Antemurale Christianitatis

Ferdo Quiquerez, Antemurale Christianitatis (1892)-Croatia is portrayed in a form of a woman that holds a sword and a shield in the form of the Croatian coat of Arms. She stands at the entrance of Europe and guards it from the Turks. Behind her the Dome of St. Peter's Basilical and, among others, Galileo Galilei and Dante Alighieri can be seen.

Mavi Boncuk |

Antemurale Christianitatis (English: Bulwark of Christendom) was a label used for a country defending the frontiers of Christian Europe from the Ottoman Empire.

In the 15th century Pope Pius II, admiring Ottoman–Albanian Wars, waged mainly by Skanderbeg defined Albania as Italy's bastion of Christianity (Latin: Antemurale Christianitatis Italiaeque). The pope himself declared the war to the Ottoman Empire in 1463, but such war was never fought, as the following year he died at Ancona, while still organizing the naval attack on the Ottomans. 

Pope Leo X called Croatia the Antemurale Christianitatis (Croatian: Predziđe kršćanstva) in 1519 in a letter to the Croatian ban Petar Berislavić,[5] given that Croatian soldiers made significant contributions in war against the Ottoman Empire. The advancement of the Ottoman Empire in Europe was stopped in 1593 on Croatian soil (Battle of Sisak), which could be in this sense regarded as a historical gate of European civilization. 

Nevertheless, the Muslim Ottoman Empire occupied part of Croatia from the 15th to the 19th centuries.. However, Pope Leo X wasn't the first that gave Croatia such a title. The nobility of the southern Croatian regions sent a letter to Pope Alexander VI and Roman-German emperor Maximilian I on April 10, 1494 seeking help against the Ottoman attacks. In that letter Croatia was for the first time called bastion and a bulwark of Christianity.

When Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, Pope Callistus III urged all Christians to the Crusades. Many Croats, led by Saint John of Capistrano, were part of the army that defeated 150,000 Turks at the Siege of Belgrade in 1456.

When Belgrade was conquered by the Turks in 1521 many Croatian writers and diplomats pointed out dramatic situation stating that Belgrade was the bastion of Christianity, the key to Europe and the fortress of the entire Kingdom of Hungary. In the following year, German Parliament in Nuremberg called Croatia Zwingermaurer (Fortress) and the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg said that "chivalrous Christian nation of Croats is standing as a shield in front of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and the whole of Central Europe and Western Christendom." At the session, Prince Bernardin Frankopan asked for help, recalling that "Croatia is a shield and door of Christianity"