The Festival of the Holy Name of the Virgin Mary
Pope Innocent XI extended this feast to the universal Church as a solemn thanksgiving for the relief of Vienna, when it was besieged by the Turks in 1683.
The Turks had formerly laid siege to Vienna, under Solyman the Magnificent, in 1529, in the reign of Charles V. But after losing sixty thousand men, and lying a month before the place, without making any considerable advances against it, they raised the siege.
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
The danger was much more formidable when those infidels made a second attempt upon this bulwark of Germany, in the reign of the Emperor Leopold. Great part of Hungary having taken up arms against that prince, the revolted cities were reduced to his obedience, and the ringleaders, the Counts Nadasti and Serini, with Christopher Frangipani, were beheaded in 1671. Count Serini had in view to make himself sovereign of Hungary, and his son-in-law, Prince Ragotzi of Transylvania. The flame of this rebellion was only covered, not extinguished, by these executions; it soon broke out again, and Emeric, count Tekeli, who had married Ragotzi’s daughter, at the head of thirty thousand good troops, carried all before him; and the better to stand his ground, invited the Turks into Hungary, Cara Mustapha being then Grand Vizier under Sultan Mahomet IV. The opportunity was embraced by the infidels; and on the 2nd of January, 1683, the fatal horse-tails, the usual ensigns of an ensuing war, were seen upon the gates of the seraglio at Adrianople, and the whole Ottoman empire was in motion, to carry fire and sword into the bosom of the German empire.
Kara Mustafa Pasha
The vizier with great expedition marched through Hungary at the head of a mighty army, meeting with no opposition till he came to Raab or Javarin, a small strong town in Lower Hungary, on his road towards Vienna. This place he despised, and leaving it behind him, in the month of July, came within sight of the capital of Austria. At the view of the fire kindled in the camp of the Tartars on both sides of the Danube, the emperor, in the utmost consternation, yielding to the earnest entreaties of his generals, quitted Vienna with his empress, who was six months gone with child, and retreated with the greatest precipitation, without carrying with him either furniture, money, or jewels. The court narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the Tartars; the emperor retired first to Lintz, and finding himself not safe there, fled with equal precipitation to Passaw. In this flight the empress and her ladies were obliged to pass a whole night in a forest, where nothing but a truss of straw could be procured, and this not without difficulty, to lay Her Majesty upon. Tekeli joined the Turkish army with forty thousand men, and was master of Buda, and almost all Hungary.
