St. Pius V

DON VINCENZO writes:

On this day, the Church celebrates the Day of the Rosary, a day of prayer proclaimed in 1571 by the Pope Pius V  after one of the decisive naval battles in history: Lepanto, fought in the Ionian Sea near today’s Greek city of Naupaktos, which adjoins both the Gulfs of Corinth and Patras.

On October 7, 1571, the boy shepherd, Michele Ghislieri, who would become Pope Pius V, recognizing the serious threat of Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean, and the boast of the Sultan Selim II that he “would stable his horses in St. Peter’s,” single handedly organized the Holy League, receiving no help from Germany, France or England, in which the naval forces of the Holy See, Venice and Spain were deployed against the much larger Turkish fleet. The pope attributed that victory by an outnumbered fleet the result of the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saying of the Rosary; hence, he called that day Our Lady of Victory, which was later changed to the Feast of the Rosary by Pope Clement XIII. Pope Pius V was to die a year after Lepanto, and one must wonder what would have happened to the history of the world had he passed away a year before. An excellent description of that battle, in which Christians were used by the Turks as galley slaves, can be read in Jack Beeching’s, In the Galleys of Lepanto. One of the casualties of that battle who bore the scars for the rest of his life was the author of Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes.

To the modern mind, however, if there is any recollection of that battle it probably stems from G. K. Chesterton’s epic poem, written in 1911, with the title of that battle: Lepanto. Coincidentally, the vast power of that poem was to be recognized by the editor of The Eye-Witness magazine, Hillaire Belloc, who became Chesterton’s friend, and whose The Road to Rome is a classic of Catholic pilgrimage journeys. It was Belloc, while a candidate for a seat in Parliament, who claimed that his Anglican opponent was doomed to Hell for his religious beliefs. Chesterton did not live in ecumenical times, and his portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed is not complimentary.

Much to the contrary is Chesterton’s hero: Don John (Juan) of Austria, the half-brother of King Phillip of Spain. Don Juan is presented as a figure out of the age of chivalry, and whose turning of the tide “had burst the battle line,” setting the galley slaves free and a major victory for Christendom.

In the end, Lepanto describes a celebratory victory for the Church and for Christendom, one that combined with the power of prayer. I do not expect to see an equivalent written in my lifetime.

— Comments —-

Henry McCulloch writes:

Three cheers to Don Vincenzo for writing of Lepanto on its anniversary and on the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary (that anniversary is why today is that Feast, as Don V. notes).  Not only was Lepanto a saving day for Christendom, it is a gripping story in its own right.  An excellent English narrative, one Don Vincenzo mentions, is The Galleys at Lepanto by Jack Beeching.  Beeching was a Royal Navy officer in World War II, so he knew war at sea first-hand.

Nevertheless, although his account of the battle itself is excellent, Beeching covers the background well, including the career of Don Juan de Austria (still quite young – just 24 – at Lepanto; he died only 31 years old on campaign in Flanders), the machinations of Sultan Selim II “the Sot,” who murdered every conceivable rival for the sultanate, and the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Turks in seizing Cyprus from Venice in the preceding year.  Beeching tells how Pope St. Pius V with great effort pulled reluctant Catholic princes together to form the Holy League just in time to stop the Ottomans, who had their sights on Italy and Rome herself, which absent the Pope’s success in organizing resistance they almost certainly would have seized as they had Constantinople in 1453.  Selim the Sot would have stabled his horses in St. Peter’s.

It’s only fair to note that Michele Ghisleri (Pope St. Pius V) was 67 at the time of Lepanto and quite sick, worn out both by his papal office and his practices of mortification.  In 1571 it was many years since Michele Ghisleri had been a boy shepherd!  For all the bravery of the fighting sailors, and despite Chesterton’s making Don Juan his hero, Pope Pius is the primary hero of Lepanto.  In addition to assembling the Holy League in the first place, it was Pope Pius who prescribed the discipline of praying the Rosary daily for the Holy League fleet, something Don Juan evidently was able to enforce.  That alone boggles the mind of anyone with any experience of sailors.  Still, it worked.  As the fleets began maneuvering towards each other, with Don Juan passing along the Christian line in his launch holding high a crucifix and commanding his sailors to pray and fight, the Ottomans had the wind at their backs; as the fleets closed each other the wind unexpectedly shifted 180 degrees to the immeasurable benefit of the Holy League.  This timely shift was attributed by all the Christians to the Virgin Mary’s intercession in response to her sailors’ fervent prayers.

One of the interesting facets of the tale of Lepanto is how both very old (by the standards of the time) and very young men played key roles in the Holy League.  The seventy-ish Pope and his commander still in his twenties.  Don Juan’s effective if not formal second-in-command was the admiral-in-chief of the Venetian fleet, the largest and most powerful element of the Holy League, Sebastiano Venier.  Venier was 75 – more than three times his commander’s age, yet he served him loyally and very well.  Even after Lepanto, Venier — blessed, as Don Juan was not to be, with a long life — went on to be the Doge of the Venetian Republic.

Lepanto is a story everyone looking for Christian heroes — especially Christian heroes who resisted Islam — should know.  And after you learn the story of Lepanto, carry on with the siege of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottomans came within an eyelash of capturing the Holy Roman Empire’s capital and breaking into the heart of Central Europe.  The discipline of the Rosary was also present among Vienna’s defenders, and the arrival of the relieving armies of King John Sobieski of Poland and Duke Charles of Lorraine just as the Ottomans were about to break in to the city was also attributed to Our Lady’s intercession.  The date: September 11th.  I suspect the Arab one-way pilots of 2001 were well aware of that…

Just try to imagine, today, a Pope gathering an alliance of the West to resist Islam.

So we should all pray our Rosaries and thank Our Lady for her saving intercessions, give thanks for our more courageous ancestors, and remember the threat they fought is among us once again and bloodthirsty as ever.

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