Unlike his fellow French Jesuit missioners in 17th-century North America, Jacques Frémin (1628-91) avoided being murdered by unfriendly natives. Born in Rheims, he joined the Jesuits in 1646 and was sent to evangelize the Mohawk, Onodaga and Cayahoga peoples, tribes not known for their pacifism. Fermin is said to have made 10,000 converts through his station on Isle la Motte, in what is now Vermont.
St Longinus of Rome
Like his more famous namesake, the soldier who pierced Christ’s side at the Crucifixion, Longinus of Rome was also a Roman soldier. He is said to have been one of three legionaries (the other two were Martinian and Processus) assigned to guard St Paul and Saint Peter in Rome. According to legend, Paul converted all three of them and they all suffered martyrdom together in the Neronian persecution.
Despite the imperial death sentence passed on heretic monk Martin Luther, his ideas began to spread throughout western Europe. In 1522 all the brothers of a monastery of his fellow Augustinians in Antwerp announced themselves convinced by Lutheran doctrine — some had resided for a time in Wittenberg and imbibed Lutheran doctrine from its source. The Catholic authorities arrested them and secured recantations from most of the monks, but two of them, Johan Esch and Heinrich Voes, remained obdurate, even under threat of death. On July 1, 1523 these two men were burnt alive in the public square of Brussels. Though the execution was nasty and prolonged, one of the condemned was heard to say “I feel as if extended on a bed of roses.”.
The news of these deaths inspired Martin Luther to write his first hymn, “Ein neues Lied wir heben an”; it is known in English through the 1843 version by John Messenger, “Flung to the Heedless Winds”.
Flung to the heedless winds Or on the waters cast, The martyrs’ ashes, watched, Shall gathered be at last. And from that scattered dust, Around us and abroad, Shall spring a plenteous seed Of witnesses for God. The Father hath received Their latest living breath, And vain is Satan’s boast Of victory in their death. Still, still, though dead, they speak, And, trumpet-tongued, proclaim To many a wakening land The one availing Name.
1968 Pope Paul VI issues the “Credo of the People of God”
To commemorate the 1900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, Pope Paul VI (1897-1978) issued the papal letter Solemni Hac Liturgia, known as “The Credo of the People of God.” It is an explication of the Roman Catholic understanding of the traditional Christian creeds. Its contents would be found largely uncontroversial by Protestants and Eastern Christians, but Articles 22-26 would cause them trouble.
One Shepherd
Recognizing also the existence, outside the organism of the Church of Christ, of numerous elements of truth and sanctification which belong to her as her own and tend to Catholic unity, and believing in the action of the Holy Spirit who stirs up in the heart of the disciples of Christ love of this unity, we entertain the hope that the Christians who are not yet in the full communion of the one only Church will one day be reunited in one flock with one only shepherd.
We believe that the Church is necessary for salvation, because Christ, who is the sole mediator and way of salvation, renders Himself present for us in His body which is the Church. But the divine design of salvation embraces all men; and those who without fault on their part do not know the Gospel of Christ and His Church, but seek God sincerely, and under the influence of grace endeavor to do His will as recognized through the promptings of their conscience, they, in a number known only to God, can obtain salvation.
Sacrifice of Calvary
We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered sacramentally present on our altars. We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as before, is a true, real and substantial presence.
Transubstantiation
Christ cannot be thus present in this sacrament except by the change into His body of the reality itself of the bread and the change into His blood of the reality itself of the wine, leaving unchanged only the properties of the bread and wine which our senses perceive. This mysterious change is very appropriately called by the Church transubstantiation. Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the Consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus that from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine, as the Lord willed it, in order to give Himself to us as food and to associate us with the unity of His Mystical Body.(37)
The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord glorious in heaven is not multiplied, but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on earth where Mass is celebrated. And this existence remains present, after the sacrifice, in the Blessed Sacrament which is, in the tabernacle, the living heart of each of our churches. And it is our very sweet duty to honour and adore in the blessed Host which our eyes see, the Incarnate Word whom they cannot see, and who, without leaving heaven, is made present before us.
Margaret Beaufort (1441-1509) was the daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Being very beautiful, as well as the heiress of great possessions, she was at the early age of fifteen years anxiously sought in marriage by two persons of high rank and influence. One was a son of the Duke of Suffolk, then chief advisor to the king; the other was Edmund, Earl of Richmond, half-brother to the reigning monarch, Henry the Sixth. Wavering between these two proposals [she was only 9 years old], Margaret, in her perplexity, requested advice from an elderly gentlewoman, her confidential friend. The matron recommended her not to consult her own inclinations, but to take an early opportunity of submitting the question to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of undecided maidens. She did so, and the saint appeared to her in a vision, dressed in great episcopal splendour, and advised her to marry Edmund. Following this advice, she became the mother of Henry Tudor, who afterwards became King Henry VII. Edmund died soon after the birth of his son, and Margaret married twice afterwards: first, Humphrey Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham; and, secondly, Thomas Lord Stanley, subsequently Earl of Derby. We are not told if she consulted St. Nicholas in the choice of her second and third husbands.
Margaret founded several colleges, and employed herself in acts of real charity and pure devotion not common at the period. After a useful and exemplary life, she died at the age of sixty-eight years; having just lived to see her grandson Henry VIII seated on the throne of England. She is included among the royal authors as a translator of some religious works from the French, one of which, entitled The Soul’s Perfection, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde. At the end of this work are the following verses:
‘This heavenly book, more precious than gold, Was late direct, with great humility, For godly pleasure therein to behold, Unto the right noble Margaret, as ye see, The King’s mother of excellent bounty, Harry the Seventh; that Jesu him preserve, This mighty Princess hath commanded me T’ imprint this book, her grace for to deserve.’
On June 28, 1914 a gang of teenage terrorists, set in motion by the Serbian secret police, attacked a motorcade in Sarajevo, Bosnia. After much tragicomic bungling, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were murdered by the gunfire of Gavrilo Princip, a young fanatic who sought independence for Bosnia from Austria. A little over a month later, Princip’s action would result in the start of the Great War, an act, as Pope Benedict XV lamented, of civilizational suicide. Millions upon millions would die, empires would fall, new nations would arise with the basic quarrels unsettled, leading to another global war. The consequences of the deed performed by a teenager named after the archangel Gabriel had untold consequences for Christianity.
Almost immediately the war assumed the shape of a holy conflict with all sides claiming to be on the side of God (German troops wore belt buckles proclaiming “Gott Mit Uns”) and their enemies the servants of the devil. For the Turks it was an anti-Christian jihad against the French and British empires; for American evangelist Billy Sunday the struggle was “Germany against America, hell against heaven.” Germans saw themselves as beleaguered Davids surrounded by bestial Goliaths. Kaiser Wilhelm’s court chaplain preached a sermon proclaiming “We are going into battle for our culture against the uncultured, for the free German personality bound to God against the instincts of the undisciplined masses. And God will be with our just weapons! For German faith and German piety are ultimately bound up with German faith and civilization.” (Karl Barth was among the few German theologians who was appalled by such an attitude.)Meanwhile the British portrayed the Kaiser as Antichrist leading a horde of church burners and nun rapists. On the national level church leaders, aside from Quakers and Mennonites, wholeheartedly supported their countries’ participation while in the trenches, troops were told the dead were Christian martyrs and the living were crusaders.
At the war’s end, thousands of churches had been levelled, most notably St Martin’s cathedral of Ypres which became a symbol of the conflict’s destruction of civility. Thousands of priests and ministers had been killed serving as chaplains or executed by occupying powers. The faith of many was shaken by the horror of the war and returning veterans were notable for their distaste for the churches whose Sunday parades they had been forced to attend in the trenches. The Orthodox Church was shattered by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution. New secular messiahs were sought and found in Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini.
Dr John Dodd, a famous English preacher whose wasteful extravagance led to his forging financial documents in order to rescue himself from poverty and shame, was hanged on this day on the triangular gallows at Tyburn in London. After being cut down, his body was instantly taken away and attempts were made to revive him with a hot bath. Since hanging at this time usually meant death by strangulation instead of snapping of the neck in the drop, such efforts at revival occasionally succeeded. A 19th-century source tells us:
On the 16th August 1264, Henry III granted a pardon to a woman named Inetta de Balsham, who, having been condemned to death for harbouring thieves, hung on a gallows from nine o’clock of a Monday to sunrise of Thursday, and yet came off with life, as was testified to the king by sufficient evidence.
Dr. Plot, who quotes the original words of the pardon, surmises that it might have been a case like one he had heard of from Mr. Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, being that of a Swiss who was hung up thirteen times without effect, life being preserved by the condition of the wind-pipe, which was found to be by disease converted into bone.
Dr. Plot relates several cases of the resuscitation of women after hanging, and makes the remark that this revival of life appears to happen most frequently in the female sex. One notable case was that of a poor servant girl named Anne Green, who was condemned to death, at Oxford in 1650 for alleged child-murder, although her offence could only be so interpreted by superstition and pedantry. This poor woman, while hanging, had her legs pulled, and her breast knocked by a soldier’s musket [in order to hasten her demise]; she was afterwards trampled on, and the rope was left unslackened around her neck. Yet, when in the hands of the doctors for dissection, she gave symptoms of life, and in fourteen hours was so far well as to be able to speak. Eager inquiries were made as to her sensations from the moment of suspension; but she remembered nothing she came back to life like one awakening out of a deep sleep. This poor woman obtained a pardon, was afterwards married, and had three children.
A second female malefactor, the servant of a Mrs. Cope, at Oxford, was hanged there in 1658, and kept suspended an unusually long time, to make sure of the extinction of life; after which, being cut down, her body was allowed to fall to the ground with a violence which might have been sufficient to kill many unhanged persons. Yet she revived. In this case the authorities insisted on fulfilling their imperfect duty next day. Plot gives a third case, that of Marjory Mausole, of Arley, in Staffordshire, without informing us of its date or any other circumstances.
On the 2nd of September 1721, a poor woman named Margaret Dickson, married, but separated from her husband, was hanged at Edinburgh for the crime of concealing pregnancy in the case of a dead child. After suspension, the body was inclosed in a coffin at the gallows’ foot, and carried off in a cart by her relatives, to be interred in her parish churchyard at Musselburgh, six miles off. Some surgeon apprentices rudely stopped the cart before it left town, and broke down part of the cooms, or sloping roof of the coffin,—thus undesignedly letting in air. The subsequent jolting of the vehicle restored animation before it had got above two miles from the city, and Maggy was carried home a living woman, though faint and hardly conscious. Her neighbours flocked around her in wonder; a minister came to pray over her; and her husband, relenting under a renewed affection, took her home again. She lived for many years after, had several more children creditably born, and used to be pointed out in the streets of Edinburgh, where she cried salt, as Half-Hanged Maggy Dickson.
The instances of men reviving after hanging are scarcely less numerous than those of females. In 1705, a housebreaker named Smith being hung up at Tyburn, a reprieve came after he had been suspended for a quarter of an hour. He was taken down, bled, and revived. One William Duell, duly hanged in London in 1740, and taken to the Surgeons’ Hall to be anatomized, came to life again, and was transported. At Cork a man was hanged in January 1767 for a street robbery, and immediately after carried to a place appointed, where a surgeon made an incision in his windpipe, and in about six hours recovered him. The almost incredible fact is added, that the fellow had the hardihood to attend the theatre the same evening. William Brodie, executed in Edinburgh, October 1788, for robbing the excise-office, had similar arrangements made for his recovery. It was found, however, that he had had a greater fall than he bargained for with the hangman, and thus the design was frustrated.
On the 3rd of October 1696, a man named Richard Johnson was hanged at Shrewsbury, He had previously, on a hypocritical pretence, obtained a promise from the under-sheriff that his body should be laid in his coffin without being stripped. He hung half an hour, and still showed signs of life, when a man went up to the scaffold to see what was wrong with him. On a hasty examination, it was found that the culprit had wreathed cords round and under his body, connected with a pair of hooks at his neck, by which the usual effect of the rope was prevented, the whole of this apparatus being adroitly concealed under a double shirt and a flowing periwig. On the trick being discovered, he was taken down, and immediately hanged in an effectual manner.
Isaac Barton (I. B.) Kimbrough was one of those many tough 19th-century pastors who appeared on the United States frontier. Born in Tennessee in 1826, he was orphaned at seven and acquired little education. When he married in 1846, having just turned 21, he could scarcely read. Three years later he was converted to Christianity.
Immediately he set out to master reading, so that he could study the Bible and theology. He had a family to maintain, so he made a frame on his plow on which to prop a book as he worked. At night, he studied by candle or at the fire side.
The upshot was that he became something of a homespun Christian scholar, evangelist and Baptist pastor in his native Tennessee. He converted and baptized over 1,000 people and organized eight new churches. Built like a football linebacker, possessing a strong voice, and definite in his aims, he commanded considerable attention.
When Tennessee Baptists appointed him to raise money for Carson and Newman College, Kimbrough, who was already 50 years old, went to work with a will, and became known as “the beggar” because he pleaded so assiduously for funds. A fascinating episode shows him as the ultimate salesman.
A pair of highwaymen pulled a gun on him and ordered him to hand over his money. According to Kimbrough, who told the tale at the Texas State Convention on this day, June 26, 1886, he asked for a little time to comply, got off his horse, pulled out the money and laid it in two distinct piles, one of them quite small. He then told the robbers that the little pile was his. They could take that. But the larger pile was the Lord’s, and he dared them to touch that. “I collected it for the young preachers of the state who are struggling for an education at Carson and Newman College.”
The highwaymen questioned him. After learning he was a preacher and the nature of his mission, they said they’d not touch either pile of money. Kimbrough then warned them they were in a bad line of business and urged them to turn from it. He then asked them to donate something to the school! Both robbers did.
A few years later, Kimbrough moved to Texas, where he spent his remaining years in the work of Christ, founding numerous churches in the less-established regions of Texas. In 1890, he was simultaneously pastor at three churches: Hale City, Plainview (where he oversaw the building of the first Baptist church in a 120 mile radius) and Floyd City. He died at Plano, Texas in 1902.
After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the push westward by settlers and the military intensified. Most native tribes were forced on to reservations but many maintained a state of intermittent warfare with the government. In 1876 a US Army campaign, one component of which was the 7th Cavalry led by Lt-Col. George Custer, was launched to force Cheyenne and Sioux nations back on to their reservations in Montana and the Dakotas. On June 25th, Custer’s 700-man column encountered a native encampment on the Little Bighorn River, the unusual size of which he did fully appreciate, and, believing he had been detected, Custer ordered an attack.
Custer divided his command into three elements, one of which he led, while the other two were under the command of Captain Frederick Benteen and Major Marcus Reno. Benteen and Reno were ordered to charge in order to bring the native warriors into a battle while Custer was to attack the village itself. Unfortunately Benteen and Reno found themselves facing superior forces and they were forced to retreat and dig defensive positions on a hill, leaving Custer unsupported and riding into what was said to be the biggest gathering of hostiles ever assembled. Instead of facing 800 enemies, Custer had blundered into a camp of thousands under chiefs such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall; mounted warriors from two directions forced him into a running battle of retreat. In about an hour, Custer and his detachment were dead. Benteen and Reno and their men were under siege for the rest of the day and into the next before the natives melted away in the face of General Terry’s relief column.
Terry’s men found the bodies of Custer, two of his brothers, his nephew and a brother-in-law, plus over 260 others, ritually mutilated where they fell, killed on the run, or in a number of dismounted “last stands”. They were buried on the battle field and the news sent out to a shocked nation about to celebrate America’s centenary.
The native triumph was short lived; their confederacy soon dissolved. Many bands returned to the reservations while Sitting Bull led his people across the border into Canada’s Northwest Territories (now southern Saskatchewan).
Racial segregation was a legal fact in much of America and it extended to their armed forces, even in the midst of World War II. Black troops were largely left out of combat roles and their officers were often less-than-competent whites who had been assigned to these units as a way of reducing the harm they could do. One of these units was a transport outfit, the 1511th Quartermaster Truck regiment, stationed at Bamber Bridge, in Lancashire. The black troops seem to have generally gotten on well with the locals and drank without incident in the local pubs until one fateful night.
The “mutiny” took place on 23 and 24 June 1943 and, as might be expected, the trouble began in what was otherwise a trivial matter. Two white Military Policemen (henceforth MPs), having been advised that there was trouble at the Old Hob Inn, went to investigate. It was just after 10 pm, closing time, and the barmaid had just refused a drink to the several black soldiers in the pub, who were there along with a number of British soldiers and civilians. The MPs tried to arrest one of the black soldiers who was improperly dressed and had no pass; the soldier refused and a crowd surrounded the two policemen. Some of the Britons in the crowd verbally supported the black troops and the whole thing escalated. As far as the MPs were concerned the black troops looked threatening and aggressive and probably were. One of the MPs drew his gun when a soldier advanced on him with a bottle in his hand. The MPs left and a bottle was thrown hitting the windscreen of their jeep.
The soldiers then began walking to Adams Hall, followed by three ATS girls. The MPs, having got reinforcements, returned to the walking soldiers; there was a confrontation ending with a fight, bottles and cobble-stones being thrown. A policeman fired a shot to stop one of them throwing a cobble-stone; another shot was fired hitting one of the blacks in the neck. Another policeman also fired. The crowd dispersed. The blacks went to Adams Hall and the MPs went for more reinforcements. Rumours then spread at Adams Hall that blacks had been shot in the back and that the MPs were gunning for African Americans. Up to 200 men then formed a crowd in the area of Adams Hall and some blacks, carrying rifles, tried to get back into Bamber Bridge but the situation was calmed by the unit’s sole black officer, a 2Lt, who convinced the men that the (white) senior officers would listen to their grievances.
But about midnight about a dozen police arrived in “a makeshift armoured vehicle”, complete with a machine gun. This convinced some or possibly many of the black soldiers that the police were going to kill them and they armed themselves with rifles. Two-thirds of the rifles in the stores were seized by the black soldiers; some stayed in the camp; others believed they were defending the camp; another group ‘took more direct action, and, as the MPs moved off, someone fired at them. British residents testified that there was firing that night in Bamber Bridge and it became known that shots were fired at the MPs who returned fire. Four soldiers were wounded and one black soldier was killed. One British resident said that the firing went on until 3 am. One black soldier had bruises, and two MPS had, respectively, a broken nose and a broken jaw.
There were two trials. The first was at another American Army base at Chorley, south of Bamber Bridge. Four of those involved in the initial brawl were charged with various offences and were found guilty. Three were sentenced to 3-4 years’ hard labour and dishonourable discharges; the fourth to two and a half year’s hard labour. On review the sentence on the fourth was overturned.
The second trial took place at Eighth Army Air Force Headquarters at Bushy Park, Tedidngton. One of the men convicted at the first trial along with the man who was acquitted were among the 35 accused of mutiny, seizing arms, rioting, firing upon officers and MPs, ignoring orders and failing to disperse. Seven were found not guilty, and the remainder received prison sentences from 3 months to fifteen years. Seven men received sentences of twelve years or more. But the President of the court martial made an immediate plea for clemency, arguing that there had been an appalling lack of discipline at the camp and poor leadership with officers failing to perform their duties properly. His views were accepted by higher authority and all sentences were reduced. A year later, 15 of the men were restored to duty, and six others had their sentences reduced to one year. The longest period served was 13 months. Opinions on the fairness of the trial varied. Some thought it a kangaroo court with the defence being poorly prepared and performed; others thought that the board bent over backwards to be fair. It could be argued that the sentences were very light considering they had been charged with mutiny in wartime.
There were some positive outcomes of the whole affair. All field officers (majors, Lt-Colonels and colonels) of black units were replaced and many junior officers were weeded out. There were also improvements in such matters as leave arrangements and for the provision of racially mixed MP patrols. But there was still trouble in various parts of England. In September 1943 some blacks wounded two MPs in Cornwall; in October 1943 some black troops faced a court martial for mutinies and attempted murder at Paignton, Devon; in February 1944 there was serious fighting between black and white troops at Leicester; and on October 5 1944, the wife of a licensee was killed in the cross-fire between black and white troops near Newbury, Berkshire.
The feast of John the Baptist takes place on June 24, a date so close to mid-summer that many popular pre-Christian customs are associated with it and, as is usual, the eve of the saint’s day is when celebrations take place.
At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights shortest. From then until December 21, daylight wanes. It is natural, therefore, that fertility, light and heat are the focus of the paganesque carryings-on. In Sweden it remains a major occasion for gaiety and hospitality with the erection of festive poles, decorated with flowers, dancing and late-night drinking. The Polish festival is called “sobótki” and traditionally involves a kind of courtship ritual of young men, and women who wear flower crowns. In Latvia, it was traditional to call the day Herbal Eve and to hold flower and herb markets (see above.)
Bonfires are the order of the day everywhere. In Quebec the day was celebrated in 1636 by cannon shots and a fire; in Turin they dance around a bonfire in the public square; in Denmark an effigy of a witch is burnt; and in Estonia old fishing boats are burnt.
