Lecture 18: 1571 Lepanto—Last Gasp of the Galleys

1571 Lepanto—Last Gasp of the Galleys.......................................

Lecture 18

B

y the 16th century, an annual ceremony held in the lagoon of Venice

had become a spectacular maritime festival. The focal point of

the ritual was the Bucentaur, the royal state galley of the Venetian

Republic. Once this ship was launched, the doge of Venice held aloft a

golden ring and solemnly pronounced the union of the city and the sea. This

odd wedding ceremony symbolized the association between the prosperity

of the Venetian Republic and its control over the Mediterranean. In earlier

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but by the mid-16th century, the ritual had become tinged with apprehension

brought on by a new and terrifying Islamic power: the Ottoman Turks.

The Opponents

x The Turks had burst out of Anatolia, toppling the once-mighty

Byzantine Empire and capturing the great city of Constantinople

in 1453. Led by contingents of elite Janissary warriors, Ottoman

Turkish armies had beaten Persia, overrun the entire eastern

Mediterranean, and then moved onto the sea, snapping up island

after island and fortress after fortress. Dozens of Venetian outposts

in the eastern Mediterranean were pillaged or captured.

x The remaining major outpost of Christendom in the eastern

Mediterranean was the island of Cyprus, held by the Venetians,

and in 1570, the Ottomans turned their attention to it. The threat to

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Mediterranean band together to try to stop the Turks.

x The Battle of Lepanto, the largest naval battle of the Renaissance,

was a cataclysmic struggle that pitted the seemingly unstoppable

Ottoman Turks against a desperate Christian naval coalition that

included the Venetians, the pope, the Knights of Malta, and Spain.