Volume 15, Number 5 · September 24, 1970
Spices & Christians
By J.H. Elliott
Magellan's Voyage
by Antonio Pigafetta, translated and edited by R.A. Skelton
Yale, 2 volumes, 390 pp., $100.00
The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825
by C.R. Boxer
Knopf, 378 pp., $8.95
In 1964 Mr. Edwin J. Beinecke presented Yale University with one of the most magnificent of all manuscripts connected with the early history of European overseas expansion. This beautiful document, carefully written on fine white vellum with illuminated initials and chapter headings in red and blue, is a French version of the celebrated account of Magellan's voyage by the Italian Antonio Pigafetta. The account itself is a classic, for it offers an eyewitness narrative of man's first circumnavigation of the globe. Four manuscripts survive, one in Italian and the remaining three in French, presumably prepared for different patrons whose certain identity remains unknown. The Beinecke-Yale manuscript, which is the most magnificent of these four, found its way, like so many other precious documents, into the famous Phillipps collection, and it was through one of the Phillipps sales that it came into Mr. Beinecke's possession. Thanks to Mr. Beinecke's munificence, it was not only presented to Yale, but has now been made available to a larger (although necessarily affluent) readership through a superb facsimile, together with an accompanying volume of translation and notes by Mr. R. A. Skelton.
Review, 2380 words
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