Filippo Pigafetta

1533 – 1604

Filippo Pigafetta (1533–1604) was an Italian mathematician and explorer. His Relatione del reame dei Congo ('A Report of the Kingdom of Congo and of the Surrounding Countries', 1591) was translated into English, Latin (as Regnum Congo), French, Dutch and German. In it Pigafetta explains that he was ordered by Pope Sixtus V to transcribe the account of Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese trader who had spent twelve years in the Congo.