Book Reviews 503

Stefan Hanß, Lepanto als Ereignis. Dezentrierende Geschichte(n) der Seeschlacht von Lepanto (1571) [Berliner Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung 21]. V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2017, 710 S.ISBN 9783847107682. €85.

The battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571, at which the Ottoman fleet was defeated by the Holy League off the west coast of Greece just north of the Gulf of Corinth, was widely hailed, especially in the countries involved, as the triumph of Christianity, and above all of Catholicism, over Islam. It was the first, and for well over a century the last, great Christian defeat of the Turks. The nations involved were mainly Venice and Spain, but they were supported by the Papal States, Genoa, Tuscany, and a number of lesser allies. Lepanto became an important item of national propaganda, a perennial reminder of the force of Catholic unity and the heroism of the individual participants. As Stefan Hanß shows in his introduction to Lepanto als Ereignis, its fame per- sisted through the ages. Celebrated in much of Catholic Europe at the time, it was commemorated by Italian imperialists and Spanish nationalists in the twentieth century, and adopted, more recently still, in debates about the ‘clash of civilizations.’ For a historian to argue against so gross a simplification is not difficult, but Stefan Hanß’s extraordinarily well documented and detailed anal- ysis of the debate about the battle and its effects over a vast geographical and temporal area brings to light a large number of altogether unexpected aspects. Hanß presents his ‘method’ as an histoire de l’événement, a study of the battle and its aftermath seen as an Ereignis or ‘event’ (as opposed to a Geschehnis or ‘incident’) in a decentralised context. He thus follows threads to wherever they might lead—from Europe to America and the Far East. Hanß’s book is not without defects. It is too long and Hanß tends to lose himself in details and digressions by no means all of which are directly rel- evant to his main theme. Its only index is topographical, while an index of persons would have been more useful. Hanß also seems eager to cater to histori- ographical fashions, introducing neologisms such as ‘glokal,’ and paying exces- sive homage to the latest methods and theories. A more substantial weakness is that he says nothing about France. The French, bound by commercial treaties to the Turks and traditionally hostile to the Habsburgs, would have no truck with the battle, but their absence is yet another proof of how disunited the Catholics were, and it would be interesting to know more about their reactions to the victory. Yet despite these shortcomings Lepanto als Ereignis is a major contribution to our understanding not only of the aftermath of the battle and the ensuing debates, but of the spread of news at the time and the effects of the complex confessional and social situation in Venice, the theological divi- sions and financial pressures in the Holy Roman Empire, and the ideological

Church History and Religious Culture © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/18712428-09803016 504 Book Reviews campaigns in Spain and the Spanish dominions. It is the fruit of formidable research. Hanß has consulted archives in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, Eng- land, Hungary, America, Turkey, Poland, Holland, Portugal, and France. He has worked his way through countless pamphlets and newsletters. The result is immensely impressive. The myth of the victory implies the existence of a homogeneous Christian, or anyhow Catholic, world, united in its determination to fight the ‘Turkish peril’ and to complete the unfinished work of the Crusaders. Of few cities could such homogeneousness be less true than Venice. Venice was one of the most cos- mopolitan centres in Europe. It housed Christians from all over the East, above all Greek Orthodox and Armenians. It had a vast Jewish community of the most varied provenance. Its commercial ties with, as well as its skirmishes in, the Levant entailed the presence of large groups of Muslims—merchants, prison- ers of war and slaves—and the Muslims themselves were divided between the Sunni Ottomans and the Shia merchants from Persia. In moments of interna- tional crisis, such as the fall to the Ottomans of Cyprus in 1571, the Venetian authorities tried to proceed against the minorities suspected of Ottoman sym- pathies, but this was far from simple. A number of the Christians were Ottoman subjects; the Jews were divided among Ottoman subjects, recognisable by their yellow headdress and suspected by the Venetians of being in collusion with the sultan who was known to have a Jewish adviser, and the Jews who had been living in Venice as Venetians for generations and who tended to wear red hats. Repressive measures invariably had a negative influence on trade.The confisca- tion of Ottoman goods might affect the Venetian vessels carrying them. Even if Ottoman Christians were generally excluded from the anti-Ottoman measures, moreover, the question might arise of whether Muslim converts to Christianity should be penalised because of their Ottoman origins. So conflicting were the interests involved that hardly any measures could be imposed for any length of time. The attempt to banish all Jews from Venice in 1571, for example, was revoked in 1573 when the Venetians signed a treaty with the Turks. FromVenice Hanß takes us north, to the Holy Roman Empire and the Protes- tant regions of Germany and Switzerland. The Venetians, the Spaniards and the papacy had presented their victory as a triumph of the Roman Catholic Church. In the Empire such a view raised significant problems. Some of the great imperial cities, such as Nuremberg and Augsburg, were divided between Catholics and Protestants. The authorities consequently spoke of Lepanto as an essentially Christian victory rather than a Catholic one. In the Protestant areas, on the other hand, the attitude to Lepanto was more ambivalent. By and large the battle was regarded in an eschatological context as one of the signs of the end of time. The Turks had long been regarded as a punitive flail, vis-

Church History and Religious Culture 98 (2018) 477–521