Faith Filled Friday: Our Lady of the Rosary

Well it’s not quite Friday yet, but it is October 7^th 2021 and besides it being the birthday of my beloved, departed father—he would have been 86 today—it is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, the 450^th anniversary (1571) of perhaps the greatest naval battle in history and defeat of the Ottoman Turks from overtaking Christian Europe. 

So why is today called the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary?  It wasn’t initially.  Originally it was called the Feast of Our Lady of Victory but within two years (1573) Pope Gregory XIII changed it to the Rosary.

Christopher Check at Catholic Answers has an excellent article, “The Battle that Saved the Christian West,” outlining the stakes.  

 

During the five-decade reign of Soleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire grew to its fullest glory, encompassing the Caucuses, the Balkans, Anatolia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Soleiman had conquered Aden, Algiers, Baghdad, Belgrade, Budapest, Rhodes, and Temesvar. His war galleys terrorized not only the Mediterranean Sea, but the Red Sea and  the Persian Gulf as well. His one defeat was at the gates of Vienna in 1529… Soleiman’s greatest dream, however, the dream of all Turks, the dream his soldiers toasted before setting off on every campaign, was the conquest of Rome. There the Turks could transform Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s, then under construction, into a mosque, just as they had Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia more than a century before.

But the resistance was coordinated by Pope Pius V in what would be called The Holy League.

 

In a papacy of great achievements, the greatest came on March 7, 1571, on the feast of his fellow Dominican, St. Thomas Aquinas. At the Dominican Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome, Pope Pius formed the Holy League. Genoa, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Spain put aside their jealousies and pledged to assemble a fleet capable of confronting the sultan’s war galleys before the east coast of Italy became the next front in the war between the Christianity and Islam… As the Pope prayed for Venice to answer a higher call, a new breed of fiery priests led by stirring preachers like St. Francisco Borgia, superior general of the Jesuits, inflamed the hearts of Christian Europeans throughout the Mediterranean with their sermons against Islam. Enough Venetians must have been listening, because on May 25 Venice at last joined the Holy League. By fits and starts, with hesitation and quarreling on the part of a few of the principal players, the fleet of the Holy League was forming.

But Pope Pius needed a commander and chose a most dashing soldier.

 

The man chosen by Pius V to serve as Captain General of the Holy League did not falter: Don John of Austria, the illegitimate son of the late Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and half-brother of Philip II, King of Spain. The young commander had distinguished himself in combat against Barbary corsairs and in the Morisco rebellion in Spain, a campaign in which he demonstrated his capacity for swift violence when the threat called for it and restraint when charity demanded it.

There is a lot in Check’s article I’m skipping over, but at the day of the battle divine intervention took place.

 

It was. At dawn on October 7, 1571, the Holy League rowed down the west coast of Greece and turned east into the Gulf of Patras. When the morning mist cleared, the Christians, rowing directly against the wind, saw the squadrons of the larger Ottoman fleet arrayed like a crescent from shore to shore, bearing down on them under full sail.

 

As the fleets grew closer, the Christians could hear the gongs and cymbals, drums and cries of the Turks. The men of the Holy League quietly pulled at their oars, the soldiers stood on the decks in silent prayer. Priests holding large crucifixes marched up and down the decks exhorting the men to be brave and hearing final confessions.

 

Then the Blessed Virgin intervened.

 

The wind shifted 180 degrees. The sails of the Holy League were filled with the Divine breath, driving them into battle. Now heading directly into the wind, the Turks were forced to strike their sails. The tens of thousands of Christian galley slaves who rowed the Turkish vessels felt the sharp sting of the lash summoning them up from under their benches and demanding they take hold of their oars and pull against the wind.

So why is it called the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary?  Fr. Reginald Martin, O.P. has an article at the Dominican Friars website titled, “The Battle Of Lepanto And The Holy Rosary” which explains.  

 

Pius V, a Dominican friar, prayed the rosary throughout the battle and attributed the victory to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. Hence the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (which was first called the feast of Our Lady of Victory) on October 7. Naturally, the feast is dear to Dominicans and their friends. But the Pontiff’s were not the only prayers addressed that day to the Mother of God. The Christian troops are said to have prayed the rosary throughout the night before the battle, and some sources say that the rhythmic repetition of the prayer thoroughly frightened and demoralized the Turkish host.

And so through the Blessed Mother’s intervention Christendom was saved.  If the Turks had won that battle, Europe may have become Muslim.

Some side notes. 

(1) Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, fought in the battle and lost his left hand.  If he had lost his right hand he may never have been able to write.

(2) Pope Pius V was a Dominican as mentioned above.  Up until that time, Popes wore the same red robes as bishops and cardinals.  But Pope Pius V insisted on wearing his Dominican white, and so ever since Popes have worn white.

(3) Pope Pius V instituted the traditional 15 (three sets of five each) mysteries of the rosary.  It became the standard and skyrocketed as a Catholic devotion until it is now the premier Catholic devotion.  Pope John Paul II added a fourth set of five mysteries in 2002.

(4) My father, born on this day, happens to have a Marian first name, Mario.  I don't know if that was intentional or not on the part of his parents.  Either way it was Providential.  Please include his soul in your next rosary.  He passed away in 2006, fifteen years ago.

(5) Pope Pius V has a striking resemblance to my Uncle Valentino.  He too has passed away.   

(6) G. K. Chesterton’s most famous poem is on the Battle of Lepanto, titled “Lepanto.”  You can read it here.  Here is an excerpt.

 

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 sweat, 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!

 

If you haven’t done it already, pray a rosary.  If you have, pray another!