Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Early Images of the Turk and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1520
- 2 Military Images of the Turk and the Conflicts of the Sixteenth Century
- 3 Biblical Images of the Turk: The Apocalyptic and the Exotic
- 4 Travellers' Tales and Images of the Ottoman Empire and Court of Constantinople
- 5 Ottoman Dress in Sixteenth-Century German Printed Costume Books
- 6 Genealogies, Histories, Cosmographies: Encyclopaedic Images of the Turk
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Introduction
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Early Images of the Turk and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1520
- 2 Military Images of the Turk and the Conflicts of the Sixteenth Century
- 3 Biblical Images of the Turk: The Apocalyptic and the Exotic
- 4 Travellers' Tales and Images of the Ottoman Empire and Court of Constantinople
- 5 Ottoman Dress in Sixteenth-Century German Printed Costume Books
- 6 Genealogies, Histories, Cosmographies: Encyclopaedic Images of the Turk
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Oh Lord God on the highest throne
Look at this great misery
The Turkish raging Turkish tyrant
Has carried out in Vienna Woods
Murdering virgins and wives
Cutting children in half
And impaling them on pikes
Oh our shepherd Jesus Christ
You who are gracious and merciful
Turn your wrath away from the people
Save us from the hand of the Turk.
Erhard Schoen's 1530 broadsheet illustration Turkish Atrocities in Vienna Woods (Figure I.1) is among the most iconic representations of the direct military threat to innocent civilians by the Ottoman forces during the 1529 Siege of Vienna. The accompanying Hans Sachs poem further strengthens the message of the print that the Ottoman Turkish army was considered a foreign enemy without morals or scruples. The woodcut depicts two Turkish soldiers wading through a mound of bodies of slain women and babies impaled on spikes, thereby showing the wrath of God as well as the direct danger Turkish soldiers posed to the most innocent members of society. The location in the woods just outside Vienna further indicates just how far the Ottoman Empire had expanded into Christian Europe. This woodcut shows some of the complex and varied attitudes of early modern European society as it was confronted with the perpetual threat of religious and territorial war and with exposure to an alien and traditionally enemy culture.
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- Information
- Images of Islam, 1453–1600Turks in Germany and Central Europe, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014