Author: gerryadmin

May 30

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by gerryadmin

St Dymphna’s Day

If you think that your family dynamics are odd or distressing, spare a thought for young Dymphna, a 7th-century daughter of a petty Irish king named Damon.

As a teenager Dymphna took a vow of chastity, an act which would lead to her persecution and death. Her father, you see, had conceived an unnatural attraction for the girl after the death of his beloved wife. As she was the image of her beautiful mother, Damon vowed he would marry her. Creeped out by this news, Dymphna fled to the Continent with her priestly confessor and the court fool. This menagerie settled in a village in what is now Belgium.

When Damon tracked her down, he had his men kill the priest and tried to force his daughter to return with him to Ireland. She resisted and, in a rage, she chopped off her head. Her tomb attracted those seeking a miraculous cure from a variety of derangements. To this day, the town where she is buried has a reputation for caring for the mentally ill.

Dymphna may be invoked against sleepwalking, epilepsy, insanity, mental disorders, neurological disorders and epilepsy. She is the patron saint of family happiness, incest victims, loss of parents, martyrs, mental asylums, mental health caregivers, mentally ill people, the demon-possessed, princesses, psychiatrists, rape victims, and runaways.

May 29

Home / Today in Church History / May 29
by gerryadmin

1453 The Fall of Constantinople

Mehmed the Conquerer enters Constantinople

After successfully repelling attacks by Slavs, Persians, Avars, Vikings, Arabs, and Bulgars, the thousand-year-old walls of Constantinople were finally penetrated by the Ottoman Turks under Mehmed II. The last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, died defending the city and with him perished the the last remnants of the Roman Empire.

For centuries that empire had been shrinking, losing the Middle East and Levant to the Arabs, southern Italy to the Normans, and Anatolia and the Balkans to the Turks. It was in financial peril, with its trade in the hands of Genoa and Venice; its crown jewels were glass (the real ones having been pawned); and the Catholic powers of Europe demanded that Constantinople abandon Orthodox Christianity before they would give any aid. Though its walls were still formidable, the city inside them was a shrunken husk of former glory, never having recovered from its sack at the hands of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Finally, the young Ottoman sultan, Mehmed II, decided to end the charade. He built a fort to cut off Constantinople from the Black Sea, and brought a huge army and fleet to besiege the city. Massive artillery bombarded the ancient walls, a fleet was hauled on rollers over the hills from the Bosporus to the Golden Horn, and miners tunneled under the fortifications. The vastly outnumbered defenders finally succumbed on May 29, 1453, whereupon Mehmed, ever after known as The Conqueror, gave the city over to three days of rape, massacre, and looting, and its inhabitants were sold into slavery. The great Church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, was immediately turned into a mosque. The most sacred relic of eastern Christians, the Hodegetria, a portrait of Mary and the baby Jesus supposedly painted by Luke the Evangelist, was chopped into bits for the gold in its frame.

By that time, Constantinople, once the grandest city on the planet, was only a hollow shell of its former self and the Roman Empire, of which it had been its capital, was reduced to a few scattered holdings. But the capture of the city had enormous political and symbolic importance. Both the Turks and the Russians claimed to be the heirs of Byzantium. Mehmet styled himself the Kayser-i-Rum, “Roman Emperor” and decreed that his next conquest would be Rome itself. The ruler of Muscovy, Ivan III, married a Byzantine princess and declared that he was the successor of Orthodox supremacy, appropriating the title of Czar, or “Caesar”. The flood of exiles from the city who found refuge in Italy brought with them manuscripts and a knowledge of Greek that helped fuel a second stage in the Renaissance. Turkish expansion brought with it a strangling of the trade between Asia and Europe, encouraging Europeans to embark on direct voyages to the East rather than relying on Islamic middle men; the expeditions of Columbus and Vasco da Gama are results of the fall of Constantinople.

Today, visitors to Constantinople, called “Istanbul” by the Turks, can visit a tiny enclave in the Fener district by the Golden Horn and see the compound of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the last remaining official of the Roman Empire.

In recent years, the Islamist government of President Erdogan has made political capital out of the Conqueror and Turkey’s Ottoman past — television movies have been made about Mehmet II and his descendant Suleiman the Magnificent; a new bridge across the Bosporus has been named after Mehmet — all part of Erdogan’s plan to erase the nonsectarian republicanism of Ataturk.

May 28

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by gerryadmin

In May, 1541 an old lady was hacked to death in the Tower of London on the orders of Henry VIII. The victim was Margaret Pole (1473-1541), Countess of Salisbury, and her crimes were being a loyal Catholic and a member of an inconvenient family.

Margaret was born into royalty. She was the daughter of George, Earl of Clarence, brother to two Yorkist kings, Edward IV and Richard III, but when Richard died in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, her heritage made her a target of the new Tudor dynasty. Over the next few decades Margaret would see her family members picked off, one by one, by Henry VII or Henry VIII. Her brother Edward was imprisoned in the Tower for years but was still executed for a conspiracy in which he had no part.

Despite her dangerous relations, Henry VIII treated Margaret well. She was named Countess of Salisbury in her own right, one of only two women in the sixteenth century with an aristocratic title independent of a husband; she was named to Princess Mary’s household and was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine. Her peril, however, emerged in the 1530s with the divorce of Katherine and the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. Margaret opposed the divorce and stood by Mary even after she had been declared a bastard. But it was her son Reginald Pole who brought her the most trouble. Reginald was a brilliant scholar, destined for a career in the Church and the recipient of Henry VIII’s patronage. However, Reginald broke with Henry on religious grounds, called on Englishmen to rebel against him, and was named a Cardinal by the pope. Henry sent assassins to murder Reginald and not too long after had Margaret and two of her sons arrested for conspiring with Reginald against the king. One son was executed, the other exiled, and Margaret, after years in the Tower was condemned to beheading. She maintained her innocence and wrote a poem carved in her cell, declaring this:

For traitors on the block should die;

I am no traitor, no, not I!

My faithfulness stands fast and so,

Towards the block I shall not go!

Nor make one step, as you shall see;

Christ in Thy Mercy, save Thou me!

In an era when it was considered the height of good manners to go calmly to one’s execution and make a humble speech of contrition, Margaret refused to cooperate in her death. She did not lay her head on the block as required and had to be held down. The rookie executioner struggled to make a clean chop to the neck of the struggling victim and, in fact, it took ten whacks before the poor woman died. The official report blamed the “blundering youth” who “hacked her head and shoulders to pieces”. The Catholic Church considers her a martyr; she was beatified in the nineteenth century.

But there may have been some posthumous revenge. Visitors to St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle are told that the body of Henry VIII lies underneath its stones. There was, however, a different story told shortly after: in the 1550s Reginald Pole was now the Archbishop of Canterbury and it is said that he and Queen Mary, who had suffered so much at the hands of her father, had Henry’s corpse disinterred, burnt and the ashes scattered in the river.

May 27

Home / Today in Church History / May 27
by gerryadmin

Saint Augustine of Canterbury

No part of Europe suffered as much from the fall of the Roman Empire to the barbarian invasions as did Britain. After the last legion pulled out in 410, the island was left to its own resources which proved insufficient to repel the waves of Picts, Saxons, Irish, Angles and Jutes that assailed the Romano-Britons. Civilization gradually died; literacy almost vanished; the barter system replaced coinage; and Christianity retreated into the Welsh hills and the remoter regions; Germanic petty kingdoms were established on the ruins.

The task of reintroducing Christianity fell to Irish monks who evangelized the north and to a mission sent out from Rome in the 590s. Aethelbert, a barbarian king in Kent, had married a Frankish princess who had won permission to include Christian priests in her retinue. Pope Gregory the Great took the opportunity to send monks from his own monastery to the Kentish capital at Canterbury and the expedition was to be led by the abbot Augustine. On the way to his post Augustine apparently heard stories of the bloodthirsty people to whom he was being sent and wanted to turn back. His spine was stiffened by exhortations from Gregory so the monk continued to Britain, arriving in 597. Aethelbert’s reception was friendly but guarded. According to the Venerable Bede, the king said: “Your words and promises are very fair but as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I cannot assent to them and give up what I have long held in common with the whole English nation. But since you have come as strangers from so great a distance, and, as I take it, are anxious to have us also share in what you conceive to be both excellent and true, we will not interfere with you, but receive you, rather, in kindly hospitality and take care to provide what may be necessary for your support. Moreover, we make no objection to your winning as many converts as you can to your creed”.

Eventually Augustine succeeded in converting Aethelbert and thousands of his people. He followed up this success by establishing monasteries, schools, and churches and laying the foundation for a network of bishoprics that would encompass all of the Anglo-Saxon territory. He was not successful, however, in winning over the native British Christians to the obedience of Rome — a Celtic variety of Christianity persisted on the island for some time.

Augustine was named the first Archbishop of Canterbury, dying in 605. His body is still interred in the church of Saints Peter and Paul which he founded.

May 26

Home / Today in Church History / May 26
by gerryadmin

1201 Murder of a Pilgrim Saint

According to CatholicSaints Info, the Scotsman William of Perth (aka William of Rochester) led a wild and misspent youth, but as an adult he had a complete conversion, devoting himself to God, caring especially for poor and neglected children. He worked as a baker, and gave every tenth loaf to the poor. He attended Mass daily, and one morning on his way to church he found an infant abandoned on the threshold. He named the baby David, and adopted him, and taught him his trade.

Years later he and David set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. During a stop-over in Rochester, England, the boy David turned on William, clubbed him, cut his throat, robbed the body, and fled. Because he was on a holy journey, and because of the miraculous cures later reported at his tomb, he is considered a martyr.

A local insane woman found William’s body, and plaited a garland of honeysuckle flowers for it; she placed the garland on William, and then on herself whereupon her madness was cured. Local monks, seeing this as a sign from God, interred William in the local cathedral and began work on his shrine. His tomb and a chapel at his murder scene, called Palmersdene, soon became sites of pilgrimage, second only to the tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Remains of the chapel can be seen near the present Saint William’s Hospital.

The stained-glass portrait in Rochester Cathedral above shows William with the traditional pilgrims’s hat, staff, purse, and cockleshell emblem. He is the patron saint of adopted children.

May 25

Home / Today in History / May 25
by gerryadmin

Towel Day

May 25th is observed around the world by fans of Douglas Adams, author of, inter alia, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Life, the Universe and Everything,  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Devotees of the Adams cult carry a towel around with them all day, in honour of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the original Towel Bearers. The eponymous Hitchhiker’s Guide tells its readers:

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

May 24

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by gerryadmin

1921 The opening of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial

On April 15, 1920, in Braintree, Massachusetts, the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company’s payroll was robbed and two men, a guard and the unarmed paymaster, were murdered. As the thieves fled the scene in a dark-blue Buick, they fired at the crowd of workers. Suspicion fell on a gang of Italian anarchists, who were questioned and followed. When police apprehended Italian-born Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a shoemaker and a fishmonger, they were found to be carrying anarchist literature, as well as pistols and ammunition which linked them to the shooting scene. They were charged with robbery and murder, which prompted their anarchist comrades to launch a series of bomb attacks including the famous blast on Wall Street that exploded killing 38 people and wounding 134.

The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti opened on May 24, 1921, eventually becoming a famous episode in American jurisprudence and an enduring part of left-wing mythology. The left presented the two as harmless cheese-eating immigrants persecuted by xenophobic bigots, while the right saw them as dangerous terrorists and a warning of the dangers of unrestricted immigration. What made this clash of ideologies worse was the incompetence and bias of the judge, Webster Thayer, who had already presided over a trial finding Vanzetti guilty of an earlier robbery. A jury found Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of robbery and murder in July 1921.

It was at this point that the American left rallied and used the undoubted flaws of the trial to raise money, publicize labour and anarchist issues, and demand a new trial. The usual crowd of celebrities, academics, and writers supported the cause, making it an international sensation. As appeals dragged on, another anarchist in 1925 took the blame for the Braintree crimes, absolving Sacco and Vanzetti, but again Judge Thayer denied the need for a new trial. However, by 1926 powerful voices, including future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, Albert Einstein and Dorothy Parker, were arguing that the original case had been a travesty of justice. The uproar was such that Massachusetts governor Alvan Fuller established an independent inquiry into the affair which, after two weeks of study and hearing witnesses, declined to overturn the original verdict. Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution on August 22, 1927 was to go ahead.

In prison, the condemned alternated between calls for violent revenge — “revenge, revenge in our names and the names of our living and dead” — and posing as innocents. Vanzetti was particularly touching, telling Sacco’s son in a letter “remember always these things; we are not criminals; they convicted us on a frame-up; they denied us a new trial; and if we will be executed after seven years, four months and seventeen days of unspeakable tortures and wrong, it is for what I have already told you; because we were for the poor and against the exploitation and oppression of the man by the man.”

Their execution prompted a wave of bombings across America and in Europe. Fifty years later Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts decreed that the pair been unfairly tried and convicted and that “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names”. Though the plight of Sacco and Vanzetti remains a legend of injustice on the left, the two were certainly guilty. Their defence lawyer told Upton Sinclair, author of a sympathetic novel, that he had provided the men with a fake alibi and that they served the cause better as martyrs than if they had been released. Anarchist sources admitted that Sacco was the shooter.

May 23

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by gerryadmin

1618 The Third Defenestration of Prague

When political turmoil grips the Canadian people, the government responds by appointing a Royal Commission, and in the years it takes to issue a final report, the brouhaha always dies down. In times of national crisis, Czechs are wont to throw people out of windows.

The First Prague Defenestration (from the Latin fenestra, and thus the German das Fenster and the French la fenêtre) took place in 1419 when angry Hussites tossed the burgomaster and civic councillors out of a window in the Town Hall to their deaths on the cobblestones below. In 1483 religious quarrels again led to the fatal hurling of the Prague burgomaster and his colleagues through windows.

In May, 1618 sectarian hostility led to a confrontation in the Bohemian Chancellory  between four Catholic regents and a group of Protestant noblemen. The latter demanded to know whether the regents had played a part in provoking the King Ferdinand II to issue harsh anti-Protestant decrees. Two of the regents accepted responsibility for supporting those moves, whereupon they and their secretary were propelled out the window 70′ above the ground. Their survival was attributed by the Catholic faction to a miraculous intercession of the Virgin Mary and by the Protestants to a fortuitous soft landing in a dung heap. The Thirty Years War soon erupted.

May 22

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by gerryadmin

1520 The Alvarado Massacre

It’s hard to say a good word about the Spanish conquistadors; a scummier bunch of rapacious, dishonourable murderers would be hard to find. On the other hand, one is hard-pressed to be a fan of the Aztecs, cruel imperialists who conducted human sacrifices on an industrial scale. A tragic event in May 1520 would prompt a clash between the two cultures that would eventually end very badly for the natives.

In 1519 the Spanish adventurer Hernan Cortes had marched to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and taken Emperor Moctezuma prisoner. The Spaniards and their native allies were housed in their own compound of the magnificent city on the lake, relying on the locals for food. They were a tiny, uneasy band surrounded by a hostile populace resentful at their god-leader’s capture.

While Cortes was absent, dealing with another band of Spaniards on the coast, the Aztecs informed his deputy Pedro de Alvarado that they would be holding a festival in honour of one of their gods. Alvarado was also told by his allies that this was a cover for the start of an Aztec uprising and that the Spaniards were sure to be overwhelmed and sacrificed. Alvarado chose to react violently. He sealed off the square where the dancing was taking place and butchered the unarmed participants.

Here is an Aztec account:

Here it is told how the Spaniards killed; they murdered the Mexicans who were celebrating the Fiesta of Huitzilopochtli in the place they called The Patio of the Gods.  At this time, when everyone was enjoying the celebration, when everyone was already dancing, when everyone was already singing, when song was linked to song and the songs roared like waves, in that precise moment the Spaniards determined to kill people. They came into the patio, armed for battle. They came to close the exits, the steps, the entrances [to the patio]: The Gate of the Eagle in the smallest palace, The Gate of the Canestalk and the Gate of the Snake of Mirrors. And when they had closed them, no one could get out anywhere. Once they had done this, they entered the Sacred Patio to kill people. They came on foot, carrying swords and wooden and metal shields. Immediately, they surrounded those who danced, then rushed to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off both his arms. Then they cut off his head [with such a force] that it flew off, falling far away. At that moment, they then attacked all the people, stabbing them, spearing them, wounding them with their swords. They struck some from behind, who fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out [of their bodies]. They cut off the heads of some and smashed the heads of others into little pieces. They struck others in the shoulders and tore their arms from their bodies. They struck some in the thighs and some in the calves. They slashed others in the abdomen and their entrails fell to the earth. There were some who even ran in vain, but their bowels spilled as they ran; they seemed to get their feet entangled with their own entrails. Eager to flee, they found nowhere to go. Some tried to escape, but the Spaniards murdered them at the gates while they laughed. Others climbed the walls, but they could not save themselves. Others entered the communal house, where they were safe for a while. Others lay down among the victims and pretended to be dead. But if they stood up again they [the Spaniards] would see them and kill them. The blood of the warriors ran like water as they ran, forming pools, which widened, as the smell of blood and entrails fouled the air. And the Spaniards walked everywhere, searching the communal houses to kill those who were hiding. They ran everywhere, they searched every place. When [people] outside [the Sacred Patio learned of the massacre], shouting began, “Captains, Mexicas, come here quickly! Come here with all arms, spears, and shields! Our captains have been murdered! Our warriors have been slain! Oh Mexica captains, [our warriors] have been annihilated!” Then a roar was heard, screams, people wailed, as they beat their palms against their lips. Quickly the captains assembled, as if planned in advance, and carried their spears and shields. Then the battle began. [The Mexicas] attacked them with arrows and even javelins, including small javelins used for hunting birds. They furiously hurled their javelins [at the Spaniards]. It was as if a layer of yellow canes spread over the Spaniards.

This atrocity greatly imperilled the Spanish position in the capital. Moctezuma would be repudiated by the Aztec elite and an uprising in June would eventually drive the conquistadors from the city with great losses. Much more blood would be shed before the Spaniards could crush the native resistance.

May 21

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by gerryadmin

1776 Battle of the Cedars

When Canada defeats an invading army, as occurred 246 years ago this week, we know how to boast about it. Behold the mighty monument to our victory over the Americans at the Battle of the Cedars, 1776! It puts that puny Arc de Triomphe to shame.

In 1775 a Continental Army invaded Quebec. The American forces succeeded in taking Montreal but failed in their siege of Quebec City. By May 1776 their position was untenable and they began to withdraw back to New York. This left their garrison at The Cedars, south of Montreal, exposed to attack. 

When a detachment of British regulars, some Quebecois militia, and hundreds of Iroquois showed up outside the wooden fort, the American commander Isaac Butterfield tried in vain to negotiate an armed withdrawal. When that option was denied, he surrendered. Other American troops at nearby Quinze-Chênes put up a fight but they too yielded. The British officers were able to persuade the Iroquois not to massacre their prisoners but the captives were looted by the natives. 

A prisoner exchange was arranged and the American soldiers were released but Congress, arguing that the Iroquois had committed atrocities, refused to honour their side of the swap.