medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (14. August) is also the feast day of: The martyrs of Otranto
(blessed).
In late July 1480 the little port city of Otranto on the Salentine
peninsula (the heel of Italy's boot) was besieged by a Turkish invasion
force that had crossed the Adriatic from Valona in today's Albania.
Only lightly garrisoned and poorly provisioned for a siege (an expected
invasion in the vicinity of Brindisi had drawn northward most of the
Kingdom of Sicily's defense forces in the region), the city held out
behind its walls for about two weeks before being taken on 11. August.
Most of Otranto's civic and religious leadership perished either in the
final assault or during the sack that followed.
Three days later, the captors took the bulk of the city's surviving
adult males (perhaps 600 in all; unreliable accounts from long afterward
put the number at about 900 and make it include virtually the entire
population regardless of sex or age) to a hill outside of town and there
executed all of them, supposedly by decapitation, one by one, all day
long. A few wealthy people had been allowed to convert to Islam and
were therefore spared; the remainder are said to have been martyred for
their faith (though whether they were really offered a choice remains an
open question).
A cult of the martyrs sprang up as soon as circumstances permitted.
When the city was recaptured by the kingdom and its allies in the
following year (the allies consisted chiefly of forces from anti-Islamic
confrontation states from Portugal to Hungary), bones of the victims
were collected on the order of the victorious commandar, the duke of
Calabria and future king Alfronso II, and brought to the capital,
Naples; others bones were tended reverently by the population of Otranto
(who clearly had not all perished). Alfonso ordered a huge reliquary to
be made, at Crown expense and in the form of a transparent glass
cylinder, for the bones that been brought back to Naples; this is
visible today in Naples' church of Santa Caterina a Formiello, designed
for Alfonso as a memorial to his triumph. After several years of
unsuccessful attempts to get a subvention from the Crown, the citizens
of Otranto had a virtually identical reliquary made for them at their
expense and installed it in their cathedral, where it can be seen today
in exactly the same position within the building as that occupied by
Alfonso's reliquary in Naples.
Civic authorities at Otranto proclaimed the martyrs patrons of their
city as early as 1539. But, despite promotion of their cause by several
bishops, it was not until 1771 that they (the marytrs, not the civic
authorities) were officially beatified.
Best,
John Dillon
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