Pirate ships Kahir-Ad-Din they appear in front of the Gulf of Salerno to lay waste to the city, strip it of its treasures and take as many prisoners as possible. That day the sky is clear, the calm sea, not a breath of wind disturbs the peace. Many people from Salerno, aware of the looming danger, run to arms, in the hope of resisting the invaders, others, knowing the fame of the cruelty of Khair-Ad-Din, better known by the name of Ariadeno Barbarossabecause of his long tawny beard, they flee, dispersing in the nearby countryside, others still flock to the Cathedral to implore the intervention of Saint Matthewelected patron saint of Salerno in the distant 954, when the monk Athanasius, under the ruins of the oratory of Velia, found, hidden in the altar by a marble, the relics of the evangelist.
The pirates are now about to land when suddenly a wind and water storm hits the gulf. The ships can no longer hold anchor and many of them sink when they collide. Others are dispersed in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The people see in the salvation of the city divine intervention of San Matteo. The people of Salerno, as a sign of gratitude, decide to add the effigy of San Matteo to the city’s coat of arms and still today every 21st August in the atrium of the Cathedral the‘”raising of the cloth”an unframed canvas painting depicting the evangelist with the writing underneath: “Salerno is mine and I defend it”.
So far the historian’s story of popular traditions Fernando Dentoni Litta. In more or less recent times the figure of Barbarossa has been rehabilitated, he would not have been a pirate, at least in that era he wasn’t one, perhaps he had been, but an Ottoman admiral, among the greatest leaders of the time. When he appears with his ships in the Gulf of Salerno he is supreme commander of the Turkish military fleet with undoubted strategic and military capabilities.
