Christmas Every Day

1572 Death of John Knox

John Knox was a driving force in the Scottish Reformation which succeeded in replacing the Catholic Church in Scotland with a stern form of Calvinist piety.

Knox was born c. 1510 to a merchant’s family in Haddington, Scotland and by his early 20s had become a Catholic priest. He fell under the influence of Protestant reformer George Wishart and assisted him in his preaching campaign. Wishart was arrested and executed as a heretic in 1546 on the orders of Cardinal David Beaton. Shortly thereafter Beaton was assassinated and Knox joined the killers in their refuge in St Andrew’s Castle, becoming their chaplain. The Scottish Regent, Marie de Guise, mother of the child-queen Mary, called in the support of the French army to take the castle. Knox and other prisoners were condemned to be galley slaves but he was released in 1549 and went into exile in England. There he became a preacher at the court of Edward VI who was attracting Protestant thinkers and clergy from around Europe.

When in 1553 Edward VI was succeeded by his half-sister, the very Catholic Mary Tudor, Knox had to go into exile again. He fled to the Continent where he eventually took refuge in Geneva, then under the sway of John Calvin. By 1558 Knox and other Marian exiles had decided that it was legitimate for persecuted Christians to rise up against a religious oppressor. He put a special spin on his doctrine of resistance making it especially applicable to female rulers.

Knox had found himself persecuted by women in power – Marie de Guise in Scotland ruling on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, Mary I (Blood Mary) in England, and Catherine de Medici in France. He proclaimed in his First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women that philosophy, the Bible, and Nature itself testified against the reign of females. Unfortunately for Knox, the book appeared just as a Protestant queen, Elizabeth I, came to the English throne. Elizabeth was justifiably vexed at Knox who did not recant but only grudgingly admitted that occasionally God made an exception to the rule. His name was thereafter a dirty word at the English court and helped to discredit the hotter sort of Protestants in the eyes of the English government.

Back in Scotland Knox rejected the religious toleration proposed by Mary Queen of Scots and called for her overthrow. He was the intellectual foundation of the Reformation imposed by the Scottish nobility and its loudest voice until his death in 1572.

1302

Boniface VIII issues Unam Sanctam

Since the middle of the eleventh century popes had been asserting their power over secular rulers. They claimed that the spiritual authority ordained by God held precedence over mere earthly power. They had deposed kings and emperors and named substitute rulers; they had precipitated civil wars; claimed dominion over entire kingdoms and excommunicated princes right, left and centre. By 1300 they had gutted the power of their chief rival, the Holy Roman Emperor and begun to quarrel with the new centralized monarchies of western Europe.

Benedetto Caetani, elected Pope Boniface VIII in dubious fashion in 1294, had twice forbidden the kings of England and France from taxing the Church in their countries. The King of France Philip IV “the Fair” responded by cutting off money from the French church to the papacy. Boniface replied by hinting that he might exercise his right of deposing Philip who immediately began a campaign of vilification of the pope including circulating forged documents.

This led Boniface on November 17, 1302 to issue the proclamation Unam Sanctam, which asserted the doctrine of papal monarchy in the most uncompromising terms ever. He asserted (1) there is but one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation; (2) that head is Christ and His representative, the pope who is above, and can direct, all kings; (3) whoever resists the highest power ordained by God resists Himself; and (5) it is necessary for salvation that all humans should be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Philip the Fair now summoned a kingdom-wide assembly, and before it he accused Boniface of every imaginable crime from murder to black magic to sodomy to keeping a demon as a pet. A small French military force crossed into Italy in 1303 and took Boniface prisoner at his palace at Anagni with the intention of bringing him to France for trial. The French plan failed—local townspeople freed Boniface a couple of days later—but the proud old pope died shortly thereafter, outraged that anyone had dared to lay hands on his sacred person.

This marks the beginning of the waning of medieval papal power. In 1305 the cardinals elected the Frenchman Clement V who submitted to the French king on the question of clerical taxation and publicly burned Unam Sanctam, conceding that Philip the Fair, in accusing Pope Boniface, had shown “praiseworthy zeal.” A few years after his election, Clement moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon in southern France, the start of the period of papal humiliation known as “The Babylonian Captivity”.

Our Lady of Kazan

Our Lady of Kazan was a highly-venerated icon of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is said to have originated in Constantinople and was transported to Russia in the 12th century where it disappeared in 1438.  It was miraculously rediscovered in Kazan after a vision in 1579. The city had been destroyed in a fire, after which a young girl had repeated dreams of the location of the icon. Despite scepticism of local church authorities it was found in the ruins of a house where it had been stored to protect it from the Tatar horde. Copies of the icon spread widely and churches were established in its honour. Prayers to this icon were credited for saving the country from invasion by Poles, Swedes and Napoleon.

In 1904 the icon was stolen and, though its gold frame was recovered, the icon itself was never seen again. The disasters of the 1905 Russian Revolution, the loss of the Russo-Japanese War, the Great War and the Communist takeover are attributed to its loss.

A splendid 16th-century copy was once owned by Pope John Paul II who returned it to the Russian Orthodox Church. It is now back in Kazan in the Cathedral of the Elevation of the Holy Cross on the site where it had been recovered.

The feast of St Rumald

Few saints have lived as brief, or unlikely, lives as the English St Rumald (aka Rumwold, Grumbald, or Rumbald). The son of an Anglo-Saxon princess and the king of Northumbria in the 7th century, he emerged from the womb proclaiming “I am a Christian! I am a Christian! I am a Christian!” He then made a full and explicit confession of his faith; desired to be forthwith baptized; appointed his own godfathers; and chose his own name. He next directed a certain large hollow stone to be fetched for his font; and when some of his father’s servants attempted to obey his orders, but found the stone far too heavy to be removed, the two priests, whom he had appointed his godfathers, went for it, and bore it to him with the greatest ease. He was baptized by Bishop Widerin, assisted by a priest named Eadwold, and immediately after the ceremony he walked to a certain well near Brackley, which still bears his name, and there preached for three successive days; after which he made his will, bequeathing his body after death to remain at Sutton for one year, at Brackley for two years, and at Buckingham ever after. This done, he instantly expired.

This remarkable infant was venerated by the pious believers of Buckinghamshire until the 16th century when the English Reformation put an end to such customs. At least four churches dedicated to tiny Rumald still exist. He is not to be confused with his contemporary St Rumbold of Mechelen, the English missionary martyred in Belgium.

St Theodoret’s Day

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we learn about a highly elastic martyr.

ABOUT the year 361, Julian, uncle to the emperor of that name, and like his nephew an apostate, was made Count of the East. He closed the Christian churches at Antioch, and when St. Theodoret assembled the Christians in private, he was summoned before the tribunal of the Count and most inhumanly tortured. His arms and feet were fastened by ropes to pulleys, and stretched until his body appeared nearly eight feet long, and the blood streamed from his sides. “O most wretched man,” he said to his judge, “you know well that at the day of judgment the crucified God Whom you blaspheme will send you and the tyrant whom you serve to hell.” Julian trembled at this awful prophecy, but he had the Saint despatched quickly by the sword, and in a little while the judge himself was arraigned before the judgment-seat of God.

Pope Saint Callixtus I

There have been three popes who started off as slaves and Callixtus (d. c. 223) was the third of them. If that wasn’t a bad start to a papal career, consider that Callixtus was also condemned (probably unfairly) for embezzlement and sentenced to a life term in the mines of Sardinia. Fortunately for him, the favourite mistress of the murderous emperor Commodus (the bad guy in the movie Gladiator) was a Christian and secured his release.

After leaving the mines, Callixtus was given a pension by the pope and then a series of church positions, becoming the superintendent of the Christian cemetery just outside of Rome, still known to this day as the Catacombs of Callixtus. By 218, he had rehabilitated his reputation enough that he was elected pope. His gentle spirit and love of forgiveness made him a number of enemies who would have preferred a harsher line toward repentant sinners or schismatics rejoining the Church. Tertullian wrote against his decision to readmit to communion those fornicators or murderers who had repented. Hippolytus denounced him as a heretic and had himself elected as the first anti-pope. Legend has it that Callixtus was martyred in 223 by being thrown down a well.

St Edward the Confessor

The sort of demands placed on kingship means that very few national rulers are ever recognized as saints. The French have St Louis IX; Hungarians have Stephen; Russia has the feckless Nicholas II, who got the title only by virtue of being murdered by Bolsheviks; and England has the very peculiar Edward the Confessor.

Edward (c. 1003-66) was the son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma, the daughter of the Duke of Normandy, born at a time when the Anglo-Saxon monarchy was crumbling before the last onslaught of Viking invaders. When Sweyn Forkbeard landed in England with a Danish army, Emma and her children fled to Normandy. After a brief civil war and the death of Ethelred, Emma married Sweyn’s son Cnut and became Queen of England a second time but Edward remained in Normandy where he was brought up as a pious Catholic. He attempted to return to England in 1036 but the murder of his brother made him return to safety in Norman territory.

In 1042, after more civil war and deaths of rival claimants, Edward became the unchallenged king in England. Having spent most of his life abroad, he was unfamiliar with his new realm and had to contend with powerful earls, particularly the ambitious Godwin of Wessex with his brood of even more ambitious sons. In 1045 Edward married Godwin’s daughter Edith; though historians disagree over whether this was a chaste marriage, it produced no children. Gradually, Godwin, and then his son Harold, came to dominate English politics and Edward seems to have withdrawn from such affairs, preferring to spend his time in hunting and religious devotions. He was also involved in the construction of Westminster Abbey whose architecture broke with local methods and introduced a Norman form of Romanesque style to England; it is where all English kings have been crowned since the death of Edward, who is buried there.

Childless Edward seems to have left conflicting wishes about who would succeed him, creating disastrous consequences for his country. Harald Hardrada of Norway, Harold Godwinson, and William of Normandy all claimed the throne after Edward’s death in 1066. The Battle of Stamford Bridge eliminated Hardrada and William’s victory at the subsequent Battle of Hastings ended Anglo-Saxon rule and saw the beginning of the Norman ascendancy.

On 13 October, 1269 Edward’s relics were moved (or “translated”) to a new shrine in the Abbey. This date is regarded as his feast day, and each October the Abbey holds a week of festivities and prayer in his honour.

Our Lady of the Rosary

The 1571 Battle of Lepanto was the biggest oar-powered battle ever, pitting the forces of Islam and the Ottoman Empire against a Christian fleet composed of an alliance of Catholic powers. Hundreds of galleys and tens of thousands of sailors and infantry took part in an encounter that ended with a Christian victory. The Turks suffered 20,000 casualties and lost 187 ships, captured or sunk. 20,000 Christian slaves were freed from the oar-benches of the Turkish galleys.

Prompted by the numerous processions in Rome by the Rosary Confraternity petitioning the aid of Mary, Pope Pius V attributed the triumph at Lepanto to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and created a new festival for Our Lady of Victory. Two years later Pope Gregory XIII changed the name to “Feast of the Holy Rosary” and in 1960 Pope Paul VI renamed it again to the “Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary”.

There are numerous churches dedicated to either Our Lady of Victory or Our Lady of the Rosary. Maria del Rosario is a common Spanish girl’s name while Rosario is a popular name for boys in the Catholic world.

1552 Birth of Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was an Italian Jesuit missionary to China whose techniques of winning the confidence of the Chinese exemplify the Jesuit approach to foreign evangelism.

In the sixteenth century, China was ruled by the decadent and inward-looking Ming dynasty. Once Ming fleets had explored the southern seas all the way to Africa, but by the late 1500s ocean-going vessels were forbidden and contact with the outside world was discouraged. China considered itself literally the centre of the universe, feeling self-sufficient and superior to all other nations. It had a department of state to deal with barbarians along its borders and another to handle its neighbours such as Korea or Vietnam which were willing to acknowledge Chinese superiority and pay tribute, but it had no notion of dealing with technologically-advanced Western nations which were now starting to intrude into Asia. Christianity, in its Nestorian form, had reached China centuries before through an overland route but Catholic presence was found only in the Portuguese colony of Macau on the southern coast.

Ricci had joined the Society of Jesus in 1571 and volunteered himself as a missionary to Asia seven years later. He was sent to Macau where he studied the Chinese language to prepare for the evangelization of the interior of China. He mastered the script and the literary classics that formed the basis of high culture — this at least allowed him to communicate with the officials whose cooperation the Jesuits would need. But how to make themselves useful in the eyes of the Chinese state that regarded foreigners as inherently useless and inferior? Here Ricci employed mathematical and astronomical skills to great advantage, areas in which the West was forging ahead of Asia. The proper way of marking time was necessary for government and religious decision-making; Ricci’s ability to predict eclipses and regulate timepieces won him and his companions the esteem of the ruling class. Ricci’s geographical knowledge presented world maps to the Chinese for the first time.

Part of the Jesuit approach to Asian missions was to adopt appropriate dress for their clergy; in India they dressed as Buddhist priests; in China they went clothed as court mandarins. Ricci also attempted to explain Christianity in a way that was compatible with Confucianism; here he trod perilously close to heresy. The mendicant orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, who saw themselves as missionary rivals to the Jesuits, complained to Rome about this alleged syncretism and a lengthy controversy erupted, one that hampered evangelism.

Ricci was eventually allowed to travel to the Ming capital in Beijing where established a Catholic cathedral and made some prominent converts. He died there in 1610 and his grave is now a tourist attraction. Efforts are being made to have Ricci named a saint.

St Francis of Assisi

The most remarkable man of the Middle Ages was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone to a prosperous merchant and his wife in central Italy in 1181. His father nicknamed him Francesco (”Frenchy”) and so the young man became known to history as Francis of Assisi.

After living the carefree life of a rich man’s son, Francis underwent a series of religious experiences that caused him to renounce his father’s wealth and to embrace a life of poverty and service. He begged for his keep, tended to lepers, and preached a message of love and repentance across the local countryside. (He also preached to the birds and fish, urging them to be grateful to God.) Francis travelled widely and even went on the Sixth Crusade where he preached to the politely attentive Sultan of Egypt. Despite his radical approach to property and the environment, Francis attracted large numbers of followers who were eventually organized in the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans, for men) and the Order of St Clare (for women).

The tender heart of Francis naturally found expression in his attitude toward Christmas. In 1220 in the town of Greccio, Francis set up the earliest living nativity scene. (From “Greccio” we get the word “crèche”.) It had been customary for centuries for churches to set up a model of a crib near the altar during the Christmas season but Francis was the first to use real animals, a donkey and an ox, a manger full of straw, and a tiny baby to bring home the long-ago events in Bethlehem and makie the Incarnation and humanity of Jesus real to the ordinary people.

Then he prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed. The brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise. The man of God [St. Francis] stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem. A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Grecio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant so marvelous sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep.

The living Nativity scene is a long-enduring tradition that is still carried out 800 years later.

Another Christmastide example set by Francis that is still observed is the custom of giving animals a special feeding on December 25. He begged farmers to give their livestock extra food at Christmas in memory of the ox and ass between whom the Baby lay. “If I could see the Emperor,” he said, “I would implore him to issue a general decree that all people who are able to do so, shall throw grain and corn upon the streets, so that on this great feast day the birds might have enough to eat, especially our sisters, the larks.” To this day, Norwegians will set out a julenek, a sort of Bird’s Christmas Tree, to provide grain for our winged friends. English farmers may wassail their cattle with an anointing of cider and Polish farmers on Christmas Eve give their cattle an oplatek wafer and bless them with the sign of the cross.

The Franciscan brotherhood is also responsible for the idea of Christmas carols. Before the 1200s most songs celebrating Advent and the Nativity were solemn, theologically-dense hymns in Latin but members of the order took popular tunes – often dance music — and wrote lyrics in the local language.