The Image of the Turkish Slave in the Adriatic Periphery of the Papal States in the 18Th Century

Chapter 14 Defeating the Enemy: the Image of the Turkish Slave in the Adriatic Periphery of the Papal States in the 18th Century

Giuseppe Capriotti

1 Introduction*

In his biography of St Pius v, published in Venice and in Rome in 1712 during the canonization of the Dominican pope, Paolo Alessandro Maffei describes, by means of a few interesting observations, how Pius instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory, which was afterward changed to Our Lady of the Rosary by his successor, Gregory xiii:

Now, since St Pius v had learned from the revelation of the victory [at Lepanto] that the prayers of the friars of the Holy Rosary had greatly con- tributed to it, he wished to memorialize the event and established a feast day, on 7 October, under the invocation of Our Lady of Victory. It is true that Gregory xiii felt admiration for the modesty of his predecessor, who, having been a member of the Order of Preachers, did not want to refer to the Holy Rosary for fear that he might be seen as honouring his Religion rather than the truth. Gregory xiii ordered that the feast of Our Lady of Victory would be celebrated in the church of the Dominican order in the future, and in all the other churches having Confraternities of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The feast would no longer be celebrated on 25 March, as it had been formerly, but annually on the first Sunday of October, with a new name, feast of the Holy Rosary.1

* This article is part of Research Project HAR2016-80354-P, “Before Orientalism: Images of the Muslim in the Iberian Peninsula (15th–17th Centuries) and Mediterranean Connections,” PI: Borja Franco. Many thanks to Francesca Serpentini for her translation of the text. 1 “Or San Pio V, il quale avea appreso nella stessa rivelazione avuta della vittoria, che l’orazione de’ fratelli del Santo Rosario, aveano grandemente contribuito alla medesima, volendo eter- narne la memoria, istituì un dì festivo, fissato ai 7 di Ottobre, sotto l’invocazione di S. Maria della Vittoria. Ben’è vero, che Gregorio xiii, ammirando la modestia del suo Predecessore, il quale essendo stato Religioso dell’Ordine de’ Predicatori, non avea voluta fare alcuna

356 Capriotti

While previous biographers, such as Arcangelo Caraccia and Lodovico Ia- cobilli, had simply mentioned Pius v’s institution of the feast of Our Lady of Victory and its later transformation into Our Lady of the Rosary by Gregory xiii,2 Maffei explains the reasons behind Pius v’s choice of name: the pope, out of modesty, did not want to honour the Lady of the Rosary as the author of the victory at Lepanto, lest anyone should think he was showing favourit- ism toward his own order (the Dominicans had spread the Rosary devotion and created confraternities of the Rosary).3 The pope might not have wanted to promote Our Lady of the Rosary directly in order not to further antagonize the rival Franciscan order, since he had already suppressed the cult of the Im- maculate Conception, a doctrine espoused especially by the Franciscans. As a matter of fact, in 1568 Pius v suppressed the Office of the Immaculate, which had been approved by the Franciscan Sixtus iv in 1477, limiting its recitation to the Franciscans.4 The association between the devotion of Our Lady of the Ro- sary and the victory at Lepanto began with a fortuitous coincidence: 7 October 1571, the day of the battle, coincided with the first Monday of the month, when in Rome the Confraternities of Our Lady of the Rosary held their celebrations and processions. Nevertheless Pius v, who had arranged the formation of the Holy League against the Ottomans, established 7 October as the day for the celebration of Our Lady of Victory and introduced the title Auxilium Christia- norum in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Litanie lauretane). According to Maffei, this celebration was renamed in 1573 by Gregory xiii, who dedicated

menzione del S. Rosario per timore, che si credesse aver’egli fatto questo onore più tosto alla sua Religione, che alla verità, ordinò, che in avvenire la festa di S. Maria della Vittoria si celebrasse ogni anno la prima Domenica di Ottobre nelle Chiesa dell’Ordine Domenicano, e in tutte le altre, ove si trovavano istituite le Confraternite del Rosario della Santiss. Vergine, e che con nuovo nome festa del Santo Rosario si dicesse, la quale non volle, che più si solen- nizzasse alli 25 del mese di Marzo, come pel passato erasi praticato.” Paolo Alessandro Maffei, Vita di S. Pio V sommo pontefice dell’Ordine dei Predicatori (Rome, 1712), pp. 344–45. On the drafting of this biography see Fabio Gasti, “L’immagine di Pio V negli scritti biografici del 1712,” in San Pio V nella storia, ed. Carlo Bernasconi (Pavia, 2012), pp. 59–79. 2 Arcangelo Caraccia, Vita del beatissimo papa Pio Quinto (Pavia, 1615), pp. 135–36; Lodovico Iacobilli, Vite del Santiss. sonno pontefice Pio V… (Todi, 1661), pp. 80–81. 3 On the origin of the Confraternities of Our Lady of the Rosary, see Gilles Gérard Meersseman, Ordo fraternitatis. Confraternite e Pietà dei laici nel Medioevo, 3 (Rome, 1977), pp. 1144–169. Also see: Luciano Cinelli, “Le confraternite del Rosario fra xvi e xvii secolo,” in Hagiologica. Studi per Réginald Grégoire, eds. Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, Ugo Paoli and Pieranto- nio Piatti, 2 (Fabriano, 2012), pp. 1259–275. 4 Laura Stagno and Ivana Čapeta Rakić, “Confronti mediterranei. Immagini dell’Immacolata Concezione e della Madonna del Rosario,” in Immagini della predicazione tra Quattrocento e Settecento. Crivelli, Lotto, Guercino, eds. Giuseppe Capriotti and Francesca Coltrinari (Cinisel lo Balsamo, 2017), pp. 57–71.