CBJ-Today, October 7th, is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a feast instituted in the 16th century in gratitude for one of the most remarkable, seemingly unlikely turn of events in human history—the Battle of Lepanto. Below please read a recounting of that battle culled from history and highlighting G.K. Chesterton's poem, Lepanto. (We at CBJ highly encourage you to read Chesterton's poem for yourself of course-- and provide a link at the end--but this article helps frame the history of the moment, which will give greater context to the reading of the poem ) Crisis-—On Sunday, October 7th, in the year of Our Lord 1571, an outnumbered, fragile coalition of small Christian states and one small part of a big Christian state defeated an empire at sea just off the coast of Greece. All of Europe rejoiced at the time, even the Christian states that refused help. Now, among the shards and remnants of that civilization which is called the West and extends far beyond Europe, the doubtful heirs reflect upon this event in more diverse and more ambiguous ways. The predominant mode is to ignore it, in the modern sense of acknowledging it on Wikipedia and then rejecting its importance, hand-waving away its unexpectedness, and belittling the idea that Our Lady of the Rosary had anything to do with it. Another approach takes the event seriously as a landmark in the history of warfare, of economics, and of the West, but still leaves Our Lady out in their attempts at explanation. Our Lady's touch And finally, there are those who see it...
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