Posted on 09/12/2014 10:29:24 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Go search on the internet about the Battle of Lepanto. Read what happened in this historical naval conflict. The Muslim fleet commander was killed and BEHEADED and his head stuck up on a pike for all to see. Upon seeing their commander's head on a stick, the other Muslims lost heart and retreated...ending the battle.
This is because they do NOT put their faith in a real god, but in men, their leaders, who are at one time powerful and vicious. When the leader is cut down, they run. The man who puts his faith in God will not run even if everyone else around him is killed, because he knows his true reward will come after death and it won't be 75, 100 or even a thousand virgins.
WHEN are we going to have leadership that has the backbone to do what has to be done? When????
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
No the Pasha’s head was not put on a stick. It was brought to Don Juan of Austria (commander of the Christian fleet) who was so disgusted by the act that he ordered the head to be tossed into the sea.
Also the battle raged on long after the beheading of Ali Pasha and the taking of the Sultana (Ottoman flagship). In fact, the Ottoman left wing almost turned the Christian right wing, and if they had, the Ottomans could very well have won the battle. I appreciate your sentiments mene, but mis-stating historical facts is not the way to go.
Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote was wounded in that battle.
Also, research the Battle of Malta. Very telling and inspiring.
Thus the Holy League confronted the Ottoman navy, the greatest maritime fighting force in the history of the world. and annihilated them. The Pope sang a Te Deum.
In memory of which we now celebrate an annual feast day on October 7, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. .
By 1570, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a regiment of the Spanish Navy Marines, Infantería de Marina, stationed in Naples, then a possession of the Spanish crown. He was there for about a year before he saw active service.
In September 1571 Cervantes sailed on board the Marquesa, part of the galley fleet of the Holy League (a coalition of Pope Pius V, Spain, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller based in Malta, and others, under the command of Philip II of Spain’s illegitimate half brother, John of Austria) that defeated the Ottoman fleet on October 7 in the Battle of Lepanto, in the Gulf of Patras. Though taken down with fever, Cervantes refused to stay below, and asked to be allowed to take part in the battle, saying he would rather die for his God and his king than keep under cover.
He fought on board a vessel, and received 3 gunshot wounds – 2 in the chest, and one which rendered his left arm useless. In Journey to Parnassus he was to say that he “had lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right” (he was thinking of the success of the first part of Don Quixote). Cervantes looked back on his conduct in the battle with pride: he believed he had taken part in an event that would shape the course of European history.
Fortunately Andrea Doria and his ships held the seaward side of the line. Once the Galleasses broke the Ottoman center it became a rout.
LEPANTO, THE BATTLE THAT SAVED THE CHRISTIAN WEST
By Mariano Navarro On October 11, 2011In Afternoon Edition,Daily Mailer,FrontPage
What some call “the battle that saved the Christian West” took place 440 years ago October 7th. It is a historical event of such importance — and of such relevance to the struggles of today — that I would be remiss not to mention it. Sadly, a cursory look on-line indicates that few people — save military historians, some traditionalist Catholics and a few rarae aves — seem to know much about it.
At about 11:00 a.m. October 7th in 1571, 300 Ottoman ships from Turkey clashed with a scraggly alliance of European naval armies in the tranquil waters between the Albanian coast and the Peloponnesus. Under the command of the 25-year-old Don Juan of Austria, the illegitimate son of Charles V and half-brother of Philip II of Spain, some 212 Christian ships from Genoa, Venice and Spain — as well from the Papal States and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta — had formed the “Holy League” to stop the advance of the Ottoman Armada.
After it was over five hours later, 35,000 Moslem Turks were dead and about 15,000 Christian slaves had been freed from the bowels of their stinking galleons. Vastly outnumbered, the forces of Christendom had only lost 7,000 men.
The importance of this battle should not be overlooked. For years, fierce Ottoman forces had been raiding and terrorizing Christian communities around the Mediterranean, taking young men and women as slaves, and slaughtering those they had no use for. Under the red crescent of Allah’s armies, the Turks had terrorized the eastern outposts of European civilization. What happened that day in the Gulf of Lepanto (today known as the Gulf of Corinth) was nothing less than the defense of Europe against a 16th century Islamic jihad.
The parallels to today are obvious. The West — perhaps no longer publicly Christian but still built on the foundations and institutions that grew out of Christendom — now faces a similar threat. But, like before, when the rulers of England and France had refused to join the Holy League, many European powers today still refuse to take steps to protect their way of life. And, like before, some European states are even complicit in encouraging and financing Islamic states.
Lepanto’s importance arises not out of the simplistic “clash of civilizations” argument. Rather, the battle — and the atrocities and massacres carried out by the Ottomans, in the years preceding the battle — are solemn reminders that Islamic jihad does not respond to compromise or diplomatic efforts. Nor will it stop until the whole world is subjugated under the name of Allah.
On the 440th anniversary of such an important event in the history of the West, we should remember that the same forces that threatened us then, threaten us now. Unfortunately, today they not only exist as external threats, but are internal as well.
That is why the Battle of Lepanto may be worth remembering every year, especially in this time of modern Islamic terrorism. It is not an ancient and irrelevant skirmish between long-forgotten armies, but a decisive event that saved European Christendom — and, thus, the West — from alien forces bent on its destruction.
Various events have taken place around the world to commemorate the anniversary. In Rome, for example, the non-profit Lepanto Center — headed by the erudite Roberto de Mattei — organized an evening roundtable. With presentations by Italian Admiral Ezio Ferrante and Professor Massimo de Leonardis, among others, the event emphasized the importance of the battle — and perhaps raised awareness of the threat we face today. There were also special Masses celebrated in Europe, the US and Australia.
We can also still read great accounts of the battle. G. K. Chesterton famously memorialized the battle in his 1911 poem, “Lepanto.” But that has been forgotten, too. And the Jesuit priest Luis Coloma wrote a short 1912 account, viewable here with images of famous paintings of the battle. There is also an excellent 12-page conference booklet titled Lepanto: A Category of the Spirit that can be viewed on-line. And the command ship of Don Juan of Austria can still be viewed, fully-restored, at the Naval Museum of Barcelona (Spain).
But, generally, it is a pity to realize how little has been written about the famous battle. Of the few articles that have been written about it, for example, only those by Michael Novak (2006) and Christopher Check (2007) are worth reading. A cumbersome, over-written account of the battle was also written by Harry W. Crocker III; but it is a slog.
In 2006, Count Niccoló Capponi, a military historian in Florence (Italy) published the eminently readable, if detailed, Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of Lepanto (De Capo Press), which was favorably reviewed by Victor Davis Hanson in First Things and Daniel Johnson in The New Criterion.
Save for these, and a few awkward posts at different Catholic websites, there is lamentably very little out there.
Western elites continue to downplay the threat of radical Islam and continue to seek “peaceful coexistence,” suggesting approaches that will avoid military conflict. The suggestion is that dialogue, diplomacy and tolerance will somehow disarm radical Islamism.
Perhaps it might be worth recalling the words of the young Don Juan, who, in the final moments before the battle started on that fateful October 7th, was counseled that there was still time to avoid a full battle. As Christopher Check recounts:
“Gentlemen,” he said, looking around at his military commanders, “the time for counsel has passed. Now is the time for war.”
The Muzzies sacked parts of Rome and the Vatican in 846. They went there expressly to raid gold and other treasure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_raid_against_Rome_%28846%29
Who, as an aside, was Don Juan De Austria, bastard son of Charles V and brother of Philip II of Spain, as opposed to Don Juan of Seville, the lovable but fictional libertine.
Christianity and Islam in History
MSGR. WALTER BRANDMULLER
I will address the topic of Christianity and Islam by limiting myself to a brief presentation of historical facts, without entering into the specifics of religious and theological dialogue.
On the same day when the Vatican made public Benedict XVI’s message for the World Day of Peace next January 1, cardinal secretary of state Angelo Sodano sponsored a meeting at the Pontifical Lateran University the grand chancellor of which is the pope’s vicar, cardinal Camillo Ruini. The meeting focused on a topic crucial for the Church’s geopolitics: “Christianity and Islam, Yesterday and Today.”
In his message, Benedict XVI pointed to “nihilism” and “religious fanaticism” as the two deep sources of Islamist terrorism.
But the analysis at the December 13 meeting at the Lateran concentrated above all on the history of the relationship between Christianity and Islam. The occasion for the meeting was the fifth centenary of the birth of saint Pius V, the pope of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, at which a league of Europe’s Christian states inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Turkish fleet.
The topic was explored by an authoritative specialist in Church history, monsignor Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
Delivered in the presence of cardinal Sodano, his address represented the Holy See’s current point of view on the question: a point of view that is certainly less pliant than the one that prevailed during the pontificate of John Paul II. - Sandro Magister
Christianity and Islam in History
by Walter Brandmüller
I will address the topic of Christianity and Islam by limiting myself to a brief presentation of historical facts, without entering into the specifics of religious and theological dialogue. This seems useful to me, because the celebration of the fifth centenary of the birth of Pius V was a bit muted, especially in academic circles. The victor at Lepanto in 1571, this pope who had the courage and the energy to construct an alliance of almost all the Christian kingdoms against the Ottoman empire which was advancing to threaten Europe and had already established dominion over the Balkans today, precisely on account of the unhappy restoration of hostility between the two worlds one formerly Christian, and to a certain extent still Christian, and the Muslim world seems to many to be an obstructing presence best left in the shadows.
The so-called “secularism” that would silence all the monotheistic religions through accusations of fundamentalism, or that exalts dialogue by negating their differences, intends to blot out the age-old conflict that has pitted the two religious communities against one another. Above all, it intends to neutralize the Roman pontiff, who has shown himself capable of blocking the Islamic advance and saving Christian civilization.
Although the two monotheistic religions in question share, among other things and to different degrees, the Jewish tradition a specialist like Samir Khalil Samir emphasizes how before Mohammed the Arab Jews and Christians called their God by the name of Allah there are many differences between Christianity and Islam, and the differences are fundamental.
Since their very beginnings, there have been differences in how Christians and Muslims think of conversion and the use of violence.
THE REST OF THE ARTICLE
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0110.html
An elegant account of faith and will. Beautiful actually.
Not even all of Catholic Europe. For instance, France was actually an ally of the Turk from around 1525 to 1800. They even engaged in a lot of combined operations, with the French allowing the Turkish fleet to winter in French ports, complete with their Christian slaves.
The more I read history,m the more I think, "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy."
You very well might enjoy this essay.
Where was Secular Humanism at Lepanto?
http://www.tomkratman.com/Ranttuloriad.html
The author is a very non-PC military SF writer. He is, unfortunately, not all that great as a writer, but I generally enjoy his books for the very noncomformist POV.
Very nice. Thanks for the link.
Yep. And Velazquez painted a beautiful painting of the surrender ceremony.
Cervantes lost his left arm for that reason is called in Spanish, “the manco de Lepanto”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.