Bogurodzica

A Polish Hymn to the Mother of God

The Battle of Lepanto is one which many Catholics remember because of its relationship to the Rosary and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in obtaining victory for the Holy League over the forces of the Ottoman Empire. But they may be less familiar with a battle which took place over 100 years later, the Battle of Vienna.

Once again the Catholic forces of the Holy Roman Empire, this time led by the Polish, faced the Ottomans. Once again the odds seemed to be in favor of the Ottomans: their soldiers outnumbering those of the Holy League.

In response to the overwhelming circumstances, the soldiers turned to prayer and penance with the assistance of Blessed Marco d’Aviano, a Capuchin friar sent by the pope to assist the soldiers at battle. Blessed Marco encouraged the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I to call for acts of prayer and penance, saying:

“God is armed with scourges because he has been provoked by our sins. We should appease him by humiliations, repentance, and self-denial. Then when our hearts have turned back to God, and when in reparation for the public offenses that are committed against him, we shall have rendered to him the public homage which is due, I am certain that God, though he send afflictions, will not will our desolation.”

He also rebuked the soldiers, encouraging them to the same saying,

“Vienna, Vienna, your love of lax living has prepared for you a grave and imminent chastisement. Convert, and consider well what you are doing O wretched Vienna.”

So the Emperor commanded acts of penance in preparation for the battle. The pope too, Pope Innocent XI joined them in prayer, offering his Lenten observances for their victory.

The morning before battle, Blessed Marco d’Aviano said Mass for the soldiers, encouraged them, and then they sang together the hymn Bogurodzica, a Polish hymn in honor of the Mother of God.

The winged hussars delivered a decisive victory over the Ottomans, with Ottoman forces ultimately fleeing the battlefield. In the end, the Polish King Jan III Sobieski who fought in the battle remarked, “Venimus, Vidimus, Deus vicit” (We came, we saw, God conquered).

The story of the Battle of Vienna shows that it is by commending ourselves to God that we are saved. While we are not fighting this kind of battle today, we might see the time of Lent as a battlefield of a different kind. Spiritually we must fight against temptations to give up on our resolutions, to give in to sin, to refrain from the good works we’ve planned to do. But in this battle too it is by means of prayer that we will conquer; all our strength to do good comes from God alone. To Him, through the Blessed Virgin:

Bogurodzica

Virgin, Mother of God, God-famed Mary!
Ask Thy Son, our Lord, God-named Mary,
To have mercy upon us and hand it over to us!
Kyrie eleison! 

Son of God, for Thy Baptist’s sake,
Hear the voices, fulfill the pleas we make!
Listen to the prayer we say,
For what we ask, give us today:
Life on earth free of vice;
After life: paradise!
Kyrie eleison!