Christmas Every Day

1992

Pagans burn the Fantoft stave church

One of Christianity’s most beautiful and unique form of architecture is the stave church, a genre developed in medieval Scandinavia. Hundreds of these wooden structures were created starting about a thousand years ago but few of them now remain. Those that do, or those replicas built in admiration of the original style, are tourist attractions, drawing visitors for their intricate carvings and for the sense they convey of a bygone world. (How many of today’s churches, for example, have a little shed where worshippers may stow their swords?)

In 1992 a young Norwegian man attached to the local pagan black metal cult set fire to the Fantoft stave church outside of Bergen. Built around 1150 the church was destroyed as an act of revenge for Christianity’s success in converting Scandinavia during the Viking era. Said the arsonist (later convicted of murder), “For each devastated graveyard, one heathen grave is avenged, for each ten churches burnt to ashes, one heathen hof is avenged, for each ten priests or freemasons assassinated, one heathen is avenged.” Over the next four years there were some fifty church arsons in Norway connected to this strange Nazi-worshipping, murderous cult.

177  Saint Blandina and the martyrs of Lyons

Butler’s Lives of the Saints tells that that a fierce persecution broke out during the reign of Marcus Aurelius,“at Vienne and Lyons, in 177, whilst St. Pothinus was Bishop of Lyons, and St. Irenæus, who had been sent thither by St. Polycarp out of Asia, was a priest of that city. Many of the principal Christians were brought before the Roman governor. Among them was a slave, Blandina: and her mistress, also a Christian, feared that Blandina lacked strength to brave the torture. She was tormented a whole day through, but she bore it all with joy till the executioners gave up, confessing themselves outdone. Red-hot plates were held to the sides of Sanctus, a deacon of Vienne, till his body became one great sore, and he looked no longer like a man; but in the midst of his tortures he was “bedewed and strengthened by the stream of heavenly water which flows from the side of Christ.” Meantime, many confessors were kept in prison and with them were some who had been terrified into apostasy. Even the heathens marked the joy of martyrdom in the Christians who were decked for their eternal espousals, and the misery of the apostates. But the faithful confessors brought back those who had fallen, and the Church, “that Virgin Mother,” rejoiced when she saw her children live again in Christ. Some died in prison, the rest were martyred one by one, St. Blandina last of all, after seeing her younger brother put to a cruel death, and encouraging him to victory.”

According to Eusebius, Blandina seems to have been roasted on a grill before being released in the arena where she was gored by wild bulls. She is the patron saint of those falsely accused of cannibalism, servant girls, and victims of torture.

A plethora of medieval churchly events on this day.

1381 The beginning of the English Peasant Rebellion

A frequent target of the rebels will be the rich churches and monasteries that have profited from the devastation caused by the arrival of the Black Death. A Lollard hedge priest named John Ball will give the most revolutionary speech of the Middle Ages when he asks peasants: “When Adam delved/ And Eve span/ Who was then the gentleman?”, implying that God’s original creation did not include kings or aristocrats.

1416 The Council of Constance burns Jerome of Prague for heresy

The Council, called to settle the problem of three simultaneous popes and the Hussite heresy, condemns the Czech reformer to death. Jerome had come to Constance in support of his mentor Jan Hus, but like Hus, was arrested and burnt despite an imperial safe-conduct.

1431 Joan of Arc is executed

Joan, a 19-year old peasant girl inspired the forces of the Dauphin Charles in their battle to expel the English from France. Taken prisoner by the Burgundians, she is turned over to the English who put her on trial at Rouen for witchcraft and transvestism. The rigged trial and her burning at the stake aroused much controversy. Twenty years later the Church annulled her conviction and in 1920 she was named one of the patron saints of France.

1434 The Battle of Lipany extinguishes the Hussite Rebellion

In 1419 a rebellion of the proto-Protestant Hussite reformers breaks out in the Czech lands. Significant military successes are won by the Taborites, the radical millenialist wing of the movement, using the tactic of the war wagon, a mobile battlefield artillery platform and fortress. The moderate Utraquist faction, willing to compromise with the established Church in return for a few reforms, combines with Catholic forces to defeat the Taborites.

Saints Donatian and Rogatian

Butler’s Lives of the Saints says:

THERE lived at Nantes an illustrious young nobleman named Donatian, who, having received the holy Sacrament of Regeneration, led a most edifying life, and strove with much zeal to convert others to faith in Christ. His elder brother, Rogatian, was not able to resist the moving example of his piety and the force of his discourses, and desired to be baptized. But the bishop having withdrawn and concealed himself for fear of the persecution, he was not able to receive that sacrament, but was shortly after baptized in his blood; for he declared himself a Christian at a time when to embrace that sacred profession was to become a candidate for martyrdom. Donatian was impeached for professing himself a Christian, and for having withdrawn others, particularly his brother, from the worship of the gods. Donatian was therefore apprehended, and having boldly confessed Christ before the governor, was cast into prison and loaded with irons. Rogatian was also brought before the prefect, who endeavored first to gain him by flattering speeches, but finding him inflexible, sent him to prison with his brother. Rogatian grieved that he had not been able to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, and prayed that the kiss of peace which his brother gave him might supply it. Donatian also prayed for him that his faith might procure for him the effect of Baptism, and the effusion of his blood that of the Sacrament of Confirmation. They passed that night together in fervent prayer. They were the next day called for again by the prefect, to whom they declared that they were ready to suffer for the name of Christ whatever torments were prepared for them. By the order of the inhuman judge they were first stretched on the rack, afterwards their hands were pierced with lances, and lastly cut off, about the year 287.

The veneration of these brothers of a Gallo-Roman family in Nantes who died in the persecutions decreed by the emperor Maximian continues today. Their relics are interred in Nantes Cathedral where statues of the two still stand.

1377

English heretic John Wycliffe is condemned by Pope Gregory XI

John Wycliffe (or Wyclif) (1331-84) was an English priest during the time of the Babylonian Captivity, when the papacy removed itself from Rome to the town of Avignon. There, under the severe influence of the French king and a series of French popes, the Bishop of Rome lost much respect in the eyes of believers. Coupled with high-ranking corruption and the devastation caused by the cataclysmic Black Death, the discredited Church lost ground to a number of wide-spread heresies. Among these dissident groups was one called Lollardy which sprang up in England in response to the teachings of Wycliffe.

Wycliffe’s ideas were strongly opposed to many fundamentals of the medieval Church. They included a belief in predestination and the notion of an invisible church — that the true believers constituted the real Church as opposed to its visible hierarchy. The earthly Church should be a poor one and relinquish its vast land holdings; it should abjure the doctrine of transubstantiation and possess scripture in the common tongue of the people. Perhaps most radically, Wycliffe proposed in his book On Civil Dominion that clergy in a state of sin could not hold dominion, an idea that conceivably could also be applied to secular rulers.

On May 22, 1377 Pope Gregory XI, the last pontiff of the Babylonian Captivity, condemned 18 propositions found in On Civil Dominion, sending copies of his bull to England where he expected it to be enforced. Wycliffe, however, had strong political protection from English political magnates such as John of Gaunt who favoured the notion of a politically-emasculated Church. He was able to live out his life relatively untroubled by prosecution but when his ideas were preached during the 1381 Peasant Rebellion, Lollardy fell from favour. In 1428 Wycliffe’s body was exhumed by the order of the pope, burnt and thrown into the river (see above).

2011 The world does not end.

“The Bible guarantees it”, said broadcaster Harold Camping, predicting that the world would end on May 21, 2011. Camping (1921-2013) was an American engineer who had assembled a chain of radio and television stations and made himself a popular preacher and scriptural interpreter. He soon developed an interest in Biblical chronology and end-times prophecy, writing over 30 books and tracts.  In 1970, Camping published The Biblical Calendar of History, in which he dated the Creation of the world to the year 11,013 BC and the Flood to 4990 BC.

His first prediction about the world’s end was that it would occur on September 6, 1994. When this date proved incorrect, he blamed it on a mathematical error. (Followers later said he was referring to the end of “the church age,” a time when human beings in Christian churches could be saved.) His media ministry remained popular despite this set-back but in 2010 Camping made a new set of calculations that foresaw the Rapture on May 21, 2011. On that date, he said, those predestined to salvation would be carried away to Heaven, followed by five months of brimstone and plague before the final destruction of the planet. His Family Radio ministry spent millions of dollars buying billboards and mobile signs advertising this prophecy. His followers are said to have sold businesses and houses in anticipation of the date.

When that day came and passed without planetary destruction, Camping claimed that a “spiritual” judgement had been rendered, which would be executed on October 21. In the absence of the Apocalypse on that date, Camping issued an apology and abandoned his claim to be able to foretell the end times. He suffered a stroke shortly after and died in 2013.

Saint Dunstan

One of the most popular English saints of the Middle Ages, Dunstan (909-88) was an important political figure and Archbishop of Canterbury.

England in the tenth century was not the most stable of countries as the Anglo-Saxon rulers contended with Welsh raids on the west and with the presence of Danes in the north. A series of short-lived kings added to the confusion. In this setting Dunstan was recognized as an accomplished artist and renowned monk, rising to head up Glastonbury Abbey and then the see of Canterbury. As an advisor to rulers he experienced (or perhaps engendered) constant opposition. He was, at various times, beaten up and thrown in a cesspit, exiled and pursued. His most famous quarrel with a king came when he confronted the newly-crowned Eadwig who had chosen to skip a state banquet and cavort with (or so the story goes) two debauched women. Dunstan also seems to have been behind the dissolution of Eadwig’s marriage to Aelfgifu, one of those shady dames.

A number of legends grew up around Dustan’s encounters with the Devil. In one of these Lucifer appeared to Dunstan, who was in his forge, in the guise of a beautiful woman who employed feminine wiles in an attempt to seduce the saint. Dunstan however had spotted the cloven hooves beneath the skirt and grabbing his red-hot tongs grabbed the Devil by the nose. Local lore says the the Archfiend, to soothe his burning nose thrust it into the waters of Tunbridge Wells. To this day the spring-water is red and tastes of sulphur. Charles Dickens celebrated this confrontation in verse:

St Dunstan, as the story goes,

Once pull’d the devil by the nose

With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,

That he was heard three miles or more.

In another tale Dunstan was asked by the Devil to shoe his horse. Instead the saint nailed a horseshoe to the Devil’s foot. Dunstan agreed to remove the shoe and release the Devil only after he promised never to enter a place where a horseshoe is over the door, giving rise to the superstition of the lucky horseshoe.

Dunstan is the patron saint of blacksmiths; Charlottetown, PEI; goldsmiths; locksmiths; musicians; and silversmiths.

1527 Anabaptist Michael Sattler condemned to death

Martin Luther’s belief that a vernacular scripture could only be read in one way by honest folk proved to be hopelessly naive and the 1520s saw the proliferation of a host of sects each claiming their version of Christianity was Biblically warranted. Among those were a group in Zürich who tried to reconstruct the church based on the behaviours they perceived in the Book of Acts. All true believers should be baptized as adults and not as children; they should espouse pacifism, abjure clerical celibacy, oaths and the devotions of the medieval church, choose their own pastors, and practise cultural separatism. These ideas marked them as dangerous radicals in the eyes of both Catholics and Protestants, resulting in intense persecution. Michael Sattler was one of the signatories to the Anabaptist Manifesto known as the “Schleichtheim Confession” of 1527.

On March 17, 1527 Sattler (an ex-monk), his wife (a former Beguine) and others were tried and condemned by authorities in Rottenburg, Germany. His punishment was ordered: “Michael Sattler shall be committed to the executioner. The latter shall take him to the square and there first cut out his tongue, and then forge him fast to a wagon and there with glowing iron tongs twice tear pieces from his body, then on the way to the site of execution five times more as above and then burn his body to powder as an arch-heretic.” Despite his mutilation Sattler was able to proclaim at the stake:  “Almighty, eternal God, thou art the way and the truth; because I have not been shown to be in error, I will with thy help on this day testify to the truth and seal it with my blood.” A bag of gunpowder had mercifully been hung from his neck and exploded when the flames reached it. His wife was punished by a “third baptism”: she was drowned.

 

The Ice Saints

A saintly collective whose festal days fall during the “blackthorn winter”.

The “Ice Saints” or “Frost Saints” is a name given to St. Mamertus, St. Pancras and St. Servatius  in European folklore. They are so named because their feast days fall on the days of May 11, May 12, and May 13 respectively — a period that often brought a brief spell of colder weather in many years, including the last nightly frosts of the spring, in the Northern Hemisphere when the Julian Calendar was in effect. The introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 involved skipping 10 days in the calendar, so that the equivalent days from the climatic point of view became May 22–25. For centuries farmers and gardeners were guided in their work by this knowledge. Of them Rabelais said: “Ces saincts passent pour saincts gresleurs, geleurs, et gateurs du bourgeon.”

St. Mamertus is not counted amongst the Ice Saints in certain countries (Southern Germany, Austria, Northern Italy, Czech Republic, etc.), whereas St. Boniface of Tarsus  belongs to them in other countries (Flanders, northern Italy, Czech Republic etc.) as well; St. Boniface’s feast day falling on May 14. , St. Sophia, nicknamed Cold Sophia (German kalte Sophie) on May 15 can be added in Germany, Alsace (France), Poland, etc. In Slovenia, Sophia is associated with rain and is nicknamed poscana Zofka “pissing Sophie”.

In Poland and the Czech Republic, the Ice Saints are Saints Pancras, Servatus and Boniface of Tarsus.  (i.e., May 12 to May 14). To the Poles, the trio are known collectively as zimni ogrodnicy (cold gardeners), and are followed by zimna Zośka (cold Sophias) on the feast day of St.Sophia which falls on May 15. In Czech, the three saints are collectively referred to as “ledoví muži” (ice-men or icy men), and Sophia is known as “Žofie, ledová žena” (Sophia, the ice-woman).

In Sweden the German legend of the ice saints has resulted in the belief that there are special “iron nights,” especially in the middle of June, which are susceptible to frost. The term “iron nights” (järnnätter) has probably arisen through a mistranslation of German sources, where the term “Eismänner” (ice men) was read as “Eisenmänner” (iron men) and their nights then termed “iron nights,” which then became shifted from May to June.

St Christopher

In the wake of the Second Vatican Church Council in the 1960s a number of popular saints, whose historical claims were shaky, had their status downgraded. They were removed from the universal liturgical calendar though local devotion to some of them was still permissible. Among those named in this cull were St Nicholas, St Catherine of Alexandria and St Christopher, who is celebrated on this day by the Eastern Church.

According to legend, Christopher (literally “Christ-bearer”) was a giant who announced that wished to serve the greatest king. He placed himself under a local monarch but noticed that he crossed himself at the mention of the devil and concluded that the devil must be greater. A bandit chief proclaimed himself the very devil and Christopher served him until he noticed that the outlaw avoided a roadside cross, so he sought out Christ. He was converted by a Christian hermit who told him that he could serve Christ by helping travellers ford a dangerous river. The medieval hagiography The Golden Legend continues the story: 

And in a time, as he slept in his lodge, he heard the voice of a child which called him and said: Christopher, come out and bear me over. Then he awoke and went out, but he found no man. And when he was again in his house, he heard the same voice and he ran out and found nobody. The third time he was called and came thither, and found a child beside the rivage of the river, which prayed him goodly to bear him over the water. And then Christopher lift up the child on his shoulders, and took his staff, and entered into the river for to pass. And the water of the river arose and swelled more and more: and the child was heavy as lead, and alway as he went farther the water increased and grew more, and the child more and more waxed heavy, insomuch that Christopher had great anguish and was afeard to be drowned. And when he was escaped with great pain, and passed the water, and set the child aground, he said to the child: Child, thou hast put me in great peril; thou weighest almost as I had all the world upon me, I might bear no greater burden. And the child answered: Christopher, marvel thee nothing, for thou hast not only borne all the world upon thee, but thou hast borne him that created and made all the world, upon thy shoulders. I am Jesu Christ the king, to whom thou servest in this work. And because that thou know that I say to be the truth, set thy staff in the earth by thy house, and thou shalt see to-morn that it shall bear flowers and fruit, and anon he vanished from his eyes. And then Christopher set his staff in the earth, and when he arose on the morn, he found his staff like a palmier bearing flowers, leaves and dates.

Christopher is then said to have gone to Lycia in what is now southern Turkey where he converted many before he was martyred, supposedly in the mid-third century persecution by the emperor Decius. Many today still wear St Christopher medals to keep them safe when travelling.