On August 14, 1480, a massacre happened on a hill outside the city of Otranto, in southern Italy, where 800 of the town’s men were taken to a place called the Hill of the Minerva, and, one by one, beheaded in full view of their fellow prisoners. It became known as the Hill of the Martyrs.
In the Middle Ages the bloody execution of a city’s population was commonplace, but what happened at Otranto was unique. The victims on the Hill of the Minerva were put to death not because they were political enemies of a conquering army, nor even because they refused to surrender their city.
They died because they refused to convert to Islam. The 800 men of Otranto were martyrs. But due to their sacrifice, however, the Ottoman invasion was slowed and Rome was spared the same fate that had befallen Constantinople only 27 years before. The city of Constantinople had been taken in 1453 and for 3 days its people were made slaves or killed or raped and the city was looted, all with the permission of the Sultan, Mehmet (Muhammad) II, who was then 21.Mehmet is the Turkish way of saying Muhammad.
He called himself Kayser-i Rûm (“Caesar of Rome”) saying he had a right to the Byzantine throne because he was a descendant of Theodora Kantakouzenos (daughter of the Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos) who in 1346 had been married to Sultan Orhan I (reigned 1326-1361).It is reported that Orhan was passionately in love with Theodora and tried many times to convert her to Islam but failed. She was allowed to continue to practice her faith and when Orhan died she returned to Constantinople.
It was Orhan who created the devshirme system, taking 500,000 or even 1 million children from Christian parents(if they refused they were killed) and forcing them to become Muslim, learn Turkish and become soldiers, and sometimes government officials. The devshirme lasted some 300 years.
Mehmet II,John Hunyadi and Dracula
After capturing Constantinople Mehmet made the Hagia Sophia, the church of Holy Wisdom built by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 500′s AD, into a mosque. But he was not invincible, just like his descendant Suleiman(Solomon),the greatest Ottoman Sultan, was not invincible. Suleiman was defeated at Vienna(1529) and Malta (1565),and his son Selim II was defeated at Lepanto(1571) and later the Turks were defeated at Vienna again in 1683.
In 1456 Mehmet II was defeated in trying to take Belgrade, in Serbia, by John Hunyadi of Hungary and John of Capistrano, a Franciscan friar from Italy. The son of John Hunyadi became the one of the greatest kings of Hungary, called Matthew Corvinus(crow in Latin),whose symbol was the crow. Belgarde was not taken till 1521 due to their bravery.
He was defeated in 1475 by Stephen the Great of Moldavia at the Battle of Vaslui, the Sultan merely waited until the next year. This time he crushed the Moldavians at the Battle of Valea Alba. More progress would have been made had Mehmet not been checked in the mountains of Wallachia by a foe even more determined and just as merciless: the Wallachian prince and one-time vassal of Mehmet, Vlad III Tepes, known to history as Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Dracula.
His Plan for Italy:the Capture of Rome,just like he did to Constantinople
Mehmet announced his intention to invade Italy, capture Rome. He intended to make. St. Peter’s Basilica serve as a stable for the Ottoman cavalry.
Mehmet had been trying to conquer the island of Rhodes, brilliantly defended by the Knights of Rhodes, and ordered a halt. The Turkish army and navy were to sail for Italy. The fleet comprised at least 90 galleys, 15 heavily armed galleasses, and 48 lighter galliots carrying over 18,000 soldiers. Their initial target was the Italian port city of Brindisi, on the southeastern corner of the peninsula along the Adriatic Sea. The city was an ideal choice as it offered a large harbor for the ships. They would capture the port and then advance immediately to Rome.
The Capture of Otranto after 2 Weeks of Resistance
The fleet aided by no resistance by the maritime power of Venice. The Venetians and the Ottoman Empire had been fighting each other now and then for dominance in the eastern Mediterranean and Adriatic since 1423.Then the two powers signed a peace treaty in 1479 that ended hostilities, at least temporarily. The Sultan thus attacked Rhodes and then launched his campaign on Italy without fear of Venice.
The weather did not cooperate and the winds forced the fleet to land not in Brinidisi but some 50 miles to the south, at Roca, near the city of Otranto. The city is located on the “heel” of the Italian “boot.” In 1480, the area was Neapolitan/Aragonese, meaning it was under the control of the united kingdoms of Naples and Aragon. Otranto’s cathedral dated to the late 11th century.
Thousands of Muslim soldiers and sailors began marching toward Otranto, where the garrison of soldiers numbered only around 400. Messengers were sent north to alert the rest of the peninsula of the danger that had arrived from the sea. The castle had no cannons, and the garrison commander knew of the limited supplies and water. The people of Otranto knew of the siege of Constantinople and that when that city fell the Muslims pillaged the city, but the key moment came when they reached Hagia Sophia. After breaking down the church’s bronze gates, they found inside a huge throng of Byzantines who had taken refuge and who were praying that the city might be delivered by some miracle. The Christians were seized and separated according to age and gender. The infants and elderly were brutally murdered; the men, including some of the city’s most prominent senators, were carted off to the slave markets; and the women and girls were taken by soldiers to be raped or sent into a life of slavery.
At Otranto, the terms of the Muslims were ostensibly generous. If the town surrendered, the defenders would be permitted to live. They said no,it was repeated and again it was no. It was the city against 18,000 Muslims and it lasted 2 weeks.
Slaughter, Sacrilege, and Slavery
Turkish troops entered and killed anyone in their path. They made their way to the cathedral. As in the Hagia Sophia, the invaders found the church filled with people praying with Archbishop Stefano Agricoli, Bishop Stephen Pendinelli, and Count Largo, the commander of the soldiers. The Ottomans commanded:
1.The archbishop to throw away his crucifix, abjure the Christian faith, and embrace Islam. When he refused, his head was cut off before the weeping congregation.
2.Bishop Pendinelli and Count Largo likewise would not convert and were also put to death, reportedly by being slowly sawed in half.
3.As was the custom, the priests were murdered and the cathedral was stripped of all Christian symbols and turned into a stable for the horses. The Ottomans then gathered up the surviving people of Otranto and took them as captives.
The people of Otranto faced the same end as the Christians of Constantinople. All of the men over the age of 50 were slaughtered; the women and children under the age of 15 were either slain or sent away to Albania to be slaves. According to some contemporary sources, the total number of dead was as high as 12,000, with another 5,000 pressed into slavery. (These numbers are almost certainly an exaggeration as Otranto did not likely have a population that high.)
800 Men who Survived told to Convert to Islam or Die
The Muslim commander ordered the men of Otranto, 800 survivors of the battle, those who were not over 50 and had not been already killed in battle or later, or were not children and had not be killed or enslaved, to be brought before him. He gave them one chance to convert to Islam or die. To convince them, he instructed an Italian apostate priest named Giovanni to preach. The former priest called on the men of Otranto to abandon the Christian faith, and they would get many benefits.
One of the men of Otranto, a tailor named Antonio Primaldi (he is also named Antonio Pezzulla in some sources), came forward to speak to the survivors. He called out that he was ready to die for Christ a thousand times. He then added, according to the chronicler Giovanni Laggetto in the Historia della guerra di Otranto del 1480:
“My brothers, till today we have fought in defense of our country, to save our lives, and for our lords; now it is time that we fight to save our souls for our Lord, so that having died on the cross for us, it is good that we should die for him, standing firm and constant in the faith, and with this earthly death we will win eternal life and the glory of martyrs.”
At this, the men of Otranto cried out with one voice that they too were willing to die a thousand times for Christ.
The Execution
The next morning, August 14, the 800 prisoners were bound together with ropes. The victims repeated their pledge to be faithful to Christ, and the Ottomans chose the courageous Antonio Primaldi as the first to be executed.
The old tailor gave one final exhortation to his fellow prisoners and knelt before the executioner. The blade fell and decapitated him, but then, as the chronicler Saverio de Marco claimed in the Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini (“The Brief History of the 800 Martyrs of Otranto”), the headless corpse stood back upright. The body supposedly proved unmovable, so it remained standing for the entire duration of the gruesome executions.
Stunned by this apparent miracle, one of the executioners converted on the spot and was immediately killed. The executioners then returned to their horrendous business. The bodies were placed into a mass grave, and the Turks prepared to begin their march to Rome.
The Second Seige of Otranto
The Pope call on others to fight against the Muslims. Hungary, France, and a number of Italian city-states answered the plea. But Venice refused. The king of Naples, Ferdinand I, quickly gathered his forces. The two weeks that were purchased through the sacrifice of the people of Otranto became the key to organizing a response to the invasion. Near the end of August 70 ships of the Ottoman fleet attacked the city of Vieste and destroyed the small church of Santa Maria di Merino and in early September burned the Monastery of San Nicholas di Casole. The monastery’s famed library was reduced to ashes.
In October they Lecce, Taranto, and Brindisi. The Muslim commander had left behind a garrison at Otranto of 800 infantry and 500 cavalry and he knew advance of the Neapolitan forces. He therefore decided to set sail from Italy before the winter storms cut him off completely from all communication with Constantinople. The garrison at Otranto would remain, and the Ottomans would return after the winter with an even larger army.
In early spring 1481 the Neapolitans came with Hungarian troops that had been dispatched by King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, a longtime enemy of the Turks and eager to deliver them a defeat in Italy. They took Otranto. Meanwhile on May 3, 1481, Mehmet II died suddenly at the age of 49, while planning his next war. It was believed that he had been poisoned, perhaps by the Venetians.
Brother killig Brother for the Ottoman Throne
It was the custom among the Ottomans and the Mughals, the 2 most powerful Muslim Empires of their time. You never saw that in Europe ,plus you never saw sex-slavery either by the hundreds or thousands in the courts of European kings.
Mehmet was succeeded in 1481 by his son Bayezid II. The war in Italy ended since he had to fight him own brother Jem(also called Cem) for the throne. The brother was not killed since he fled to Rhodes, which was Christian. Bayezid II is known for accepting many Jews exiled from Spain in 1492.
Bayezid II’s final years saw a succession battle between his sons Selim and Ahmed. Ahmed, the older of the two claimants had won a battle against the Karaman Turks and their Safavid allies in Asia Minor and now marched on Istanbul to exploit his triumph. Fearing for his safety, Selim staged a revolt in Thrace but was defeated by Bayezid and forced to flee to Crimea (1511). At this point, Bayezid II developed fears that Ahmed might in turn kill him to gain the throne and refused to allow his son to enter Istanbul. Selim returned from Crimea and, with support from the Janissaries, defeated and killed Ahmed. Bayezid II then abdicated the throne in 1512.What a beautiful family.
Sources
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2008/0807fea2.asp
https://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Hst/Otranto800Mrtyrs.htm
https://www.thinkpuglia.com/guide-to-puglia/history-of-puglia/the-martyrs-of-otranto.aspx