Author: gerryadmin

September 26

Home / Today in Church History / September 26
by gerryadmin

St. Cyprian the Magician

According to Chambers’ Book of Days: 

This saint, so surnamed from his having, previous to his conversion, practised the arts of a magician or diviner, has been coupled in the calendar with Justina, a young Syrian lady, regarding whom a young pagan nobleman applied to Cyprian to assist him with his arts in rendering her more favourable to his suit. Justina was a Christian, and opposed, we are told, through the aid of the Virgin, such an effectual resistance to the devices of Cyprian, that the latter was convinced of the weakness of the infernal spirits, and resolved to quit their service. He consulted a priest named Eusebius, who encouraged him in the work of conversion, which he ultimately consummated by burning all his magical books, giving his substance to the poor, and enrolling himself among the Christian catechumens. On the breaking out of the persecution under Dioclesian, Cyprian was apprehended and carried before the Roman governor at Tyre. Justina, who had been the original mover in his change of life, was, at the same time, brought before this judge and cruelly scourged, whilst Cyprian was torn with iron hooks. After this the two martyrs were sent to Nicomedia, to the Emperor Diocletian, who forthwith commanded their heads to be struck off. The history of St. Cyprian and St. Justina was recorded in a Greek poem by the Empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius the Younger, a work which is now lost.

The two were struck from the saints’ calendar in the papal reforms of 1969, but since that purge also demoted Saint Nicholas we need pay no attention to it.

September 25

Home / Something Wise / September 25
by gerryadmin

Some assorted historical wisdom today:

The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true; Cor ne edito; “Eat not the heart.” Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that lack friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.  – Francis Bacon, “Friendship”, Essays

It tickles human vanity to tell us that we are wiser than our fathers; and it is one of those propositions which is likely to pass without contradiction, from the circumstance that all those most interested in denying it are dead and gone. But if the grave could speak, and the churchyards vote upon the question, we living boasters would be in a most pitiful minority. – James K. Paulding, The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham.

Someone asked Diogenes why people gave to beggars, but not to philosophers. He answered, “Because they think it’s possible that they themselves might become lame and blind, but they don’t expect that they’ll ever end up philosophers.” – Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers.

There are two phases for each period in history. The first phase is called “What Can It Hurt?” and the second is called “How Were We to Know?” – Mark Shea

September 24

Home / Today in Church History / September 24
by gerryadmin

1890 Mormons renounce polygamy

It’s amazing how many heretical groups start off with changes in sexual behaviour among their tenets: the nudism of the Adamites, the antinomianism of the Ranters and the multiple wives of Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints. With the exception of Islam, it usually ends, or ends badly. In 1890, under pressure from the U.S. government and eager for Utah statehood, the LDS Church forbade future multiple wife taking. Existing polygamous unions were left unaffected and covert evasion of the decree continues to this day among some sects.

1957 Little Rock Schools integrated by the 101st Airborne

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus opposed integration of public schools and ordered his state’s National Guard to prevent black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower countered by sending in the paratroopers. Though admitted, the first nine black students were subject to shameful verbal and physical abuse by townsfolk and their fellow students.

September 23

Home / Today in History / September 23
by gerryadmin

One of my favourite diversions when I travel is to have my picture taken beside the statues of famous historians, imagining that I, too, one day, will be immortalized in bronze by a grateful nation, gazed at uncomprehendingly by generations of school children, and used as a toilet by neighbouring birdlife. Here is a photograph of me and the statue of Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, erected in Bergen, Norway.

Snorri was born in 1179 and died on this date in 1241, one of the few of my profession to be thought worthy of assassination. He was born into a rich Icelandic family and married well, becoming prosperous and head of the Althing, the national assembly. On a visit to Norway he made an impression and was cultivated by those hoping to add Iceland to the King of Norway’s domain. Back in Iceland, his unionist position was not well-received by other chiefs; civil strife broke out and continued for years. Eventually Snorri was murdered, cowering in his cellar, with the connivance of the Norwegian king he had once sided with.

Snorri’s lasting fame comes from his historiography. The Prose Edda, Egli’s Saga, and the Heimskringla give us valuable information on the mythology and history (legendary and otherwise) of Iceland and Norway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 22

Home / Today in History / September 22
by gerryadmin

It is often forgotten that the decision by Nazi Germany to invade Poland in September 1939, and thus to start the Second World War, was only made possible by a secret agreement with the government of the USSR. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of the previous month contained clauses that partitioned Poland into German and Soviet zones of influence and allowed Russia to drive into Poland from the east while the Wehrmacht struck from the west.

On this date in 1939, German and Soviet forces met, and in token of their victory over Poland, held a celebratory military parade in Brest-Litovsk (ironically the site of a humiliating capitulation by Lenin’s Bolshevik government to imperial Germany in World War I). Standing on the platform in the photo above are two geniuses of tank warfare, Germany’s Heinz Guderian and the Soviet Semyon Krivoshein.

The Soviets occupied eastern Poland until 1941 when Hitler’s surprise attack, Operation Barbarossa, broke the peace treaty with the USSR and opened up a new front in the war. In the interim the Soviets had taken hundreds of thousands of Polish prisoners and massacred the officer class in the Katyn forest in 1940. The Red Army would return in 1944 and drive out the Germans. Their stay would last until the fall of eastern European communism in 1989.

September 21

Home / Uncategorized / September 21
by gerryadmin

1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie’s first victory

In 1689 James II, King of England and Scotland, was deprived of his throne in what came to be known as the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution. His desire to bring about religious toleration for Catholics (he was one) and his abuse of constitutional norms to do so united much of the political class who summoned James’s daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William to assume rule. William and Mary died childless and were succeed by James’s other daughter Anne. When she died in 1714, the English looked about for a Protestant heir and found one in George I who became the first of the Hanoverian line.

The descendants of James II were not willing to let the Stuart claim to the throne lapse. In 1715 James the Old Pretender launched an invasion of England with French help but was repelled. In 1745, his son (the grandson of James II) Charles Edward, known as the Young Pretender or Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland and found a small army of supporters to rally around him. His men (called Jacobites after the Latin translation of James) quickly took Edinburgh, forcing the British army to try and bring him to open battle.

This they did at Prestonpans, east of the capital. The redcoats outnumbered the Scots and were better armed but the Jacobites were made of sterner stuff than the ill-trained and inexperienced Englishmen. A sudden and savage Highland charge broke their opponents in less than fifteen minutes, killing hundreds and taking even more prisoners.

Charles Stuart’s success here led him and his generals to believe that such a charge could win them more battles but the Highlanders were massacred at Culloden when they faced disciplined troops and artillery fire.

September 20

Home / Uncategorized / September 20
by gerryadmin

1871 Martyrdom of a missionary bishop

On this date, churches of the Anglican communion celebrate the life of John Patteson (1827-71), the first Bishop of Melanesia. Patterson was the great-nephew of the poet Samuel Coleridge, educated at Oxford, and ordained a priest. He was a devoted student of languages and a country curate when he was recruited in 1854 to become a missionary in the Southern Pacific.

Based in New Zealand, Patteson sailed through the island chains of Melanesia trying to spread Christianity. To enable himself for this task he learned 23 native languages, wrote grammars for these tongues and translated parts of the Gospel. His job was made immeasurably harder by the presence in those areas of “blackbirders”, essentially kidnappers from British ships who would recruit islanders as indentured labourers and treat them as slaves on plantations. Patteson’s desire to offer a boarding-school education for native youth seemed to many of the locals as just another way of taking away their young men who would never return. Despite his opposition to this slave trade Patteson was attacked on more than one occasion. On this date in 1871 Patteson was killed on an island in the Solomons; his body was found floating at sea in a canoe with a palm leaf in his hand.

His death spurred a crack-down on black-birding and steps were taken to better protect islanders. Patteson is buried in Exeter Cathedral’s Martyrs’ Pulpit.

September 19

Home / Uncategorized / September 19
by gerryadmin

Saint Januarius

Should you happen to be in Naples on this date, or on December 16, or on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May, make it your business to drop in on the cathedral where you may be fortunate enough to see a miracle. At these times, the dried blood of St Januarius (or San Gennaro to the locals) will liquefy.

Januarius was the bishop of Naples during the time of the persecution of Christianity by the Emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century. In 304, he was thrown to the bears and then beheaded. His relics were preserved and it was noted in 1389 that when the ampoule containing his blood was brought near the reliquary containing his head, liquefaction occurred. This miracle came to occur regularly on his saint’s day (today), the anniversary of the translation of his relics, and on the festival of his patronage of Naples.

On March 21, 2015, the blood in the vial appeared to liquify during a visit by Pope Francis. This was taken as a sign of the saint’s favour of the pope. The blood did not liquify when Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI visited nor when Naples elected a Communist mayor. Make of that what you will.

Januarius is the patron of Naples and blood banks and may be invoked against volcanic eruptions.

September 18

Home / Today in History / September 18
by gerryadmin

 

96

The assassination of a tyrant

The Romans, after dispensing with their Republic, tried a series of imperial dynasties. The problem was that, while the founder was often a man of restraint and competence, his children or grandchildren were likely as not to be monsters. The very able Augustus gave way to the paranoid Tiberius, the ghoulish Caligula, the dotard Claudius, and the fiendish Nero. After a year of four rival claimants Nero was replaced by the moderate Vespasian. Unfortunately Vespasian’s decent son Titus died early and was replaced in 81 AD by the younger Domitian, whose tale Chambers takes up here:

The obituary for this day includes the name of one of those monsters, who disgrace so frequently the annals of the ancient Roman empire. On 18th September, 96 A. D., the Emperor Domitian was assassinated by a band of conspirators, after having rendered himself for many years the terror and detestation of his subjects. The son of Vespasian, and the brother and successor of Titus, he exhibited in the commencement of his reign a great show of righteous severity, and came forward as a reformer of public morals. Several persons who had transgressed the laws of conjugal fidelity, as well as some vestal virgins who had violated their vows, were punished with death. It was not long, however, before his real character showed itself; and he became a disgrace to humanity by his acts of cruelty and avarice. Cowardice and falsehood entered largely into his disposition, which, if we are to credit all the accounts that have descended to us, seems to have scarcely had a redeeming point. Multitudes of persons were put to death, either because the emperor desired their wealth, or from his having become apprehensive of their popularity or influence. Secret informers were encouraged, but philosophers and literary men were slaughtered or banished, though Martial and Silius Italicus could so far degrade poetry, as make it the vehicle for flattery of the imperial monster.

A favourite amusement of his, it is said, was killing flies, in which he would spend whole hours, and nothing seemed to give him greater pleasure than to witness the effects of terror on his fellow-creatures. On one occasion, he invited formally the members of the senate to a grand feast, and caused them on their arrival to be ushered into a large hall, hung with black and lighted with funeral torches, such as only served to exhibit to the awe-struck guests an array of coffins, on which each read his own name. Whilst they contemplated this ghastly spectacle, a troop of horrid forms, habited like furies, burst into the apartment, each with a lighted torch in one hand, and a poniard in the other. After having terrified for some time the members of Rome’s legislative body, these demon-masqueraders opened the door of the hall, through which the senators were only too happy to make a speedy exit. Who can doubt that the character of Domitian had as much of the madman as the wretch in its composition?

At length human patience was exhausted, and a conspiracy was formed for his destruction, in which his wife and some of his nearest friends were concerned. For a long time, the emperor had entertained a presentiment of his approaching end, and even of the hour and manner of his death. Becoming every day more and more fearful, he caused the galleries in which he walked to be lined with polished stones, so that he might see, as in a mirror, all that passed behind him. He never conversed with prisoners but alone and in secret, and it was his practice whilst he talked with them, to hold their chains in his hands. To inculcate on his servants a dread of compassing the death of their master, even with his own consent, he caused Epaphroditus to be put to death, because he had assisted Nero to commit suicide.

The evening before his death, some truffles were brought, which he directed to be laid aside till the next day, adding, ‘If I am there;’ and then turning to his courtiers said, that the next day the moon would be made bloody in the sign of Aquarius, and an event would take place of which all the world should speak. In the middle of the night, he awoke in an agony of fear, and started from his bed. The following morning, he had a consultation with a soothsayer from Germany, regarding a flash of lightning; the seer predicted a revolution in the empire, and was forthwith ordered off to execution. In scratching a pimple on his forehead, Domitian drew a little blood, and exclaimed: ‘Too happy should I be were this to compensate for all the blood that I cause to be shed!’ He asked what o’clock it was, and as he had a dread of the fifth hour, his attendants informed him that the sixth had arrived. On hearing this he appeared reassured, as if all danger were past, and he was preparing to go to the bath, when he was stopped by Parthenius, the principal chamberlain, who informed him that a person demanded to speak with him on momentous business of state. He caused every one to retire, and entered his private closet. Here he found the person in question waiting for him, and whilst he listened with terror to the pretended revelation of some secret plot against himself, he was stabbed by this individual, and fell wounded to the ground. A band of conspirators, including the distinguished veteran Clodianus, Maximus a freedman, and Saturius the decurion of the palace, rushed in and despatched him with seven blows of a dagger. He was in the forty-fifth year of his age, and fifteenth of his reign. On receiving intelligence of his death, the senate elected Nerva as his successor.

September 17

Home / Today in Church History / September 17
by gerryadmin

ST LAMBERT, BISHOP OF MAESTRICHT, MARTYR (c. A.D. 705) 

An account from Butler’s Book of Saints of the life of a churchman during the turbulent rule of the Merovingian Franks.

St Landebert, called in later ages Lambert, was a native of Maestricht, and born of a noble and wealthy family between the years 633 and 638. His father sent him to St Theodard to perfect his education. This holy bishop had such an esteem for his pupil that he spared no trouble in instructing and training him in learning and Christian virtue, and he was a credit to his master: his biographer, who was born soon after Lambert’s death, describes him as, “a prudent young man of pleasing looks, courteous and well behaved in his speech and manners; well built, strong, a good fighter, clear-headed, affectionate, pure and humble, and fond of reading”. When St Theodard, who was bishop of Tongres-Maestricht, was murdered, Lambert was chosen to succeed him; but the tyrannical Ebroin was reinstated as mayor of the palace when the Austrasian king, Childeric II, was slain in 674, and he at once began to revenge himself on those who had supported Childeric. This revolution affected St Lambert, who was expelled from his see. He retired to the monastery of Stavelot, and during the seven years that he continued there he obeyed the rule as strictly as the youngest novice could have done. One instance will suffice to show how he devoted his heart to serve God according to the perfection of his temporary state. One night in winter he let fall his shoe, so that it made a noise. This the abbot heard, and he ordered him who was responsible for that noise to go and pray before the great cross, which stood outside the church door. Lambert, without making any answer, went out as he was, barefoot and covered only with his shirt; and in this condition he prayed, kneeling before the cross, three or four hours. Whilst the monks were warming themselves after Matins, the abbot inquired if all were there. Answer was made that he had sent someone to the cross who had not yet come in. The abbot ordered that he should be called, and was surprised to find that the person was the Bishop of Maestricht, who made his appearance almost frozen. 

In 681 Ebroin was assassinated, and Pepin of Herstal, being made mayor of the palace, expelled the usurping bishops and, among other exiled prelates, restored St Lambert to Maestricht. The holy pastor returned to his flock animated with redoubled fervour, preaching and discharging his other duties with wonderful zeal and fruit. Finding there still remained many pagans in Kempenland and Brabant he applied himself to convert them to the faith, softened their barbarous temper by his patience, regenerated them in the water of baptism, and destroyed many superstitious observances. In the neighbourhood of his own see he founded with St Landrada the monastery of Munsterbilzen for nuns. 

Pepin of Herstal, after living many years in wedlock with St Plectrudis, entered into adulterous relations with her sister Alpais (of whom was born Charles Martel), and St Lambert expostulated with the guilty couple. Alpais complained to her brother Dodo, who with a party of his followers set upon St Lambert and murdered him as he knelt before the altar in the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian at Liege. That is the later story of the circumstances of St Lambert’s death, but his earliest biographers, writing in the eighth and tenth centuries, tell a quite different tale. According to them, two relatives of Lambert, Peter and Andolet, killed two men who were making themselves obnoxious to the bishop. When Dodo, a kinsman of the men thus slain, came with his followers to take revenge, Lambert told Peter and Andolet that they must expiate their crime. They were killed on the spot; and when the bishop’s room was found to be barred, one of Dodo’s men climbed to the window and cast a spear which killed Lambert too, as he knelt in prayer. This took place at a house where is now the city of Liege.

Lambert’s death, suffered with patience and meekness, joined with the eminent sanctity of his life, caused him to be venerated as a martyr. His body was conveyed to Maestricht. Several miracles which ensued excited the people to build a church where the house stood in which he was slain, and his successor, St Hubert, translated thither his relics. At the same time he removed to the same place the episcopal see of Tongres-Maestricht, and around the cathedral which enshrined the relics of 8t Lambert the city of Liege grew up. He is to this day the principal patron of that place.