Juan Luna
Batalla De Lepanto

Surely someone has noticed that even today, at every noon, the bells of nearby churches burst into cheerful chimes. "It's true," you might say, "but who cares??" You can indeed not care and leave it at that, but if not, have you ever wondered why? It seems the custom was consolidated in the 16th century, after the Ottoman fleet was massacred in one of the most epic battles of all time, Lepanto. What was that battle, which Cervantes labeled as “la major jornada que vieron los siglos”? The victory of the Cross over Islam? Not quite. Did it mark the end of the aggressive Ottoman imperialism? Not that either. It wasn't even, not entirely at least, a crusade or a holy war; a terrible expression for us, but which at the time had a different meaning, as different were the sense and feeling of faith.

Let's take it step by step; the painting in question shows us the heart of the battle. That guy standing upright at the top left, with helmet and armor, is Don John of Austria. This man has nothing to do with the famous Molierian seducer, he was of a completely different sort, a noble and romantic knight, the natural son of Emperor Charles V, the most powerful ruler of all time. He is the soul of that victory and managed, in the reckless enthusiasm of his twenty-four years, to unite the different factions of the Christian fleet toward a common goal, namely making the Mediterranean a safe sea again and dealing the Turks an exemplary defeat. Lepanto was indeed the drastic reaction to a state of war that the Turkish, Egyptian, Algerian, and Tunisian pirates, all in the employ of the Sublime Porte, had unleashed against the Spanish and Venetian dominions. The culmination of a series of Ottoman aggressions that had begun a little more than a century earlier, in 1453, when the last bastion of imperial Rome, the “city of pure gold,” had fallen under the blows of Mehmed II's cannons. From then the Ottomans (and it is not accurate to say Turks, because there is quite a difference between the two...) had become “the current terror of the world.” A terror that by the time this Batalla de Lepanto was painted had already faded.

In 1887 the Ottomans are a decadent people, unable to react to changing times and to develop a modern state system, capable of managing the multi-ethnic drives that had been their strength and greatness. In the painting, the Turks are few, confused behind the smoke of the cannons, dominated and crushed by the mass of the Spanish ship that terrifies them and literally throws them into the sea. The Sublime Porte painted by the Filipino Juan Luna, political activist as well as painter, is a sick empire, defeated on the field of history. Western civilization, white and luminous, well-dressed and blessed with the blood of the infidels barely streaking the timber of the ships, triumphs. It was in a sense what happened, but this point of view overlooks many details, annihilates and contaminates the real essence of that struggle, of that clash between two civilizations that completed, interpenetrated, and in a sense understood each other. The painting is a victim of the most common mistake when talking about the past, which is to measure and judge another era by today's standards. Lepanto is important because it was a technical, tactical, religious victory, a unique moment when the divides that were separating the various Catholic powers were set aside for a specific goal that was not dictated by fanaticism or desire for conquest. It was a matter of defending, of protecting a terrified population that had become slaughter fodder and a breeding ground for slaves. And they succeeded.

But the “Grand Turk” didn't die at Lepanto, the plumes of its janissaries would terrorize Europe for at least another two centuries. The end again came from the West, but not the one of Don John, not the one that protected its lands and riches in the name of Christ. It was a progressive and greedy Europe, born from a series of revolutions that had swept away the Renaissance political system from Paris. Jealous of themselves, with no purpose other than world supremacy, the powers required conquests and resources. To obtain them, they used nationalistic pressures, skillfully orchestrated with a hypocritical paternalistic spirit, which dissolved the Empire of the sultans, making it a speck of nations easy prey for Western imperialism. And the results can be witnessed even today, by reading about any conflict in any part of the former Ottoman Empire. Because the reality was that holy war, looting, and at the same time tolerance and extreme social mobility were the strength and the glue of very different populations that managed to coexist.

It's hard to draw conclusions; many more words could be typed. But this serves as just an invitation to be a tad curious. Maybe the bells that ring at noon can help us remember who we were as victors and who they really were, the defeated. And that Don John, in his time, fought for a Europe, and a faith, that were different.