July 23, 1456 (Slankamen)
This second letter from Capistrano, discovered only in the twentieth century, was composed only a day after the first letter. It was written in Slankamen, a town on the south bank of the Danube roughly a day’s journey (some thirty miles or fifty kilometers) northwest of Belgrade. The letter offers more detail and context than the first, including more about Capistrano’s own role, which has been disputed from the day of the battle itself. Capistrano also notes that he will send by way of the emissary Jerome of Padua a “certain noble boy of Bosnia,” who will bear witness to the outcome of the battle in person.
Source: Trans. J. Mixson, from Luke Wadding, ed., Annales minorum, 3rd ed. (Quaracchi, 1932), 12: 796. The letter was originally discovered by Michael Bihl in a manuscript in the Benedictine abbey of Salzburg (Salzburg, Erzabtei St. Peter, Benediktinerstift, Bibliothek, b XI 19).
Most blessed father, a kiss before your feet, and humble and devout obedience unto death. What praises and acts of grace we offer to almighty God and to our Lord Jesus Christ, by the invocation of whose name he has seen fit to give to us this, his glorious victory. Oh, most blessed father, if Your Holiness could have seen it with your own eyes, how many dangers, and how great, from which the Most High delivered the Christian people, I think there is no way Your Holiness could consider it all without coming to tears.
The most treacherous pagan Turks destroyed the walls, towers, and buildings of the fortress that was a first line of defense, meant to deter the invasion not only of the glorious kingdom of Hungary, but indeed of all Christendom. Now the Turks climbed through walls destroyed by siege engines and cannons. They breached the outer walls, lest I exaggerate, through perhaps thirty holes, after which they then worked to fill in the rampart and the moat surrounding the fortress of Belgrade. Having done this, they were more easily able to climb the destroyed towers and walls. They did as much as God allowed, and thus brought down great judgment upon themselves. They climbed their way into the fortress and thought that they could take it with their diabolical machines and inventions. But Christ Jesus our Lord, with his customary piety and mercy, protected us; I would say nothing but that they were hardly able to harm us, and many thousands of their number were killed. I counted forty-four [Turkish] galleys in the first of our attacks, all of which were destroyed by the same treacherous Turks, who set them on fire. But there were, as we later found out, sixty-four; all told, we had some twenty in hand. We had overcome ten in the first conflict of your crusade, three of which survive of the larger kind, and two of the smaller. And what would I say to Your Holiness regarding their land forces which, as those who fled from them now claim, numbered over one hundred thousand soldiers? Still others say that there were over 120,000. Oh, most blessed father, how great is the strength of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Since no one else arrived who could serve as a regent for Your Holiness, it fell to me alone to motivate the troops, to direct the battle line, and lead them to take up a strong position in the face of the Turks. I advised, and at first often instructed our troops, like a Joshua working among the ruins of the walls of Jericho, so that with my cries as I invoked the most holy name, all could cry “Jesus!” together in the loudest voice.1 And so it was, most blessed father, that when I had gathered together what was no small number, and when I first began to cry “Jesus!” all responded to my voice – even if we could not easily attack the enemies of Christ, because we could not easily cross the Sava River (which stood between us) without the aid of small ships. When those enemies of Christ heard our loud voices and our resounding cries, those wicked and cursed ones, though no one pursued them, were for the first time put to flight. Our Lord and God Jesus Christ rose up, and his “enemies were scattered”; “as the smoke vanishes,” his enemies vanished, and “as wax melts before the fire,” so his enemies perished before the face of God.2
O most blessed father, how could all the people of the Christian religion be enough to return thanks and worthy praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone, for his cause and for our protection, fought and drove out and destroyed the army of the Great Turk with such confusion and memorable shame, so that forever, as long as the present age will last, such a glorious victory of Christ Jesus will never cease to be on the lips of all Christians.
Hindered by many things, holy father, and tangled in the difficult business of the matters assigned to me by Your Holiness, I am not able to give a thorough account of all of these events. But note that I am sending the noble man Jerome of Padua to the feet of Your Holiness, who will present to Your Blessedness, as a testimony to this victory, a certain noble boy of Bosnia, who was carried to the Turks in his mother’s womb and raised up in their royal court. He is of good character and prudent disposition, and he will tell Your Holiness many things concerning the status of the Great Turk and his present ruin. I commend them, both the one presenting and the one presented, to Your Blessedness. And although I, a weak little worm at your feet, am unworthy and undeserving of your grace and of the opportunities you have afforded me, nevertheless with Abraham’s reverent humility, I might speak to you and ask you, my lord, insofar as it please Your Holiness, to support me with greater authority, at least insofar as it pertains to the salvation of souls and the protection of the Christian faith, for the glory and the honor of that name “which is above every name,”3 Christ Jesus. May he see fit, happily, to long maintain Your Holiness within his holy church.
From Slankamen on the twenty-third day of July, 1456, after the flight of the Great Turk, against whom the Almighty saw fit to grant us victory on the previous day, that is, on the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, in a fight that was terrible and terrifying in every way. Let all Christians give thanks to God. Concerning the thirty-two cannons of the great and diabolical Turk, I hold it as certain that we have captured nearly all of them. After my departure from the site of the victory, as we came to meet the most reverend lord legate [Juan Carvajal], the illustrious lord governor John [Hunyadi] wrote to me that with certainty half of the army of the Great Turk had been destroyed.
1 Cf. Joshua 6:1–27.
2 Cf. Psalm 67 (68).
3 Philippians 2:9.