ABSTRACT
The war against the Turks at the end of the seventeenth century was of particular importance from the point of view of the development of the information media in Italy. Never before had military events continuously held the breath of entire cities, while bands of writers of various sorts sought to satisfy a curiosity that seemed limitless. There had been similar episodes in the past. In the sixteenth century the battle of Lepanto had inflamed popular enthusiasms. The seventeenth century, the Iron Century par excellence, had seen experimentation with new information systems that had brought the echo of military events into the centres of every city of Europe. But the war against the Ottoman Empire that followed the liberation of Vienna from 1683 had a far greater resonance in Italy, no doubt at least in part because the news was constantly good, and in part because a broad Christian coalition had been organized against the ‘universal enemy.’
