[1]The siege of Otranto, with the martyrdom of its inhabitants, was the last significant military attempt by a Muslim force to conquer southern Italy.

The slaughter was remembered by historians of the Risorgimento like Girolamo Arnaldi and Alfonso Scirocco as a milestone in European history[2] because the sacrifice had the consequence that the Italian Peninsula was never conquered by Muslim troops.

[4] On 28 July 1480, an Ottoman force, which was commanded by Gedik Ahmed Pasha, consisting of 90 galleys, 40 galiots and other ships and carrying a total of around 150 crew and 18,000 troops, landed beneath the walls of Otranto.

The garrison and all of the townsfolk thus abandoned the main part of the city on 29 July and retreated into the citadel, and the Ottomans began bombarding the neighboring houses.

According to accounts of the story chronicled by Giovanni Laggetto and Saverio de Marco, the Ottomans promised clemency if the city capitulated but were informed that it would never surrender.

A second Ottoman messenger was sent to repeat the offer but "was slain with arrows and an Otranto guardsman flung the keys of the city into the sea".

The remaining fifty soldiers fought alongside the citizenry and dumped boiling oil and water onto the Ottomans who were trying to scale the ramparts between the cannonades.

Upon reaching the cathedral, "they found Archbishop Stefano Agricolo, fully vested and crucifix in hand", who was awaiting them with Count Francesco Largo.

One Muslim executioner, who the chroniclers state was an Ottoman officer, called Bersabei, witnessed that and is said to have converted on the spot and to have been impaled immediately by his fellows for doing so.

In 1930 Monsignor Cornelio Sebastiano Cuccarollo, O.F.M., was made archbishop of Otranto, and as a sign of affection and recognition to his old diocese, he gave some of the relics to the Sanctuary of Santa Maria di Valleverde in Bovino, where he had been bishop from 1923 to 1930, and they are now in the crypt of its new basilica.

On 6 July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree recognising that Primaldo and his fellow townsfolk had been killed "out of hatred for their faith".

[16] After deciphering documents in the state archives at Modena, the author Daniele Palma suggests the executions were the result of failed diplomacy.