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The 16th century in Europe's history was when its inhabitants once again faced the threat of Muslim armies. This time the aggressor is Turkey, which has just reached the peak of its power and is looking more and more greedily at the countries in the northern part of the Mediterranean. The growing threat from it reached its climax in the early 1670s, when Pius V, a Dominican, was pope.
Faced with the risk that the State of the Church would turn into a province of the Ottoman Empire, the pope took political action: he established the Holy League, began to collect troops and money for their maintenance, and thought about strategy. However, he did not neglect the spiritual side and reached for a measure proven by hundreds of years of practice in his order – he addressed the whole Church with a call to pray the rosary in the intention of the victory of Christians.
The day of the decisive battle fell on October 7, 1571, the first Sunday of the month – the day that the Dominicans celebrated as the remembrance of Mary, Queen of the Rosary. At Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth, two powerful naval armies faced each other, and the Pope and the faithful fell to their knees with rosaries in their hands.
During the prayer, Pius V had a vision in which he saw the bay where the battle was taking place, and above it Mary looking calmly at the struggle. Our Lady assured the Pope of victory. And indeed – no sooner had the battle begun than the wind unfavourable to the armies of the Holy League died down. The outnumbered Turkish ships were scattered, only a small number of them managed to escape. The blow was so strong that the Turkish fleet never regained its glory.
To commemorate this event, Pius V established the remembrance of Our Lady of Victory on October 7, and two years later Pope Gregory XIII designated the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on the first Sunday of October. This concerned only the territories of the State of the Church, until in the eighteenth century, Clement XI, in gratitude for the defeat of the Truks near Belgrade, extended this feast to the entire Church. In the twentieth century, as part of the liturgical reform, Pius X moved the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary to October 7.
A few dozen years earlier, in 1883, Leo XIII ordered the invocation 'Queen of the Rosary' to be inscribed in the Litany of Loreto. He also, two years later, ordered that the Rosary be prayed every day throughout October. And so the Dominican way of defeating the enemy became a tactic known throughout the Church. Known and highly valued.
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