Above Image: After 20 year of raffles, spaghetti dinners and beauty pageants, Italian-Americans in Atlantic City raised enough money to make and erect this statue of Columbus near St. Michael’s Church and their Ducktown neighborhood of Atlantic City, NJ held raffles, spaghetti dinners, beauty pageants to, and other events to pay for this statue near St. Michael’s Church and their Ducktown neighborhood. City officials and the NJ Casino Reinvestment and Development Authority removed it on July 1, 2020 after Black Lives Matter and other leftist groups vandalized and destroyed similar statues in other cities.
Columbus discovered America on this day, October 12, in 1492. An often forgotten result of this event is that Christianity and Western Civilization were saved. Columbus himself probably knew this. That is probably why he named the first island he discovered “San Salvador” or Holy Savior.
Just before 1492, Christianity and Western Civilization were on the verge of collapse. This was because of the stunning Islamic conquests that happened during the previous 800 years.
In just ten years, between 622AD and 642AD Muhammed and his “companions” conquered the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Egypt, Jerusalem and most of the Middle East. During the next hundred years, their followers conquered and occupied roughly two-thirds of the Christian world and most of India. Their empire stretched from Morocco, Spain and Portugal on the Atlantic Ocean to India.
After about 300 years of crushing defeats, Christians in Europe began to push back. From the 1000s to the 1200s, they fought Crusades to protect Christian minorities and holy places in Palestine. Christians then reconquered Spain and Portugal. However, during the 1300s, the Ottoman Turks took up the banner of Jihad and continued the Muslim expansion.
During the 1300s, those Ottoman Turks conquer most of the Greek (Byzantine) Empire. That includes what is now Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria. In 1389, the Turks conquered Serbia after the Battle of Kosovo. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks completely destroyed the last remnants of Greek (Byzantine Empire) by taking its capital of Constantinople. That great city is now known as Istanbul. The Turks also turned the “Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the world’s largest Christian church, into a mosque.
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 is one of the most significant events in European history. This event triggered European exploration of the Atlantic Ocean and their discovery of America. However, this event is not even mentioned in “Enduring Vision”, the US History textbook used in many US colleges and high schools.
The fall of Constantinople was a catastrophic and psychologically devastating defeat. It ruined economies in much of Europe. Europe was denied access to the “Silk Road” to China. Christian ships could no longer sail safely anywhere in the Mediterranean Sea. Columbus and a whole generation of Italian merchants and sea captains were forced to flee to Spain, Portugal, France, and England. They found it safer to sail in the stormy, unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean, than along the calm, well-charted trade routes of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Ottoman Turks saw their conquest of Constantinople as proof that Allah wanted Muslims to rule the world. They also saw it as proof that they were destined to take control of the Islamic world away from the Arabs.
In 1512, the Ottoman Turkish rulers or Sultans, made themselves the undisputed “Caliphs” or rulers of the entire Islamic world. The Ottoman Turks seized Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, Damascus in Syria, and the holy Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina in Arabia.
As Caliphs of the entire Islamic world and rulers of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan’s of Turkey seemed about to finish the conquest of “Rome” or Christian Europe that Mohammad himself had started roughly 800 years before. In 1522, the Ottoman Turks tightened their control of the Mediterranean by conquering the Christian island-fortress of Rhodes, Greece. In 1528, the Ottoman Turks conquered Hungary. During that same year, they and their “Barbary Coast” allies defeated Spain on land and sea near Algeria.
During that previous 200 years, from the early 1300s to the early 1500s, Ottoman Turk armies and navies consistently outnumbered and outgunned Christian defenders on land and sea. Christians suffered defeat after defeat with no end in sight. The Turkish Sultans openly bragged that they would soon conquer Rome in Italy and do to St. Peters they had done to the Haggia Sophia Church in Constantinople in 1453.
All that changed soon after Columbus discovered America. Spain and much of Europe quickly became wealthy from the gold and silver they found in America, along with their new ways to reach China and the spice islands of the East Indies by sea. It also made the Ottoman Turks poor. Fewer Europeans paid them taxes, tribute and protection money to pass through waters and territory they controlled to reach China and the East.
Spain and its sea-faring and merchant allies then donated much of their wealth to help the Catholic Church defend Christian Europe from the Ottoman Turks.
In 1571, Pope Pius V formed a new alliance of Christian nations called the “Holy League”. It began with Spain, Austria, and most of Italy. They were later joined by Poland, several German states, Croatia, Serbia, and Romania.
Pope Pius spent much of the wealth from America to build hundreds of the most modern and best equipped warships in the world. He also paid, fed, and equipped thousands of Christian soldiers and sailors.
Polish King Jan Sobieski used giant cannons like these to drive Turkish invaders away from Vienna, Austria, on September 12, 1683. Those cannons were given to Poland by Pope Innocent XI with wealth from Spain. Spain obtained this wealth from lands and trade routes discovered by Columbus.
The Pope’s leadership plus massive new wealth from America quickly changed everything. In 1571, a Holy League fleet destroyed a massive Turkish fleet near the Greek port city of Lepanto. In 1593, their armies defeated the Turks in Croatia and Serbia. In 1683, Holy League armies stopped the Turks outside the walls of Vienna Austria. Christian armies paid and equipped with wealth from America then drove the Turks out of Poland, Hungry, Croatia, Serbia, and the rest of Austria.
Statue of Richard Somers and Mural of Important Events in His Life in Somers Point, New Jersey. The “Barbary Pirates” he fought in 1804 had been attacking, robbing, and enslaving Christians since North Africa was conquered by followers of the Prophet roughly 1300 years ago.
Ironically, the Mediterranean Sea did not become completely free from Turkish attacks until the more than 200 years later. That was when the navy of the newly formed United States of America defeated the Muslim sea fighters of North Africa during the “Barbary Wars” of 1801-1805. Richard Somers of Somers Point, New Jersey, was a hero in that war. For years, those “Barbary Pirates” supplied the Turkish Sultans with wealth and slaves they captured by attacking Christian ships.
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Seth Grossman, Executive Director
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