Author: gerryadmin

July 19

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by gerryadmin

1553

Lady Jane Grey and the Protestant coup

Henry VIII’s desire to have a legitimately-born son to follow him in the Tudor dynasty led to all manner of marital distress, political turmoil, and the withdrawal of the Church of England from its subjection to the papacy. In 1544 Henry passed a scheme of royal succession. The throne, on his death, would pass to his only surviving son Edward (raised as a Protestant); if he died without children, the throne would go to Mary, his eldest daughter (and a Catholic); if Mary were to prove childless, she would be succeeded by Henry’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth (religiously ambiguous). Should all of his children die without issue, the throne would go to the successors of Henry’s younger sister Mary Tudor, the line which included Lady Jane Grey (1536-1554).

When Henry died in 1547, Edward VI instituted a Protestant national church, the beginning of Anglicanism as we now know it. For almost six years he legislated against Catholic practices, instituted a new Prayer Book, allowed clergy to marry, and placed Protestant ministers and professors in positions of power. In this he was supported by some, though by no means all, of the political class. By 1553 it was clear that Edward was not going to live long and steps were taken to disinherit Mary, still obdurately Catholic. Elizabeth was still, by law, considered a bastard and was thought to be religiously unreliable, so plans centred on Lady Jane Grey. Jane had been raised a firm Protestant and had been married off unwillingly to the son of the greatest Protestant noble, the Duke of Northumberland. In his “Devise for the Succession”, Edward sought to preserve Protestantism by placing Jane on the throne.

At Edward’s death in July 1553, the Protestants of the political class, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, had Jane declared Queen and set her securely in the Tower of London to await the result of the rest of the coup. The key was the arrest of Mary and Elizabeth to keep them from raising support for the legitimate line. Mary slipped through Northumberland’s fingers and assembled so many armed partisans and so much public goodwill that after nine days the coup collapsed. Mary promised religious toleration and, on July 19, Jane stepped down. By early 1554 Mary was well on the way toward the active persecution of English Protestantism. Jane, her husband, and father-in-law were considered too dangerous to live. On February 12, Jane went to the block to die, becoming a romantic martyr for the reformed cause.

July 18

Home / Today in Church History / July 18
by gerryadmin

1918

The murder of Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia

The Holy Martyr Yelizaveta Fyodorovna was born in 1864 as Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, the grand-daughter of Queen Victoria and daughter of the Grand Duke of the German state of Hesse. As one of the most beautiful aristocrats of her generation, she attracted the romantic interests of princes and kings including the future Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, but she married into the Russian royal family. In 1884 she married the Grand Duke Sergei, younger brother of the Tsar and uncle of Russia’s last Romanov ruler Nicholas II. She converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism and was a well-accepted member of the upper reaches of Russian society when Alexei was made Governor of Moscow.

The Russian Empire in the early 20th century was full of political turmoil and revolutionary fervour, which made Alexei, a royalist hardliner, a favoured target for terrorist assassins. In February, 1905 a hit squad of the Socialist-Revolutionary party blew the Grand Duke to bits as he rode in his carriage through the streets of Moscow. Elizabeth went to the jail to speak with his murderer and begged for him to repent; she pleaded with the authorities to spare his life but the young man, poet Ivan Kalyayev, demanded the death penalty, saying that his death would be more beneficial to the revolutionary cause than that of the Grand Duke.

After this tragedy, Elizabeth forsook her high status, sold off her jewels and possessions, entered a nunnery and devoted her life to prayer and charity. She opened an orphanage and hospital and worked with the poor of Moscow’s slums. This counted for nothing after the Bolshevik Revolution broke out. In 1918 she was arrested by the Cheka, the Communist secret police, and was murdered along with her maid and another nun, and some high-ranking officials. She was thrown down a mine shaft and grenades tossed in to finish the job. Her body was later recovered and smuggled to China and then to Jerusalem where she and her husband had founded a convent. She is buried there. A statue of the Grand Duchess is one of 10 Martyrs of the Twentieth Century that stand above the west door of Westminster Abbey.

July 17

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by gerryadmin

1794

The Carmelite Martyrs

The French Revolution had begun in 1789 as a way to secure human rights for all citizens to enjoy, and its early days saw the triumph of middle-class liberalism: freedom of the press, freedom of religion, an end to feudalism and arbitrary arrest, under a constitutional monarchy. But soon it turned against the Catholic Church, confiscating its land, dissolving the monasteries, severing the ties with the papacy, and mandating that clergy serve a state church. This caused great consternation in the country and alienated King Louis XVI and many others from the Revolution. But radicals were prepared to go much farther and soon the Revolution turned against Christianity itself. Thousands of clergy were arrested, church services were forbidden, and a propaganda campaign of blasphemy and vilification was undertaken. Priests and nuns were forced to marry, the word “saint” was removed from streets and place names, tombs and monuments were desecrated and destroyed. “Religion”, said one radical, “is nothing but a mass of stupidities and and absurdity . . . A true republican cannot be superstitious; he bends the knee before no idols; he worships liberty alone; he knows no other cult than that of loving his country and its laws. The cross has become, in the eyes of the humanist thinker, a counter-revolutionary emblem.” In 1792 massacres of clergy began; these accelerated with the Terror of 1793-94.

In June 1794 a group of nuns living in a community in Compiègne was arrested for refusing to abjure their vows. Sixteen Carmelite nuns and lay sisters were taken to Paris for trial and were condemned to death. Most were middle-aged women, the youngest was 29 and two were 78 years old. On the evening of July 17, in the Place de la Nation, one by one, beginning with the youngest, the nuns mounted the steps of the guillotine to be beheaded. As they awaited their deaths they sang the psalm Laudate Dominum omnes gentes : O praise the Lord all ye nations! Praise him all ye people! For his mercy is confirmed upon us and the truth of the Lord remains forever. Praise the Lord! One by one, as their turn came to die, they kissed a little statuette of the Virgin and Child held out to them by Mother Theresa, their prioress, at the bottom of the stairs. Finally, she too, the last remaining alive, singing still, climbed up to be killed.

The constancy of these women very much impressed the crowd and added to the growing disgust of Parisians for the Terror, which was ended brutally less than two weeks later by the execution of its inventor Maximillien Robespierre and his henchmen. Francis Poulenc’s operatic masterpiece Dialogues of the Carmelites (1957) takes historical liberties with the story but is a powerful tribute to the martyrs.

July 16

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by gerryadmin

1942

The Vel’ d’Hiv’ Roundup

Early in 1942, the German government decided on a policy of exterminating Jews in the territories under their control by shipping them to death camps in eastern Europe. To do so in  France required the permission of the puppet French government in Vichy, which agreed that the German occupying forces could arrest foreign Jews, while French Jews would be scooped up by local police. After securing the agreement of the Vichy government, German officials and French police conducted roundups of Jews in both the occupied and unoccupied zones of France throughout the summer of 1942. The Vél d’Hiv was part of a series of roundups codenamed Opération Vent printanier (Operation Spring Wind) that took place across the country in spring and summer of 1942.

Preparations for the Roundup

Planning for the Vél d’Hiv roundup took place among René Bousquet, secretary general of the French national police; Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy Régime; SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, head of Adolf Eichmann’s Judenreferat [Jewish Section] in France; and SS-Oberstürmführer Helmut Knochen, head of the German Security Police in France.

The Director of the local Paris Municipal Police, Emile Hennequin, sent precise expectations for the roundup to the police prefecture three days before the event. The roundup was originally set to take place from July 13–15, which included Bastille Day, the French national holiday. The holiday was not celebrated in the occupied zones of France, and in order to preclude local rioting, Nazi officials allowed French officials to delay the operation until July 16–17.

The German goal was that French police would round up 28,000 foreign and stateless Jews in the greater Paris area. They were to exempt “sensitive cases” such as British or American Jews. Although German authorities had originally agreed to exempt children under the age of 16, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval suggested for “humanitarian” reasons that children be arrested with their parents, unless a family member remained behind to care for them. Four thousand children were among those arrested in Paris.

In order to maintain a detailed record of the roundup, the police were to report the number of people they arrested each hour to their local prefecture.

July 16–17

Beginning in the early hours of July 16, French police rounded up thousands of men, women, and children throughout Paris. By the end of the day, the police had taken 2,573 men, 5,165 women, and 3,625 children from their homes. The roundup continued the following day, but with a much smaller number of arrests.

Approximately 6,000 of those rounded up were immediately transported to Drancy, in the northern suburbs of Paris. Drancy was at that point a transit camp for Jews being deported from France. The rest of the arrestees were detained at the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Winter Cycling Track), an indoor sporting arena in Paris’s fifteenth arrondissement.

Officials could have held few illusions of the unsuitability of the “Vél d’Hiv” for holding such a large population indefinitely. Early in the war, it had been used to intern German nationals, mainly refugees. In 1940 it housed interned foreign women. In both instances, conditions were deplorable.

Following the roundup of Jews in greater Paris, some 7,000 Jews, among them almost 4,000 children, were crowded together in the sports arena. There was scarcely space to lie down and the incarcerated Jews faced appalling circumstances. No arrangements had been made for food, water, or sanitary facilities. Only two physicians a shift were allowed in to treat the internees. The glass ceiling of the arena contributed to a stifling environment by day, as all ventilation had been sealed to prevent escape, and led to chilly temperatures at night. Parisian Quakers came to bring food and water.

Aftermath

After five days, Jews incarcerated at the Vél d’Hiv were transferred to other transit camps outside Paris. At Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande, French police guarded these men, women, and children until transport to concentration camps and killing centers in the east. At the end of July, the remaining adults were separated from their children and deported to Auschwitz. Over 3,000 children remained interned without their parents until they were deported, among adult strangers, to Auschwitz as well.

German authorities continued the deportations of Jews from French soil until August 1944. In all, some 77,000 Jews living on French territory perished, the overwhelming majority of them at Auschwitz.

Postwar Trials

For his prominent role in the deportation of Jews from France, Pierre Laval, formerly the French Prime Minister, was arrested and tried after the liberation of France. He was shot by firing squad on 15 October 1945.

The fate of two German officials most involved in the Vél d’Hiv mirrored the common fates of high-ranking SS administrators. Theodor Dannecker was arrested by American officials in Bad Tölz, Bavaria, in December 1945, and committed suicide while in custody. Helmut Knochen, sentenced by a British court to 21 years in prison for a separate offense, was sentenced to death by a French court in 1954. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and Knochen was released on orders of French President Charles de Gaulle in November 1962.

In 1949, René Bousquet, secretary general of the French police, was found guilty for his role in the complicit Vichy government, but his sentence was immediately commuted for “having actively and sustainably participated in the resistance against the occupier.” In 1991, French justice authorities in Paris indicted Bousquet for his participation in the deportation of Jews from France. Christian Didier, a mentally ill individual, assassinated Bousquet in his home in Paris on June 8, 1993, before proceedings could take place.

Acknowledging the Role of the State and Police

On July 16, 1995, on the fifty-third anniversary of the Vél d’Hiv roundup, French President Jacques Chirac acknowledged the role the state and its police had played in the persecution of Jews and other victims of the German occupation. “France,” Chirac said, “land of the Enlightenment and of Human Rights, land of hospitality and asylum, France, on that day, committed an irreparable act. It failed to keep its word and delivered those under its protection to their executioners.”

This post is taken from the Holocaust Museum’s excellent website. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008213

 

 

July 15

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by gerryadmin

St Swithun’s Day

Swithun or Swithin (d. 862) was an obscure bishop of Winchester in the mid-9th century. However, after his death he seems to have been quite active in the miracle department. On his deathbed, Swithun asked to be buried out of doors, where he would be trodden on by local folk and rained on. However, when the monks of Winchester attempted to remove his remains to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral legend says there was a heavy rain storm during the ceremony.

This led to the belief that if it rains on St Swithin’s Day (July 15th), it will rain for the next 40 days in succession, and a fine 15th July will be followed by 40 days of fine weather. The old rhyme says:

St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain 

For forty days it will remain. 

St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair 

For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.

A local variation says: If on St Swithun’s day it really pours/ You’re better off to stay indoors.

Unfortunately for the wisdom of our ancestors, this seems not to be borne out in fact. Since records began, not a single 40-day drought has occurred anywhere in the UK during the summer months, and there has been not one instance at any time of the year of 40 consecutive days of rainfall. According to the British Meteorological Society “the middle of July tends to be around the time that the jet stream settles into a relatively consistent pattern. If the jet stream lies north of the UK throughout the summer, continental high pressure is able to move in, bringing warmth and sunshine. If it sticks further south, Arctic air and Atlantic weather systems are likely to predominate, bringing colder, wetter weather.” The rhyme should read:

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain

For forty days, relatively unsettled there’s a fair chance it will remain

St Swithun’s day if thou be fair

For forty days, a northerly jet stream might result in some fairly decent spells

But then again it might not.

July 14

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by gerryadmin

Agitation for a Second Front

When, in August 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, agreeing to a 10-year peace, Communists in the West were startled. They were no longer to say bad things about Hitler and, in the next month, when the invasion of Poland by the armies of both Hitler and Stalin started World War Two, party loyalists were instructed to oppose, sabotage, and obstruct the military efforts of Britain and France. In the United States, leftists such as Peter Seeger and Woody Guthrie, urged America to stay out of the conflict, calling President Roosevelt a war-monger.

Things changed in the summer of 1941 when Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Communists in the UK and USA now enthusiastically backed the war effort and soon began to clamour for a “Second Front in Europe” to ease the pressure on the Red Army. When this failed to take shape soon enough, leftists claimed that the capitalist West was happy to see the USSR suffer horrific losses.

The failure of the Dieppe raid in 1942, where the largely Canadian invading force was pinned down and butchered scarcely having got off the beaches, convinced planners that taking a port was not the way to go. Amphibious attacks were undertaken in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, with mixed results and many lessons learned. It was not until June 1944 that the western Allies felt ready to launch Operation Overland and land on five Normandy beaches.

The call for a “Second Front” was always a code phrase for “more help for Russia.” Britain was fighting on a number of fronts in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, Asia, and in the air over Germany, and when the USA joined they too waged war from Alaska to New Guinea in the Pacific and in Europe.

 

July 13

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by gerryadmin

A plethora of birthdays

Appearing on Earth for the first time on this day were

1821 Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate cavalryman, war criminal, founder of the Ku Klux, and, apparently, a late convert to racial harmony.

1863 Margaret Murray, English anthropologist and horribly mistaken proponent of the origin of witchcraft.

1940 Patrick Stewart, English actor and Star Trek captain.

1942 Harrison Ford, American actor, starship captain, and archaeologist.

 

And best of all:

1903 Sir Kenneth Clark, English art historian. Born into a life of aristocratic privilege, be was chosen at a very early age to be director of Britain’s National Gallery and Keeper of the King’s Pictures. He is best known for the greatest documentary series in television history, 1969’s Civilisation: A Personal View. This 13-episode gem could never be made in today’s woke times. Imagine a broadcasting company giving a limitless budget to an elderly white male with a crooked tooth and a comb-over, tailored in 1930s-style suits, sitting still and talking about great art and architecture. Not the slightest nod to diversity, intersectionality, or the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Imagine allowing someone with these sorts of ideas to have a public platform:

I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.

Watch the series or read the book. You will be a better human being for having done so.

July 12

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by gerryadmin

1690

The Glorious Twelfth

With the accession of Catholic James II to the English throne in 1685, political tensions were high. For most Englishmen and Scotsmen (because James also ruled that country) Catholicism was equated with foreign tyranny and invasion. The Spanish in the 16th century and the French in 17th century were seen as the nation’s enemies, egged on by the pope to bring England back to obedience to Rome. Some thought to exclude James from the throne but others were reassured by the fact that his Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, would eventually succeed him. This changed when James’s second wife bore him a surprise son in 1688 — this would mean a Catholic heir. The king’s quarrels with Parliament over his plans to enforce religious toleration led to the revolt of most of his political class. With the help of a Dutch army led by her husband William of Orange, his daughter Mary returned and ousted her father from power. This so-called Bloodless Revolution may have been without much violence in England but that was not the case in Ireland where James fled to rally support.

The Irish Parliament declared their support for James, passing a bill decreeing religious toleration for both Catholics and Protestants. A French army landed on the island to bolster his claims and found much support among the Catholic population. War raged across Ireland until a decisive battle was fought on the Boyne River by the rival kings: James with an army of 25,000 French and Irish against Mary’s husband, William III, with a larger and more professional army of Dutch, English and assorted European Protestants, armed with more modern weaponry. James was driven from the field and fled to France, leaving his Irish supporters to be mopped up piecemeal over the next few years. The exiled king lived on a French pension for the rest of his life and never made a serious attempt to regain the throne, though his son James (the “old Pretender”) and grandson Bonnie Prince Charlie (the “Young Pretender”) invaded Britain unsuccessfully to press their dynastic claims.

To this day the Battle of the Boyne looms large in the memory of Ulster Protestants for whom July 12 is a grand holiday to be celebrated by marching triumphantly through Catholic areas to intimidate their neighbours.

An interesting historical irony: the papacy did nothing to support Catholic King James in 1689. Pope Innocent XI, involved in a church-state tussle with the French government, felt that James was too much a tool of Louis XIV.

July 11

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by gerryadmin

1804 The death of Alexander Hamilton

The fame of American revolutionary Alexander Hamilton has blossomed in the 21st century, thanks largely to a Broadway musical whose charms are (I confess) lost on me. Readers might be interested in a 19th-century English assessment of the man, from Chambers’ Book of Days.

Although the name of Alexander Hamilton is not so popularly familiar as several others concerned in the construction of the American Union, yet there is scarcely another which so closely interests the profounder students of that momentous passage in the world’s history. Of Hamilton’s share in that work, [French politician and historian Françcois] Guizot testifies, ‘that there is not one element of order, strength, and durability in the constitution which he did not powerfully contribute to introduce into the scheme and cause to be adopted.’

Hamilton’s father was a Scotsman, and his mother a member of a Huguenot family, banished from France. He was born in 1757, on the island of Nevis; and whilst a youth serving as clerk in a merchant’s office, a hurricane of more than ordinary violence occurred, and Hamilton drew up an account of its ravages, which was inserted in a West Indian newspaper. The narrative was so well written, and excited so much attention, that the writer was deemed born for something better than mercantile drudgery, and was sent to New York to prosecute his education. The dispute between Great Britain and the colonies had begun to grow very warm, and Hamilton soon distinguished himself by eloquent speeches in advocacy of resistance. 

With the ardour of youth he commenced the study of military tactics, and turned his learning to good account in the first action between the British and Americans at Lexington in 1775. In the course of the unhappy war which followed, Hamilton was Washington’s most trusted and confidential aid. At the conclusion of hostilities he commenced practice at the bar, became secretary of the treasury under President Washington, and a leading actor in all those intricate, delicate, and perplexing discussions, which attended the consolidation of the thirteen independent colonies into one nation. 

Hamilton was the most conservative of republicans. He opposed the ultra-democratic doctrines of Jefferson. [That is putting it mildly. Here are Hamilton’s observations on America’s third president: The moral character of Jefferson was repulsive. Continually puffing about liberty, equality and the degrading curse of slavery he brought his own children to the hammer and made money out of his debaucheries.] He was an ardent admirer of the English constitution, and he beheld the course of the French Revolution with abhorrence and dismay.

But all the blessings which lay in store for America in the treasury of Hamilton’s fine intellect, were lost by a cruel mischance ere he had attained his forty-seventh year. With the feelings of an upright man, he had expressed his sense of the profligacy of Aaron, who thereon challenged him to a duel. Hamilton had all reasonable contempt for such a mode of settling differences, but fearing, as he wrote, that ‘his ability to be in future useful either in preventing mischief or effecting good was inseparable from a conformity to prejudice in this particular,’ he weakly yielded. With every precaution of secrecy, he met his adversary at Weehardken, near New York. Colonel Burr fired, and his ball entered Hamilton’s side. Hamilton fell mortally wounded, his pistol going involuntarily off as he staggered to the ground. After a day of agony, he expired on the 11th of July 1804. Never, except at Washington’s death, was there such mourning in America.

Hamilton was a man under middle height, spare, erect, and of a most dignified presence. His writings in The Federalist are read by political philosophers with admiration to this day. He wrote rapidly, but with precision and method. His habit was to think well over his subject, and then, at whatever time of night, to go to bed and sleep for six or seven hours. On awaking, he drank a cup of strong coffee, sat down at his desk, and for five, six, seven, or even eight hours continued writing, until he had cleared the whole matter off his mind.

July 10

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by gerryadmin

165

The martyrdom of St Felicitas

Little is known for certain about St Felicitas (or Felicity) other than the site of her grave in Rome and that her martyrdom was marked by a homily preached by St Gregory the Great in a church erected over her tomb. Legend, however, gives us more data. According to Butler’s Lives of the Saints:

Felicity was a noble Christian woman who, after the death of her husband, served God in a state of widowhood and employed herself in prayer and works of charity. By the example of this lady and her family many idolaters were moved to embrace the faith of Christ. This angered the pagan priests, who complained to the Emperor Antoninus Pius that the boldness with which Felicity practised the Christian religion drew many from the worship of the immortal gods, who on that account would be angry with the city and state. The emperor was prevailed upon to send an order to Publius, the prefect of Rome, and he caused the mother and her sons to be apprehended and brought before him. He took Felicity aside and used the strongest inducements to bring her to sacrifice to the gods, that he might not be obliged to proceed with severity against her and her sons; but she answered, ” Do not think to frighten me by threats, or to win me by fair speeches. The spirit of God within me will not suffer me to be overcome, and will make me victorious over all your assaults.” ” Unhappy woman “, replied Publius, ” if you wish to die, die; but do not destroy your children.” ” My children “, said she, ” will live eternally if they are faithful, but must expect eternal death if they sacrifice to idols.”

The next day the prefect sent for Felicity and her sons again, and said, ” Take pity on your children, Felicity, they are in the bloom of youth.” The mother answered, “Your pity is impiety, and your words cruel.” Then, turning towards her children, she said, ” My sons, look up to Heaven, where Jesus Christ with His saints expects you. Be faithful in His love, and fight courageously for your souls.” Publius commanded her to be beaten, saying, ” You are insolent to give them such advice in my presence, in contempt of the orders of our prince.” He then called the boys to him one after another, and mixed promises with threats to induce them to worship the gods; but they all refused and, after being whipped, were remanded to prison. The prefect laid the whole process before the emperor, who gave an order that they should be sent to different judges and be condemned to different deaths. Felicitas implored God only that she not to be killed before her sons, so that she might be able to encourage them during their torture and death in order that they would not deny Christ.  Januarius was scourged to death, Felix and Philip were beaten with clubs, Silvanus was thrown headlong into the Tiber, and Alexander, Vitalis and Martial were beheaded; the same sentence was executed upon the mother last of all.