Saint Mary of Victory
The Historical Role of Our Lady in the
Armed Defense of the Faith
by Gary Potter

Published with the Generous Permission of
THE SAINT BENEDICT CENTER

Taken from THE HOUSETOPS, Spring, 2003 Issue.
 
PART TWO

Her Reign in Spain

The Mohammedans were gone from France, but on the other side of the Pyrenees the last of them would not be expelled from Spain until 1492. To be sure, there were before then many notable Christian victories during the centuries of what is known by the Spanish as the Reconquista, the Reconquest. One of the first was at Covadonga in Asturias in 718. This victory was attributed to the help obtained for the warriors by the Madonna of Covadonga, who came to be called throughout Christian Spain Our Lady of Battles. [Note how this Madonna resembles both Our Lady of Loreto (robes) and Our Lady of Czestchowa (headdress).] In August, 1989, while on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Pope John Paul II stopped at Covadonga. He said on that occasion: "Covadonga is one of the foundation stones of Europe. It is why, in my pilgrimage to Compostela, to the sources of Christian Europe, I confidently lay at the feet of the Madonna of Covadonga, the project of a Europe that has not rejected the Christian roots from which it grew."

The Reconquista really began in a serious way to turn back the Mohammedan tide in the second half of the 11th century. As the tide receded, chapels dedicated to Our Lady marked the withdrawal. They were like milestones of it. King Jaime of Aragon built more than a thousand. King St. Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon would build still more. (This warrior-monarch and canonized Saint, who died in 1252, never rode into a fight without a statuette of Our Lady of Battles lashed to his saddle.)
 
Of course when the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, Granada, was defeated in 1492, it was by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Los Reyes Catolicos, in whose name that same year Christopher Columbus would claim the New World, our part of the world, for Christ and His Mother. By this act of Columbus, serving as the agent of a Power even higher than Ferdinand and Isabella, the lands of the Americas were destined to become Catholic. All did. Even our own part of North America fulfilled this destiny for a time, thanks to the exertions of the Spanish and also the French. If we were eventually diverted, may our return to the historical course first set for us be a milestone in the Reconquest of Christendom!

We must not neglect to speak here of Portugal, another Iberian country whose captains and missionaries would fight and labor to make so much of the world outside Europe, including a large portion of this Hemisphere, Catholic. The Reconquest in Portugal was begun in 1143 by King Alfonso, called the Conqueror. He vowed that if he conquered the city of Santarem he would build a monastery in honor of Our Lady, which he did. When Lisbon capitulated to him he saw to the establishment of two churches, both consecrated to Our Lady, one of them in what had been the Moors' chief mosque in the Portuguese capital.

The Battle of Belgrade
 
Even as the Reconquest of Iberia was ending, the Mohammedan pressure on Europe's eastern flank was increasing following the fall of Constantinople. For a time it was successfully resisted. For instance, the Hungarian knight John Hunyadi valiantly beat off a Turkish advance on Belgrade in 1456, for which victory Pope Callistus III ordered the daily Angelus to be recited at midday because that was the hour when the Mohammedans were vanquished. Of the Catholics who still recite the Angelus at noon, how many know why they do it at that hour? How different would be the world today had John Hunyadi's victory been definitive? (Certainly there would not have been U.S. troops in Bosnia and Kosovo these past several years shoring up Mohammedan power in Europe.)

Alas, it was just then that the greatest ruler the Turks ever produced came on the scene. This was in 1520. The Sultan in question is called by history Suleiman the Magnificent. Belgrade fell to his troops in 1521. There followed in 1526 the awful defeat of the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohacs. Hungary's King Louis II was killed in this battle and his capital, Budapest, was soon sacked by the Turks.

Suleiman's land assault on Europe would be stopped before he could reach Vienna, but it would be centuries before much of Hungary and most of the Balkans would be freed from the oppression of the Mohammedan yoke. That our government is now shoring up Mohammedan power in any part of the region should shame every Christian in the U.S.
 
Even as Suleiman was consolidating Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea was fast becoming a Turkish lake. Suleiman took the Island of Rhodes in 1522 and soon afterwards barely missed capturing Malta, which was all that stood between him and Italy. The Turks fell back in the direction of Cyprus and Crete, which were then colonies of the Republic of Venice. Cyprus by itself would be springboard enough for the Ottoman conquest of Europe, if it were captured. The danger was made the more acute because by now the unity of Western Christendom was broken. Following the Protestant Revolt, commonly referred to as the Reformation, there was the series of conflicts we know as the Wars of Religion. Christendom was no longer united in the face of the Mohammedan threat. Its sons were fighting among themselves. We shall presently consider the Protestant military threat to the Faith, but before that we cannot leave off discussing the Mohammedan one without speaking of the Battle of Lepanto, as we said we would.

War at Sea

The battle took place in 1571, by which time Suleiman had been succeeded by his son Selim. Hearing the previous year that Selim's forces were attacking Cyprus, Pope St. Pius V summoned his cardinals to consider what ought to be done in the face of the threat.

It needs to be remembered at this juncture that Pope St. Pius was not simply head of the Church on earth. In the 16th century the popes still wielded temporal power. When it was decided that he would call on Philip II of Spain for help, he did so as ruler to ruler as well as pope to Catholic monarch. It was decided to call on Philip because Spanish troops based in Sicily were the Christian force that could most easily be deployed into the eastern Mediterranean. Philip agreed to the deployment.
 
A fleet of papal, Venetian and Spanish ships was assembled to transport the men. The Spanish ships were put under the command of an Italian, Andrea Doria. That did not please the Venetians because he hailed from the city that was their chief commercial rival, Genoa. So there was tension among the commanders from the beginning.
 
After the fleet set out it got no farther than Crete when it was learned that Nicosia, the principal city on Cyprus, had fallen to the Turks on September 8 and that a massacre had followed. Admiral Doria decided unilaterally to withdraw. He sailed away with his ships.

When word of the development reached the Pope, he immediately dispatched envoys to the courts of Europe seeking additional help to press a naval offensive against the Turks to prevent them from projecting their power from Cyprus, should the entire island fall to them. The kings of Spain and Portugal
were agreeable, but asked that any action be postponed because so many of their resources were committed to their colonizing enterprises in the New World and Africa. The king of France was unresponsive and suffered a papal rebuke because of it. After a long delay Emperor Maximilian in Vienna agreed to attack the Turks, but only by land. Finally, Pope St. Pius prevailed on Philip II not to postpone his further assistance.
 
So that the division of forces that resulted from Doria's defection during the first expedition would not repeat itself, Pope St. Pius decided to name a single commander for the new one. This was Don John of Austria, a natural son of the abdicated Emperor Charles V and therefore a half-brother of Philip. On July 11, 1571, Pope St. Pius conveyed a pontifical banner to the mustering forces. "Go forth in the name of Christ to combat His foes," was the Pope's accompanying message on this occasion. "You will be victorious."
 
The fleet that eventually set out consisted of 208 galleys. The Turks would have 300. Aboard the Christian ships were 50,000 sailors and 31,000 soldiers. Prior to sailing, there was a fast of three days and Confession and Holy Communion were made available to everyone. More than 80,000 men made Confession and received Communion.

Scarcely had the fleet set sail when the Pope received the news that Famagusta, the last Christian stronghold on Cyprus, had fallen. That made victory over the Turks all the more imperative. The Pope called on confraternities of the Holy Rosary to pray and then to double their prayers. When he judged that the fleet was probably near to making contact with the Turks, he ordered convents and monasteries in Rome to keep a vigil of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. On their side, the Turkish commander, Ali Pasha, was incredulous when he heard the Christian fleet was looking for him. After the way the expedition of the previous year had fallen apart, he could not believe the Christians had found the courage to challenge Ottoman naval power.

The fleets found each other and the battle took place on Sunday, October 7, in the Gulf of Lepanto at the western end of the larger Gulf of Corinth. All over Catholic Europe rosaries were being prayed for a successful outcome. On the Christian ships chaplains led the fighting men in the same prayer until the last minute. Don John, who was flying the standard of Our Lady of Guadalupe on his flagship, now raised the pontifical banner, the one given on July 11, as his battle ensign. Thousands of male voices greeted the sight with cheering.

Naval battles in those days were still fought like land engagements, not from over the horizon as in our age of computer-guided missiles. The opposing fleets would approach each other in close formation. This was the task of the sailors: to bring the ships to where combat would take place. Then it was for the generals and soldiers to fight. On October 7, 1571, the Christian warriors fought brilliantly.

 Twenty-five thousand Mohammedans were killed or wounded, 5,000 were taken prisoner, 90 infidel ships were sunk and another 130 captured. On the Christian side there were 8,000 killed or wounded---less than a third of the casualties suffered by the enemy. (For a complete account of Lepanto and some of the other battles mentioned in this article, the reader cannot do better than turn to A Military History of the Western World, by Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, a work I have recommended in the pages of From the Housetops
before now. This is to speak of an account of the military side of the battles. In terms of the specific Catholic dimension, much of what is read here is drawn from a talk delivered some years ago by Pierre Berger, a retired admiral of the French navy, a text of which appeared in Approches, the wonderful publication that was edited by the late Hamish Fraser. That text is not now at hand, but the inspiration provided by Admiral Berger is indelible.)

At the very time the Cross triumphed that Sunday afternoon in the Gulf of Lepanto, Pope St. Pius was conferring with his treasurer. So the world has been told. It is said His Holiness suddenly cut off the conversation, went to a window, seemed to be listening, and then cried: "Run and give thanks to God in His church. Our army has won the victory!" Of course, it is always emphasized, the army did not win unaided. That is why Pope St. Pius intended that the Battle of Lepanto would be commemorated every year with a Feast of St. Mary of Victory. However, his successor, Gregory XIII, named the feast Our Lady of the Holy Rosary and authorized its celebration only for churches that would dedicate a special altar for it.

Many Catholics today believe the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary is a direct result of the victory at Lepanto. However, although Turkey would never be the same powerful menace at sea that she was before Lepanto, the Mohammedan threat to Europe did not end on October 7, 1571: In fact, not until Austria's Prince Eugene defeated the Turks at Peterwardein in 1716 was the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy
Rosary extended to the Universal Church by Pope Clement XI in thanksgiving for that victory. Before then, however, still another Marian feast would come to be universally celebrated on account of a Christian victory over the Mohammedans.


Coffee and the Crescent

That was in Vienna in 1683. Fortuitously, the pope of the day, Innocent XI, had just brokered an alliance between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland, which was also menaced by the Mohammedans. When it became known that no fewer than 300,000 Turks were advancing on the imperial capital, Pope Innocent ordered that rosaries be recited in the religious houses and churches of Rome. The same prayers of supplication were offered throughout the Empire. Still, the situation was so dangerous that the imperial court left Vienna for Passau and took refuge there. Meantime, there were special devotions at the Capuchin Church in Vienna to Our Lady Help of Christians, whose famous picture hangs there. [We do not have that image, however you may view another image of Our lady under that title, HERE.] It would become the symbol of the victory over the Turks by Poland's King John Sobieski when he arrived on the scene after a series of forced marches from Czestochowa.
 
The Polish army hit the numerically superior Turkish force with their surprise attack so hard, the Turks panicked. They did not simply withdraw from the walls of Vienna, they fled. (It is an aside, but of some cultural significance, that such was the Turkish flight, they left behind virtually all their stores and baggage. This is when the Viennese, Europe's most famous coffee drinkers, discovered the stuff. The Turks left quantities of it in their stores when they ran.) More to the point, in thanksgiving for the help given by the Mother of God for the victory at Vienna, which was won on her feast day, the 30th day after the Assumption, Pope Innocent extended the feast in honor of the Holy Name of Mary to the Universal Church.

The universal Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary may not be linked directly to Lepanto as many believe, but something else was. When Friday abstinence from meat was the obligatory rule for Catholics, subjects of Spain, including in her overseas dominions, were exempted as a reward for the Spanish contribution to the defeat of the Mohammedans at Lepanto.

Continued forward.

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