Antonio Primaldo — the chroniclers call him Primaldo or Pezzulla — was an elderly tailor of Otranto, a working man of no rank, learning, or office. History would never have recorded his name at all had the Ottoman army of Gedik Ahmed Pasha not taken his city in August 1480 and offered its surviving men a single choice: embrace Islam, or die.
It was the old tailor who stood up to answer for the eight hundred. The accounts preserve the sense of his words: they held Jesus Christ for the Son of God, and as He had died for them, so they were ready to die for Him — 'it is time for us,' he told his companions, 'to fight for our souls.' On August 14, on the Hill of Minerva above the city, the prisoners were beheaded one by one, Primaldo first. The tradition cherished at Otranto holds that his headless body stood upright at the block, unmovable, until the last of his companions had died.
His name stands for all of them: of the 813 canonized by Pope Francis in 2013 — the largest canonization in the history of the Church — his is the only name history kept. The company is inscribed in the register of the saints as 'Antonio Primaldo and companions.' Their bones line the glass reliquary walls of the Chapel of the Martyrs in Otranto Cathedral, and the hill where they died bears the name Hill of the Martyrs to this day.