ANTONIO PRIMALDO (GRIMALDO) AND COMPANIONS, blessed, martyrs. — Gedik Ahmed Pasha, admiral of the fleet of Mohammed II, having conquered Otranto, put to death on the nearby hill of Minerva, on 14 August 1480, about 800 inhabitants out of hatred for the faith. The first to be killed was the elderly Antonio Primaldo or Grimaldo, a cloth shearer or tailor, who with ardent words urged his fellow citizens to die for Christ.
The following year the bodies of these martyrs were transferred to the Cathedral and became the object of popular veneration, so much so that in 1539 the ordinary process for their beatification was begun. Their cult was recognized by Clement XIV on 14 December 1771.
BIBL.: G. M. Laghetto, Historia dello Guerra di Otranto del 1490, edited by L. Muscari, Glatina 1940 (the author’s father is its precapua source); Acta SS. Augusti, III, Antwerp 1737, pp. 179–98, with extracts from the ordinary process of 1490.
A. Pietro Frutaz