Thank you for being a Member of this Channel! On September 11, 1683, the largest army on earth was one mine away from taking Vienna — and the men sent to stop it spent the next morning at Mass.
The true story behind the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, told the old-school Paul Harvey way: a friar in sandals, a Polish king with gout, and the Queen of Heaven.

Joe McClane tells the story of the relief of Vienna as most of us never heard it. Kara Mustafa Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, arrives on July 14, 1683 with an army of 150,000 and a boast that he will stable his horses in St. Peter's. Emperor Leopold flees. Fifteen thousand men hold walls the Turkish engineers have been blowing up from underneath for two months. Half of Germany is Protestant and in no hurry to bleed for a Catholic emperor; Louis XIV of France takes the opportunity to attack the Netherlands. A Capuchin friar, Blessed Marco d'Aviano, sent by Pope Innocent XI, walks tent to tent and shames the princes of Europe into acting like Christians again. And in Kraków, King Jan III Sobieski — 54, overweight, gout so bad he can barely stand — goes not to his generals but to Częstochowa, kneels before the Black Madonna, and puts his sword, his army and himself under her mantle. He marches out on the Assumption. On the night of September 11 the Christian army lights bonfires on the Kahlenberg above the Ottoman camp. Before dawn on the 12th, in the ruins of a burned church, the friar says Sunday Mass and the King of Poland serves it. Then 18,000 horsemen — 3,000 Winged Hussars at the front — come down the mountain singing the Bogurodzica. Their battle cry is her name. It is over in an hour. Sobieski writes to the Pope: Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit. And the rest of the story — why Innocent XI named a feast instead of a hero, who took it off the calendar in 1969, and which Archbishop of Kraków walked past Sobieski's tomb for fourteen years before he put it back — is the reason September 12 is on your calendar at all.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Why September 11? Islam's long memory and the year 1683
0:54 Welcome to A Catholic Take
1:30 A feast most of us walked right past
2:12 July 14, 1683: 150,000 men at the gates of Vienna
2:46 The emperor flees; 15,000 hold the walls
3:36 A divided Christendom: Luther's Germany and Louis XIV
4:04 A friar in sandals and Pope Innocent XI
4:36 The Lion of Poland kneels at Częstochowa
5:28 Marching out on the Assumption: the Winged Hussars
6:32 Over the mountains to the Kahlenberg
7:05 The part the History Channel skips: Mass on the mountain
8:13 "Some trust in chariots" — Psalm 19
8:42 September 12, 6 PM: the largest cavalry charge in history
9:37 "Jesu, Maria!" — over in an hour
10:06 Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit
10:30 The rest of the story: a feast for the whole Church
11:14 1969: taken off the calendar
11:28 A crypt in Kraków and a priest named Wojtyła
12:19 Genesis 3:15 — she shall crush thy head
12:38 Europe today: no Sobieski is coming
13:22 Trust in the Holy Name of Mary

SCRIPTURE (Douay-Rheims)
Psalm 19:8 — "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God."
Genesis 3:15 — "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."
Judith 15:10 — "Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honour of our people."

REFERENCED
Feast of the Holy Name of Mary — Catholic Encyclopedia: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07254a.htm
Pope Innocent XI extended the feast to the universal Church in thanksgiving for the victory (1683/84); it was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 and restored by Pope St. John Paul II in 2002.
Blessed Marco d'Aviano, O.F.M. Cap. (1631–1699), beatified by John Paul II on April 27, 2003.
King Jan III Sobieski's dispatch to Pope Innocent XI after the battle: "Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit."

Most Holy Name of Mary, pray for us.

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