![]() It opens with the motivation that led the author to consult the stars, those bearers of information about kings and empires: This document was anonymous, like the handwritten avvisi. This was the case of a handwritten document in French that had wide circulation in Paris at the end of July 1683, and that on 3 August 1683 received an Italian translation by a correspondent of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in France In the summer of 1683, for instance, a series of news sheets circulated in Italy and Europe, whose aim was to predict the outcomes of the struggle with the Ottoman enemy through an accurate reading of the stars, the signs of the Zodiac, as well as through supernatural events. There were also other media outlets circulating their material along the postal routes, and these were no less important or informative than the afore-mentioned documents. ![]() However, the informative material spreading throughout Europe during the crucial days of the siege of Vienna included not only gazettes, avvisi and dispatches. The Florentine documents clearly show that the dissemination of news, to and from Vienna, was one of the main advantages the Emperor Leopold I had over Grand Vizier Kara Mustaphà. ![]() One element that has perhaps been underestimated, though, is the live reporting of the events, which we might call the "siege chronicle ".Īn analysis of news distribution in the Holy Roman Empire and Italian Peninsula is one of the clearest methods of fully grasping the historical value of the siege. The siege as an event has already been widely covered by historians in the 20th century, with authors such as John Stoye and Franco Cardini providing various perspectives on the siege, from the purely military, to its societal aspects. Handwritten avvisi and gazettes explored the event in all its aspects, recounting not only the most intense moments of the battles, but also the preparations, the anxieties and worries of the Christian world that saw its faith and welfare threatened by the advance of the “infidel army”. Regarded as a real turning point in European history, the Siege represented not only a fundamental pushback at growing Ottoman hegemony on European soil, but also a renewed awareness of Christian forces. Jan Matejko (1883), The Polish King Jan Sobieski III sends the victory announcement to the Pope, Oil on canvas, Musei Vaticani Galleria Sobieski ![]()
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