Garbled Edition
Amoretti lost no time in transcribing, editing, and annotating the manuscript. 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. Magaglianes negli anni 1519-1522 ora pubblicato per la prima volta, tratto da un codice MS. della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano e corredato di note da C. Amoretti...con un transunto del Trattato di Navigazione dello stesso autore... Milan, 1800. The following year a French edition, translated by Amoretti himself, came out with the title Premier voyage autour du monde par le chevalier Francesco Antonio Pigafetta sur l'escadre de Magellan, pendant les années 1519-20-21-22, suivi de l'extrait du Traité de navigation du même auteur et d'une notice sur le chev. Martin de Behain. Paris, H.J. de Jansen. That same year a German translation came out. The French edition has been digitized and published at the site Europeana.
Among other things Amoretti modernized the Italian of Pigafetta's text. His edition was the basis for the writings on Magellan's expedition by Jose Toribio Medina and Francis Hill H. Guillemard whose biography of Magellan is still considered the leading work on the Portuguese navigator. 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. Robertson accused Amoretti of committing "the sin of editing the precious document, almost beyond recognition." Brand describes the work as "somewhat garbled." 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 in frank terms which would offend the delicacy and modesty of the reader of good taste."
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