On the blank pages at the back of a 1484 printed missal for the diocese of Kraków, an anonymous fifteenth-century Polish cleric has inscribed an additional text, a votive mass against pagans. Written in red and black ink, the liturgy pleads for divine protection in the face of imminent cataclysm:
Strike from on high, without delay, at these profane dogs the Turks and make them flee across the land and sea, for yours is the power, King of Heaven. Without you we are nothing, without you, we cannot resist…1
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History
