great island. The rajah’s entourage included a Muslim trader who had just arrived from Siam on a junk and who, recognizing the cross of St. James on the sails of the arriving fleet, whispered that these visitors were the pillagers of India and Malaya. Humabon ignored the warning; warming to the capitán-general from their first meeting, the rajah immediately consented, through Enrique, to a perpetual treaty of peace with Spain. Pressed by Magellan, he also agreed to burn his pagan idols and worship Jesus Christ as his lord and savior. Once more Magellan played the role of stage manager; the rajah’s initiation in his new faith, celebrated on the second Sunday after Easter, was even more liturgical and ostentatious than the earlier Mass on Lima-sawa. Humabon’s subjects massed densely outdoors round a market square, in the midst of which an altar, decorated with palm branches, dominated a high platform. Behind the altar and beneath a sheltering canopy were two thrones wreathed in red and purple satin. Humabon occupied one throne; the other awaited the arrival of the capitán-general.
Magellan made a spectacular entrance. Wearing an immaculate white robe and preceded by forty men in gleaming armor, he advanced beneath the fluttering silken banner of Castile and Aragon, unfurled here for the first time since it had been presented to him, twenty months earlier, in Seville’s church of Santa Maria de la Victoria. As a band played stirring marches, the armada’s officers paraded behind their leader. The Spaniards bowed their heads, a large cross was raised above the platform, and the fleet’s cannons boomed across the harbor. That nearly ended the ceremony. The native congregation, hearing gunfire for the first time, panicked, began to scatter, and returned only when they saw that their ruler—who had been forewarned—remained composed and enthroned.
The rajah knelt and was baptized; Magellan, as