Pigafetta On the Sex Lives of the Cebuanos ca.1500s

 

Le voyage et navigation, faict par les Espaignolz es Isles de Mollucques. Des isles qu ilz ont trouvé audict voyage, des roys dicelles, de leur gouvernement & maniere de viure, avec plusieurs aultres choses by Pigafetta, Antonio, ca. 1480-ca. 1534


The controversial page from Pigafetta's account of the Magellan's Circumnavigation of the Globe. This is the French version published in 1525 taken from the original Italian. (Said to be the first edition that was printed). This is the part of the chronicle that always gets censored due to its content for it discusses an aspect of the sexual lives of the Cebuanos. This edition is abridged. The later translation had the whole original paragraph.
One English edition translates the supposed paragraph:
"Those people go naked, wearing but one piece of palm-tree cloth about their privies. The males, young and old, have their penis pierced from one side to the other near the head, with a gold or tin bolt as large as a goose quill. In both ends of the same bolt, some have what resembles a spur, with points upon the ends; others are like the head of a cart nail. I very often asked many, both old and young, to see their penis, because I could not credit it. In the middle of the bolt is a hole, through which they urinate. The bolt and the spurs always hold firm. They say that their women wish it so and that if they did otherwise they would not have intercourse with them. When the men wish to have intercourse with their women, the latter themselves take the penis not in a regular way and commence very gently to introduce it (into their vagina), with the spur on top first, and then the other part. When it is inside it takes its regular position; and thus the penis always stays inside until it gets soft, for otherwise, they could not pull it out. Those people make use of that device because they are of a weak nature. They have as many wives as they wish, but one of them is the principal wife. Whenever any of our men went ashore, both by day and by night, everyone invited him to eat and to drink. Their viands are half cooked and very salty. They drink frequently and copiously from the jars through those small reeds, and one of their meals lasts for five or six hours. The women loved us very much more than their own men. All of the women from the age of six years and upward, have their vaginas gradually opened because of the men's penises."
Five hundred years ago this week Antonio Pigafetta was in a different investigation, asking around about the sex lives of the Cebuanos.

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