The patrons of Otranto are Saint Antonio Primaldo and his companions, the martyrs of Otranto, and their date is 14 August.
It is the exact date of what they commemorate. The Turks took the town on 11 August 1480, slaughtering the population; three days later some eight hundred male prisoners were beheaded for refusing to renounce the Christian faith. The same sack destroyed the monastery of San Nicola di Casole, where Basilian monks had assembled the largest library in the West of that time.