Via Antonio Primaldo

Antonio Pezzulla was the first man from Otranto to be beheaded by the executioner Berlabei following the Turkish invasion of 1480. Before the execution, he spoke and declared that all his companions believed in Jesus Christ and would rather lose their lives a thousand times than deny Him

Tradition holds that he remained standing without his head until the last of his companions fell to the ground. Witnessing this extraordinary event, Berlabei converted to Christianity and was impaled together with the Martyrs of Otranto.

The canon Bernardino de Alessandro, the first of the ten witnesses called to testify in the “First Otranto Canonical Trial” of 1539, reported that “one of them, rather old, turning to all the others, spoke words of exhortation: ‘My sons and my brothers, this is the day we owe to Christ. Let each one, for His love, endure patiently and with good courage, for we shall receive the crown of martyrdom.’”

In the same trial, the two fellow citizens of Otranto, Giovanni Leondario and Giovanni Longo, eyewitnesses to the events, recalled him by the name of Master Grimaldo, of advanced age and with the profession of shoemaker. In versions closer to Laggetto’s original text, he was identified as Antonio Grimaldo, a “cloth shearer,” later transformed into the name Antonio Primaldo.