Thanks, Mr. Piatak. It IS a Holy Day in my neck of the woods and this date is hewn in my heart, burned in my brain, and seared in my soul.

Thanks be to God for the good dead white male Christian Catholics who put to the sword and gun and cannon these barbarian bastards.

Non Spartacus:

You are welcome.  I know that the Feast of the Holy Rosary was placed on this date to commemorate Lepanto, but it is a date that all of us who honor European civilization, whatever our religious beliefs, should celebrate, because we are all beneficiaries of that victory.

Without Lepanto, this conversation would be taking place in Arabic. Even Queen Elizabeth, no friend of the Pope, had the Church bells rung in celebration of the victory.

In celebration, we should all recite (or even memorize) this poem:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/lepanto.htm

Wait a minute, am I to understand Europe hasn’t always been Muslim?

“Wait a minute, am I to understand Europe hasn’t always been Muslim?”

Holy Freedom Fries! AIPAC’s gonna make us nuke Europe.

“Holy Freedom Fries! AIPAC’s gonna make us nuke Europe.”

Nah, they’re too worried about Christian Russia.  They know who they love but oh so much hate to go around.  Got to make sure everyone gets their fair share.

“Nah, they’re too worried about Christian Russia.”

You make a good point, M. Nucci.  Come to think of it, the Israelis are already in Georgia, selling arms and provoking Russia, and every American pol, from McBama to Biden to Billary to Dick Cheney is trying to get Georgia into NATO.

Jerry,

I believe in celebrating one of the great victories of the West over its enemies, as did G. K. Chesterton.  I do not want to see the lovely steeples of Europe turned into minarets.  I see no reason to apologize for this, either.

Jerry,

You have yet to provide a cogent reason why I shouldn’t celebrate the victory at Lepanto.  I am not a neocon:  I was against the Iraq War from the beginning, and I don’t want to see us go to war against Iran.  But I am not naive about Islam, and I am entirely sympathetic to Europeans who are opposed to Moslem immigration into Europe, an issue about which the neocons could not care less.  (In fact, the neocons often attack European rightists who are opposed to Moslem immigration).  And the Ottoman Empire certainly sought to spread Islam by force of arms, following the precedent set by Mohammed and the Caliphs.

@ jerry: You said, “the reasons for the war were clearly not about ‘Christianity versus Islam’, they were about the Ottoman empire wanting trade dominance in the Mediterranean trade routes and the Western nations fighting over them as well.  And no churches would have had minarets on them regardless even if the battle was lost.” If I remember my old history lessons, correctly, after the Ottoman Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453, it wasn’t long after that the venerable Church, Hagia Sophia had minarets emplaced.  In fact, if my memory serves me, ever since the 7th century A.D. there has been an ongoing war against the Christian West and the planting of the mosque and minarete in conquered lands by the Islamic hordes of the East.  If it were strictly trade routes that the Muslims wanted to dominate, why do we find them being crushed by the “Terror of the Ottomans”, King Jan Sobieski before the gates of Vienna in 1683. Oh, and where was it that Charles “the Hammer” Martel defeated the Muslims in 732 A.D?  Oh, yeah, at a place called Tours, which is well into France.  What do you think the Crusdades were all about, jostling for commercial advantages?  C’mon, get a grip on reality and know that the Battle of Lepanto is considered by far better minds than yours or mine to be one of the fifteen decisive battles of Western History.  And that is for a fundamental reason: Europe was save from being islamized! Thanks be to Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary.

Although it might be unfair to lay the blame for the Turkish expansionist policy at the door of Islam, the fact is that the Turks were the carriers of Islam, and that a victory at Lepanto would have carried them to the gates of Rome. That’s why the Turks were at Lepanto in the first place. Even Queen Elizabeth recognized this, and while she sent no help, she did not restrain Englishmen from helping at Malta, and celebrated the victory along with the rest of Europe.

Piatak:  “You have yet to provide a cogent reason why I shouldn’t celebrate the victory at Lepanto.  I am not a neocon:  I was against the Iraq War from the beginning, and I don’t want to see us go to war against Iran.  But I am not naive about Islam, and I am entirely sympathetic to Europeans who are opposed to Moslem immigration into Europe, an issue about which the neocons could not care less.  (In fact, the neocons often attack European rightists who are opposed to Moslem immigration).”

Amen

Then, as now, Islam (embodied in the Ottoman Empire) sought to expand as much as it reasonably could.

Unlike now, it could reasonably aspire to spread, militarily, into Europe. A hundred years after victory at Lepanto, Vienna was still threatened (as others have noted), and much of the Balkans remained under Islam).  Without it, who knows?

Also unlike today, Islam then had no hope of establishing itself in Europe demographically, without military conquest.  It’s interesting to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of its position then and now, and consider what that tells us about the insufficiency of military force (however necessary).

Jerry:

I do not want to see Moslem immigration into Europe, regardless of the ethnic makeup of the immigrants.  A Moslem Europe would not, in any sense except the geographical, be Europe any longer.

So please, go ahead and have your little nerd role play circle jerks about crusades and killing Muslims

Jerry. You make a great dhimmi.

and overturning Vatican II and such

Mr. Piatak has never advanced that impossibility.

meanwhile, leave reality and common sense to us Orthodox Catholics

Mr. Piatak is one of the most orthodox Christian Catholics I have ever read and he writes with equanimity and with a real sense of justice in dealing with those, like your own self, who are clearly deficient in historical knowledge and perspective and who tries to disguise that reality by repeatedly introducing non sequiturs.

@ jerry: Gee, I am so sorry I caused such a hissy fit from you.  So, in order to avoid bile rising in your throat again, I’ll just give you the facts as recounted by the eminent Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh in his OUTSTANDING

To quote Hilaire Belloc: The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.

And I’ll add: and that Faith isn’t Islam!

@ jerri, sorry, I hit the wrong key...but to continue, William Thomas Walsh wrote an outstanding book titled Philip II.  In Chapters XXIV and XXV he narrates the reasons for the Turkish fleet coming into existence in the first place and then the battle itself.  It is not necessary to recount the battle, because that was not your point.  Your point was that the whole thing was over control of Mediterranean trade routes—of course, you must forgive me when I question that motive for historical reasons: like the Europeans controlled trade routes to the New World and East Asia and didn’t need the Mediterranean for transacting business from the far east, except those detestable Venetians who would compromise their mothers for a profit.  Anyway, to get back on track, here was the situation at the time 300 Turkish/Muslim ships made their foray: The Spaniards under the Duke of Alba was attacking the Protestants under William of Orange in the Netherlands.  William need relief and appealed to Constantinople.  Spain was being rocked by a Morisco rebellion that had started in Granada and had over spilled into adjacent provinces.  The Venetians had control of Cyprus and Joseph Nasi, head of the so-called Jewish party in Constantinople, opposed a direct attack on Spain and called for one against Cyprus, because he desired to rule it.  But Spain and the Venetians intervened.  So, the Mohammedan fleet sailed to defeat the Christian fleet before attacking Cyprus, but were defeated.  Thus ended their maritime dominance as a threat to the security of Christendom. Das ist alles.

“I do not want to see the lovely steeples of Europe turned into minarets.”

Poland, Russia, etc. some of the best beautifully designed churches in Eastern Europe do, in fact, have those dreaded minarets.

I remember reading an interview a few years back (in the first issue of Nexus) with a very wise man named Robert N. Taylor who stated that any society, culture or race whose women have come to view the birthing and rearing of children as a hassle, a distraction or even something catastrophic, already has one foot in the grave.

Those immigrants wouldn’t be coming to Europe if European countries had sustained a normal level of population growth.

And for the record the idea of a uniform singularity called “Islam” is as ludicrous and ahistorical as the idea of “Christendom.”

While the Ottomans, for example, were brutal towards their Greek, Armenian and southern Slavic subjects, Armenian and Assyrian communities in Iran thrived and became prosperous.

In fact, the primary destination for the survivors of the Armenian Holocaust was Iran. And to this day, the magnificent Vank Cathedral in Esfahan is home to a museum that honors the memory of those who were slaughtered at the hands of the Turks.

Eh… that should read “some of the most beautifully designed churches...”

Jerry,

I suggested that Lepanto would be an appropriate occasion for the EU to observe because it represented a victory of Europe over the enemies of Europe, not a victory of one European nation over another.  But it will never happen, because the people who run the EU are ashamed of the likes of Pius V and Don John of Austria.

Jerry, the reason none of those “bogeymen” ever have invaded England, Europe, etc. is because the defense has always taken the fight TO the enemy.

The best defense is ball control on offense.

Don Juan of Austria (why hasn’t this man been canonized yet?) defended Christendom (and, yes, it really existed, although more fractious than all involved wanted) from the Mohammedan Turks with GREAT ball control.  He essentially scored a go-ahead touchdown in the 4th quarter and left the Turks with 2 seconds on the clock.  Did the Holy League “run up the score”?  No.

Get a-hold of yourself man!

And this is coming from someone who grew up in Central Europe, and realizes it’s not being over-run with immigrants (especially France), and doesn’t at all mind the Native Americans (the “Mexicans"), who are now at least nominal Catholics, repopulating North America.

When it comes down to it, the Battle of Lepanto is a miracle that further strengthens the role of the Mother of God as Mediatrix of ALL Graces, victory included.  The HEART of Europe (which, as a proud Bavarian I am willing to say) isn’t the Rhine Valley, but the Mediterranean.

Jerry calls himself an orthodox Catholic in the midst of tirades directed against those who recall and celebrate a miraculous victory that preserved liberty.

He also, by implication, directs those tirades against Pope St. Pius V who instituted The Feast of The Holy Rosary in solemn commemoration of the great victory.

It seems only Islam is allowed historical memory. Like so many other putative orthodox Christians, Jerry is a dhimmi and can not be counted on in the fight against Jihad.

All he can do is hurl baseless charges of neo-con this and war-monger that against those who opposed the Invasion of Iraq.

Jerry. I could not care less that you disapprove of my celebration of this great victory.

Succor your enemy and attack your own interests (like most liberals and dhimmis do) and soon you will discover you have nothing left to attack and you will then willingly set-out on the Hajj blathering about your enlightenment.

Actually I don’t know that Europe ever united even to fight the Turks. I read that Vlad the Impaler was left with no assistance to fight them off on that front.  There were different factions in Europe who had hoped he would lose.  The typical hope for your enemy to get taken out strategy that goes on today.

Ah… only at Takimag.

jerry,

Mr. Piatak has aggressively and consistently opposed the invasion of Iraq and arrogant, brutal, blundering neoconservative meddling in the affairs of the Middle East.

As such it is a bit thick to suggest he is one step away from kicking Muslims in the balls, killing their babies, kicking their dogs, peeing on their prayer rugs, etc.

As to his selection of Lepanto as a holiday, it could have something to do with Pius V, a saint of the Church, instituting it as an annual feast.

Then again, if we were to take your logic to its natural conclusion, then the Catholic Church doesn’t exist either, since Catholics frequently war with one another.

Come to think of it, by that logic neither the West nor the Arab world exists either, in which case there’s no need whatsoever for us to fret over so-called “Western” imperialism in the so-called “Arab world”.

The problem G.S. is not either the western or Arab world but globalists.  That strange ilk who have no love for their fellow countrymen but claim love for all mankind equally.  The real fact is that they have no real love for anyone.  Just an abiding disdain for their fellow men in general.

God Bless Tom Piatak for this post.
As much as I am a fan of Don John of Austria, I don’t expect he’ll be canonized soon.  He was, it seems, something of a gunslinger.  We know he sired at least one illegitimate child because she later became the Mother Superior of an Italian convent. (evidence, by the way, that the Roman Church, as a mother, is much more patient with realities like bastardy than the puritanical churches of Yankee America, for example; Don John, himself, was a bastard.) The Walsh book on Philip II is superb and the portrait of Don John in there is reliable.  He was undoubtably a heroic figure, and after Lepanto, he was well on his way to cleaning up the mess Alba had made of the Low Countries when death came to him too soon.  Sometimes, however, the larger-than-life quality of Don John can overshadow the critical contributions of the other captains that day, especially Don Alavaro de Bazan, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the seventy-something Sebastian Venier, and even Gianandrea Doria about whom there is much debate still.

So far as the decisiveness of the day is concerned, it is true that Venice signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire on 7 October 1573, two years to the date after the forming of the Holy League.  The Venetians ceded Cyprus causing the anti-Christian Voltaire to quip a century later that the Turks had been the real victors of Lepanto.  It is little wonder that Voltaire and his colleagues, as authors of the destructive ideas that have lead us to the horrors of total war and its profoundly immoral “unconditional surrender,” would reject the merits of a negotiated peace. 
Since the Enlightenment, it has become fashionable among some historians to dismiss the battle as not decisive.  After all, they argue, that the Ottomans put to sea another fleet within a couple of years of the battle.  This argument withers under scrutiny.  The new Ottoman vessels were hastily built of green wood and lacked the experienced sailors and pilots of the fleet that had engaged the Holy League (At Lepanto, the Holy League took extra care to kill the Turkish experts: 16th century war galleys were complex machines require real skill to operate, especially in battle; see John Guilmartin on this.)
The Ottoman Navy never went on the offensive again, and after the defeat at Vienna a century later, the fading of the empire hastened.  The scoffers also ignore the effect that the victory at Lepanto had on European morale.  Historian W. L. Rodgers in NAVAL WARFARE UNDER OARS, summarizes the mood across Europe that followed in the wake of the battle.
“The battle relieved the Christian world of an intolerable dread which had oppressed it for centuries.  Men had feared that the steady advance of an oriental civilization and a hated religion was uncontrollable, like the rising tide, and, although the material consequences of the battle were slight the spiritual and psychologic relief to Europe was immeasurable.”
This is not to say that there were not political or economic motives behind the actions of the West in this campaign.  Nonetheless, it is a fact that the man who united Christendom to fight the Turk was the Pope, and the thing under which Christendom was united was the Faith.  This is why, as Tom Piatak argues, it should be a European holiday, and it is also why it will not be--at least not in our lifetimes.

A quick correx:  The treaty was signed on 7 March 1573 and announced by the Doge on 4 April.

P.S. -

In all charity and diplomatically, here’s something you might chew on:

Probably you agree with Ron Paul’s assertion that America’s imperialism and hubris played a role in antagonizing Muslims, provoking Sept. 11th.

By analogy, it is just possible that the constant politically-correct hectoring, lecturing, and finger-wagging --leveled by liberals such as yourself against old-fashioned, small town American conservatives—prompted the rise of neoconservatives.

I’ve worked in academia and have sat in many a graduate-level English course, and you cannot tell me that academics do not go out of their way to sneer at traditional values.  I’ve been there; I’ve heard it.  The parents of these college kids aren’t as stupid as you think—they’re aware of this, which is what drives many of them to rally round the Republican Party.

P.C. liberalism is to imperialism, as rednecks and country folk and Christians are to Arab Muslims, as the re-election of G.W. Bush is to 9-11.

If the liberal establishment hadn’t forced Red State America into perceiving our elections as a matter of choosing between leftist, anti-Western self-hating guilt on the one hand and Republican warmongering on the other, perhaps peace really could have a chance.

In other words, it’s quite possible that people like *you* bear far, far more responsibility for the deaths in Iraq than Mr. Piatak does.  If you want someone to blame you might try looking into the mirror instead of casting stones.

Just chew on it.  Please.

P.P.S.-

This last was directed at jerry of course (BTW FYI the “shift” key is usually located either to the lower left or lower right on the keyboard; if you have such an excellent name you should try treating it with the respectful capitalization it deserves...)

Naturally I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Nucci’s remark.

We needn’t speculate in a vacuum about what an Islamic conquest of Europe would have looked like.  We know what the Balkans looked like until ~1912 and, for that matter, what they’ve looked like since.  The consequences would have been similar, if presumably diluted, were the border drawn deeper in Europe. 

So of course an ethnically European majority would have persisted, but with large portions of it converted to the faith of the new overlords and the rest oppressed and relations between the two groups (which would not even have been separate groups without the conquest) poisened with hostility for at least generations, and pherpahps irreparably to the forseeable future. All in all, well avoided.

“I guess once you have an enemy cornered and they have no where to go, they just screech insults and words that have no meaning in order to change the subject.”

I made an error, it seems, in assuming that you were of the multicultural, politically-correct persuasion.  One of the downsides of joining a discussion late and not reading all the preceding comments carefully.

As such I apologize, though I still think the point I made about the liberal guiltfest contributing to the rise of the Bush regime is downright interesting.  Perhaps that’s just me.

That said:

“Mr. Piatak has aggressively and consistently opposed the invasion of Iraq and arrogant, brutal, blundering neoconservative meddling in the affairs of the Middle East.

As such it is a bit thick to suggest he is one step away from kicking Muslims in the balls, killing their babies, kicking their dogs, peeing on their prayer rugs, etc.

As to his selection of Lepanto as a holiday, it could have something to do with Pius V, a saint of the Church, instituting it as an annual feast.”

I really do think that has something to do with what was being discussed, and deserves a more charitable response than—well, than, say, screeching out lengthy and intense personal insults about someone of whom you know nothing.

Jerry,

Why don’t you read what I wrote before spouting off?  This is what I wrote at the very beginning:  “If the EU were actually interested in preserving European civilization, rather than subverting it, today would be a holiday throughout Europe.”

If Europe is so concerned about Muslim population growths in Europe then why did it fully support Kosovo independence?

Seems a little hypocritical.

...meanwhile, leave reality and common sense to us Orthodox Catholics…
Posted by jerry on Oct 07, 2008. ....With that being said, it would be ridiculous to make that feast a EU holiday, since if your going to make one Catholic holiday a national one, you may as well make them all, and since the Catholic calendar world wide has at least some veneration or special day on everyday of the year, we would then have 365 days off...

Jerry. You are wrong about The Calendar.

The old use of the word feria, for feast day, is lost, except in the derivative feriatio, which is equivalent to our of obligation. Today those days are called ferial upon which no feast is celebrated. Feriae are either major or minor.

As I was re-reading this thread I suddenly remembered why you are so obviously winging-it when it comes to your putative “catholicism.”

I remember your posts from the past in which you succored Islam and trashed Christendom.

You are either a Muslim or a Dhimmi. Whatever your actual status, it is crystal clear you are not a Catholic.

Jerry,

Tell you what:  if the EU ever makes the anniversary of Lepanto a holiday, please track me down and I’ll give you my opinion.  It will never happen because, as I indicated in the initial post of mine that so enraged you, the EU is ashamed of Europe’s Christian heritage and committed fully to “multiculturalism” and “diverstity.” The typical Eurocrat would be as horrified at the prospect of commemorating the Battle of Lepanto as you are.

Yeah… I’m somebody who thinks it would be good if we had a party to commemerate the Battle of Lepanto, instead of having spent the 90’s starving Arab children to death with embargos, and dropping bombs on Baghdad.

Obviously I’m some kind of bloodthirsty extremist who polishes a toy gun and fantasizes about killing Muslims.

As to the EU, that’s rather akin to asking if Mr. Piatak would have supported the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had the USSR been in the business of celebrating the Christian heritage of tsarist Russia.

For those who doubt the central place of Islam in the Ottoman ideology of conquest, I offer one quote ... I could in an hour or so round up scores more. This one is handy, it is about the Ottoman regime’s recognizing the territorial integrity of Hapsburg realms in the treaty of Karlovac, 1699.

The treaty’s terms [ending raiding of Christian lands, recognition of Hapsburg sovereignity]

‘implied a sudden abandonment of the raison d’etre of the Ottoman dynasty, whose dispensation for leadership of Islam was contingent upon its ability to maintain continuous war with the infidel’.

Abou-el-Haj, Rifaat A. “The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier in Europe: 1699-1703.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1969 pp 467-475

Jerry:

Are you dense?  I never said the EU would be “forgiven” if it chose to celebrate Lepanto.  You persist in reading your ideological fantasies into what I write, and return my charitable responses to your writings with more insinuations about my beliefs.  I have made my views perfectly clear, to the satisfaction of everyone but you.

Protestants in the EU probably shouldn’t celebrate this day.  The Huguenots of the time thought that the victory over the Turks would lead to a Catholic resurgence in W. Europe.  A year after Lepanto came the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacres.  The two events are connected.  Leave me out of this celebration!