“The Turks, swollen by their victories, will wish to take on our fleet, and God—I have the pious presentiment—will give us victory. Charles V gave you life. I will give you honor and greatness. Go and seek them out!”
Pope Saint Pius V to Don Juan of Austria
On October 7, 1571, four hundred and forty-six years ago, the forces of the Holy League under Don Juan of Austria, illegitimate half brother of Philip II, in an ever-lasting tribute to Italian and Spanish courage and seamanship, smashed the Turkish fleet. This was the turning point in the centuries-long struggle between the Christian West and the forces of the Ottoman Empire over the Mediterranean. The Holy League had been the work of Pope Saint Pius V and he proclaimed the feast day of Our Lady of Victory to whom he attributed the victory.
On Wednesday of this week my bride and I led a living Rosary of the elementary and middle school students at the CCD classes held by our parish.
For a good overview of the battle of Lepanto read this review by Victor Davis Hanson here of The Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of Lepanto by Niccolò Capponi.
Before the battle Don John of Austria went about the ships of his fleet and said this to his crews: ‘My children, we are here to conquer or die. In death or in victory, you will win immortality.’ The chaplains of the fleet preached sermons on the theme: “No Heaven For Cowards”. Many of the men were clutching rosaries just before the battle. Admiral Andrea Doria went into the fight with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe aboard his ship. Back in Europe countless Catholics were praying rosaries at the request of Saint Pope Pius V for the success of the Christian fleet. (On Wednesday of this week my bride and I led a living Rosary of the elementary and middle school students at the CCD classes held by our parish, before we began I explained this history to the kids. We Catholics have a grand history, but it is meaningless if we do not convey it to our young.)
At the hour of the battle, and this fact is very well attested, the Pope was talking to some cardinals in Rome. He abruptly ceased the conversation, opened a window and looked heavenward. He then turned to the cardinals and said: “It is not now a time to talk any more upon business; but to give thanks to God for the victory he has granted to the arms of the Christians.” So that Catholics would never forget Lepanto and the intercession of Mary, he instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory. To aid in this remembrance G. K. Chesterton in 1911 wrote his epic poem Lepanto:
White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that, is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade….
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
There is a new option open for Catholics on the feast day of Our Lady of Victories.
Now it is possible for individual SSPX priests to go to the Vatican or the local bishop and tell them that they affirm Vatican Council II(without the premise).Religious from other communities and lay people can do the same.1
Not be overlooked is the Battle of Párkány that took place on October 7-9, 1683 (present day Štúrovo, Slovakia), where Jan III Sobieski and the Holy League pursued the Ottomans. On October 7, the Polish cavalry was driven from the battlefield by the Ottomans. Uundaunted, the attack was resumed on October 9, supported by Charles of Lorraine and von Stahremberg. The battle of October 9 saw the Holy League rout the Ottomans decisively. The Holy League continued to pursue the Ottomans and inflicted several more defeats.
Lepanto was in large part the result of the Italian cannons .
CAM
Monday, October 9, AD 2017 8:43am
Penguin, thank you for that bit of history. My husband is pure Polish on his father’s side. Years ago the Walters Museum in Baltimore hosted a travelling exhibit, The Polish-Lithuanian Empire. It was fascinating to learn about so many firsts these people introduced in governing, warfare, science, medicine, and of course their religiolus devotion and defense of our Faith. Regarding Oct 7-9, the exhibit featured the formidable Polish winged cavalry, the Hussars. The sounds of the wings were a psycological warfare counterpoint to the Turkish drums. There many captured Turkish artifacts from the battle such as a huge silk tent embroidered with tulips n vessels of gold. The Ottomans were encumbered by all the luxuries they travelled with. I wish such an exhibit would come to the US again. A powerful reminder of the saving of Christendom.
wpDiscuz
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There is a new option open for Catholics on the feast day of Our Lady of Victories.
Now it is possible for individual SSPX priests to go to the Vatican or the local bishop and tell them that they affirm Vatican Council II(without the premise).Religious from other communities and lay people can do the same.1
1
OCTOBER 7, 2017
SSPX canonical recognition is assured : Vatican Council II (premise-free) is no more an issue
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/10/sspx-canonical-recognition-is-assured.html
Our Lady of Victory Pray for Us!
Not be overlooked is the Battle of Párkány that took place on October 7-9, 1683 (present day Štúrovo, Slovakia), where Jan III Sobieski and the Holy League pursued the Ottomans. On October 7, the Polish cavalry was driven from the battlefield by the Ottomans. Uundaunted, the attack was resumed on October 9, supported by Charles of Lorraine and von Stahremberg. The battle of October 9 saw the Holy League rout the Ottomans decisively. The Holy League continued to pursue the Ottomans and inflicted several more defeats.
Today, Poland is having a massive Day of Prayer in honor of Our Lady and the victory at Lepanto.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/27/one-million-catholics-to-join-mass-rosary-on-polands-border/
Thank you.
Penguins Fan.
Thanks for the link.
From it comes;
“Powerful prayer of the Rosary can affect the fate of Poland, Europe, and even the whole world.”
Amen!
Our turn is next Saturday…the 14th.
http://www.rosaryrallytools.org/
Lepanto was in large part the result of the Italian cannons .
Penguin, thank you for that bit of history. My husband is pure Polish on his father’s side. Years ago the Walters Museum in Baltimore hosted a travelling exhibit, The Polish-Lithuanian Empire. It was fascinating to learn about so many firsts these people introduced in governing, warfare, science, medicine, and of course their religiolus devotion and defense of our Faith. Regarding Oct 7-9, the exhibit featured the formidable Polish winged cavalry, the Hussars. The sounds of the wings were a psycological warfare counterpoint to the Turkish drums. There many captured Turkish artifacts from the battle such as a huge silk tent embroidered with tulips n vessels of gold. The Ottomans were encumbered by all the luxuries they travelled with. I wish such an exhibit would come to the US again. A powerful reminder of the saving of Christendom.