Optional Memorial of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary

In 1683, the Ottoman Empire, under Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha Pasha, laid siege to Vienna, threatening to break through into Central Europe. By September of that year, the city of Vienna had been besieged by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire for two months. The defenders were vastly outnumbered — about 81,000 defenders against 130,000 Ottoman troops.

On September 12, 1683 a relief effort resuted in battle that was fought by the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarchy) and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth along with allied forces from Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Baden, and Bavariaboth under the command of King John III Sobieski of Poland, against the Ottomans and their vassal states.

On the morning of September 12, Sobieski heard Mass on the Kahlenberg heights above Vienna before leading a decisive cavalry charge — the famed Winged Hussars — that shattered the Ottoman lines. Prior to the Battle, the king had gone to pray at the Jasna Gora monastery for the intercession of Our Lady of Czestochowa before the battle.

The victory halted the Ottoman advance and marked a turning point in European history.

Pope Innocent XI instituted the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary in 1684 (some sources note 1683) as a universal thanksgiving for the deliverance of Vienna. The feast was later removed from the General Roman Calendar after Vatican II but was restored by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

The feast honors the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the power of invoking her name. It parallels the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus on January 3.

The battle marked the first time the Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire had cooperated militarily against the Ottomans. The defeat was a turning point for Ottoman expansion into Europe, after which they would gain no further ground.

The decisive Christian victory led to the subsequent Habsburg reconquest of Hungary and the Balkans, establishing the Habsburgs as a dominant Central European power and initiating a long period of Ottoman retreat and territorial loss, formalized by the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699.

Pope Innocent XI extended the feast to the universal Church in thanksgiving (initially assigned to the Sunday within the octave of the Nativity of Mary). Pope Pius X later fixed it on September 12 itself. It was removed from the General Roman Calendar in the post-Vatican II reforms (as somewhat duplicative of the Nativity feast) but remained in the Roman Martyrology.

Pope John Paul II restored it as an optional memorial in the third typical edition of the Roman Missal (2002).