In 1598, the Venetian Lazzaro Soranzo published a treatise deeply inspired by the renewed spirit of crusade by Pope Clement VIII - at whose court he worked as a clerk - with the explicit aim of suggesting all possible ways to definitively defeat the Ottomans. In L'Ottomanno, Soranzo argues that, before attacking Hungary and thus starting the Long Turkish War (1593-1606), the Ottomans had thought of waging war on the Italian peninsula, which at the time was divided into several small states - not to mention Venice, their own motherland, which Soranzo describes as ‘timid’ and incapable of preparing for war. According to Vincenzo Lavenia, these were the pages that unleashed the wrath of the Serenissima for the explicit accusations of its own weaknesses, which had led to the decision not to intervene and wait for the war to end. However, in the third part of the treatise Soranzo advocates a Venetian alliance with Spain to defeat the enemy at sea, thus rekindling the flame of a crusade against the infidels.

"Since the Grand Turk is waging war against the Venetian Republic [...] it would be necessary [...] that all Christian Princes should think very well of keeping it in state, and without doing it any great harm. Especially the Catholic King [Philip II of Spain], either by putting them in connection with it, or by helping it in some other way, for it is credible, that the Turk would not only employ his forces to overthrow the Republic of Venice, but to have a much easier way to tempt Italy, in which the Crown of Spain possesses the finest parts."

In the end, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire would have been caused, according to Soranzo, by fatal internal revolts - based on internal divisions - caused by the circulation of ‘easy books’ written in as many languages as the Empire, in order to sow discord with principles of the Christian faith. These books would create discord in the Ottoman Empire in the same way that Protestant writings had torn Christian Europe apart, pitting Christians against each other in Germany, France and Flanders.