Dimasaua, also spelled Dimasawa and Dimasava, was the invented name created by 17th-century Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J., pointing to a tiny isle in southern Leyte whose chief, according to Colín, "gave the most signal service" to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew at the port of Butuan in March–April 1521.
The incident is described in a three-paragraph epitome of Magellan's sojourn in Philippine waters, part of a historical study entitled Labor evangelica obreros de la compañia de Jesus en las islas Filipinas, which was published 1663 in Madrid.
Principal source of Magellan story
Colín identified his principal source for his reconstruction of the above episode as Antonio Pigafetta as edited by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. Ramusio was the foremost travel writer of the Renaissance who retranslated back to Italian a French text of Antonio Pigafetta's account of Magellan's voyage. The French text, known today as Colines edition in honor of its printer, was done supposedly by Jacopo Fabri who worked on the French translation based on an original Italian text which is now considered lost.
Ramusio's work is entitled Viaggio attorno il mondo scritto per M. Antonio Pigafetta...tradotto di lingua francese nella Italiana and is found in a compendium of travel stories, Primo Volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi...Venetia, gli heredi di Luc Antonio Giunti, 1563. This same translation came out earlier in 1536, anonymously, in book form entitled Il viaggio fatto da gli Spagniuoli a torno a'l mondo without the name of the printer and place of publication. Scholars have speculated it was printed by N. Zopini at Venice. The same work, Delle navigationi...was first republished in 1550 without any credit as to authorship. It was preceded by Ramusio's "Discorso" where he remarks the French text was done by Fabri, which has never been corroborated by any external evidence. Vol. I was republished in 1554 again without any author's name for the Pigafetta translation. Ramusio's name as the author of the translation came out only in the edition of 1563.
Ramusio corruption of Pigafetta's account
The Ramusio translation is a hopelessly garbled story of the above incident. In the authentic account of Pigafetta, the port was not Butuan, which was and is not an island, but an island named Mazaua, pronounced "masawa", a word found only in Butuanon and a derivative language, Tausog, and in no other of over 200 Philippine languages and dialects.
In Ramusio's corrupted story Magellan and his crew celebrated a mass at Butuan on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1521. They also planted a big cross atop the tallest hill in the afternoon of the same day. From Butuan, so Ramusio's story goes, they sailed for Cebu passing "Zeilon, Bohol, Messana..." Tantalizingly, Ramusio then talks of the fleet being at "Messana" which was the name given by Maximilianus Transylvanus in 1522 to Mazaua. "Messana" because of its familiarity to Europeans—it's the name of the Italian port where the bubonic plague started—had for a long time supplanted the true name, Mazaua, so that even as late as 1894 when the Italian scholar Andrea da Mosto had expertly transcribed Pigafetta's Ambrosiana codex, which work fully established the text of that manuscript that has essentially been adopted by succeeding historiographers, even then da Mosto used Transylvanus' "Mazana."
The confused timeline of Ramusio's story has Magellan's fleet anchored from March 28-April 4, 1521 at Butuan. Then from Butuan, they sailed for Cebu but all of a sudden are found at "Messana" which in the real story is "Mazaua" where the fleet did in fact anchor on those dates. But, as Ramusio wrongly relates, the real port, Mazaua, is supplanted by Butuan, and Gatighan, the waystation, supplanted by "Messana." It's important to remember this mix-up to have a clear view of which island in the true story Colín's Dimasaua is pointing to.
The precise story, as told by Antonio Pigafetta and the other witnesses, is the fleet had anchored at a tiny — about 3,930 hectares according to Ginés de Mafra - island-port named Mazaua which The Genoese Pilot said was at latitude 9° north, locating the skerry in Mindanao. From Mazaua the Armada sailed for Cebu in the Visayas in central Philippines passing first at a little island called Gatighan. By tracing this route, we are able to determine that Colín's Dimasaua is actually Pigafetta's "Gatighan."