Christmas Every Day

1881

Basingstoke rioters attack the Salvation Army

“Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence. Clean straw for nothing.” The consumption of cheap liquor in the nineteenth century by what Oscar Wilde termed the “drinking classes” was a major social problem, a leading cause of death, marital breakdown, unemployment and violence. The temperance movement sought to make the manufacture, sale and use of alcohol illegal and the Salvation Army in England was in the forefront of this cause.

In September 1880 the Salvation Army arrived in the Hampshire town of Basingstoke proclaiming an anti-drink crusade that would “open fire on Sin and Satan.” Though their presence was welcomed by some Dissenting churches, pub-owners and brewers (major employers in the town) saw the Salvationists as a threat to their livelihood and many of their customers perceived a threat to their main source of enjoyment. Within a month sporadic acts of violence had been directed at those preaching teetotalism. In March of 1881 organized opposition appeared in the form of the “Massagainians”, sponsored by local brewers who gathered in mobs to confront Salvation Army marches. The hooligans greatly outnumbered the Salvationists and the police who had to call in reinforcements. Windows were smashed, a home was burnt, assaults took place and the Riot Act had to be read on a number of occasions. Eventually ten men were sent to jail for their violence but on their release they were treated as heroes by many in Basingstoke:

 They were fetched home in carriages with postillions. They had a band of hundreds of people to welcome them home, with flags flying and strings of flags across Winchester Street. Dinner was held for them in the Corn Exchange and each received a silver watch. The Corn Exchange was crammed full and the noise they kicked up was awful.

The town was clearly divided on the subject. In August 1881 the Magistrates were presented with two petitions: one signed by the Vicar of Basingstoke and 498 others, called for the Salvation Army marches to be banned as they were disturbing the peace and quiet of the town; the other, signed by the minister of the Congregational Church and 613 others, called for the processions to be properly protected. The violence continued on and off for a year before the brewers realized that their business was not going to be affected unduly.

The Annunciation to Mary

“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David: and the virgin’s name was Mary.” The story of the angel’s visit to Mary and her agreement with the divine plan that she should conceive a child by the Holy Spirit is the subject of Luke’s gospel 1: 26-38. It has been the inspiration for centuries of artists fascinated by the meeting between an angel of the Lord and a simple country girl. Among the more spectacular depictions are The Cestello Annunciation by Botticelli with Gabriel kneeling before the Virgin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini where Mary cowers on her bed. In the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, Veronese’s Annunciation (above) shows the angel wheeling into the Virgin’s room still in flight. Common iconographic elements are a lily, a dove or a ray of light.

Since the second century Christians have fixed the date of March 25 as the Feast of the Annunciation. March 25 was known as Lady Day in medieval England and was considered the first day of the new legal year.

St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne

Cuthbert (634-87) was an English Benedictine monk born in Northumbria during a time of strife between that Christian kingdom and pagan neighbour Mercia. He seems to have been a soldier in those wars before joining a monastery that practiced the Celtic ritual. When his monastery adopted the Roman approach, he moved to another establishment but finally accepted the decision of the 664 Synod of Whitby that standardized northern English worship on the Latin model.

By this time he already had a reputation for saintliness and miracle working so he was chosen by Theodore of Tarsus, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to become prior of the great Lindisfarne monastery and guide their shift to the Roman usage. He retired for a time to a life of contemplation but reluctantly abandoned that when asked to be bishop. After his death his tomb became the site of numerous miracles.

The story of St Cuthbert’s body deserves a book of its own. When the Vikings invaded in 875, the body of the saint was removed for safety and went on a seven-year journey through Cumberland, Galloway and Northumberland. In 883 it was placed in a church at Chester-le-Street, but was moved a century later to Ripon when another invasion loomed. On its way through Durham a miracle indicated that this was where the saint wished to finally rest. When William the Conqueror was laying waste to the north of England in 1069, Cuthbert was taken to Lindisfarne and then back again to Durham. In 1104, his shrine was transferred to Durham cathedral where it was discovered that the body remain uncorrupt (a sure sign of sainthood) and that it held the head of the martyr St Oswald. As the stained glass above indicates, this has become Cuthbert’s symbol. During the Middle Ages, his shrine was the destination of thousands of pilgrims. During the English Reformation when so many holy sites were destroyed in fits of iconoclasm, Cuthbert’s body was moved in 1542 to a secret location which, legend says, only a few Benedictines in each generation know of.

1314 Burning of Jacques de Molay and Templar leaders

One of the most cynically evil acts in French history was the unjust prosecution of the Templar Order by King Philip IV. The enormously rich order had become the principal banker of the French monarchy, a regime which had ruthlessly squeezed all other sources of revenue. Its vast holdings and secrecy had aroused suspicion in the populace which saw that the order had lost its crusading zeal since being expelled from the Holy Land in the 1290s. This provided Philip with the opportunity of accusing the Knights of all kinds of perfidy: heresy, demon worship, sodomy, collusion with Muslim powers; 127 charges in all. The leadership of the Order was subjected to torture until they confessed to the accusations, setting the stage for a public condemnation in which they were to be sentenced to life imprisonment, but where Jacques de Molay upstaged the proceedings and regained his integrity at the cost of his life. According to a medieval account:

The cardinals dallied with their duty until 18 March 1314, when, on a scaffold in front of  Notre Dame, Jacques de Molay, Templar Grand Master, Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy, Hughes de Peraud, Visitor of France, and Godefroi de Gonneville, Master of Aquitaine, were brought forth from the jail in which for nearly seven years they had lain, to receive the sentence agreed upon by the cardinals, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens  and some other prelates whom they had called in. Considering the offences which the culprits had confessed and confirmed, the penance imposed was in accordance with rule — that of perpetual imprisonment. The affair was supposed to be concluded when, to the dismay of the prelates and wonderment of the assembled crowd, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney arose. They had been guilty, they said, not of the crimes imputed to them, but of basely betraying their Order to save their own lives. It was pure and holy; the charges were fictitious and the confessions false. Hastily the cardinals delivered them to the Provost of Paris, and retired to deliberate on this unexpected contingency, but they were saved all trouble. When the news was carried to Philippe he was furious. A short consultation with his council only was required. The canons pronounced that a relapsed heretic was to be burned without a hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for. That same day, by sunset, a pile was erected on a small island in the Seine, the Ile des Juifs, near the palace garden. There de Molay, de Charney, de Gonneville, and de Peraud were slowly burned to death, refusing all offers of pardon for retraction, and bearing their torment with a composure which won for them the reputation of martyrs among the people, who reverently collected their ashes as relics.

There is an interesting legendary postscript to these murders. As he was being incinerated, de Molay uttered a mighty curse. He laid a malediction upon King Philip, the royal advisor Guillaume de Nogaret, and Pope Clement, prophesying that they would all die with thin the year. All did. De Molay is also said to have cursed Philip’s family, and very shortly all of his sons died without heirs, leaving the dynasty extinct. These series events are recounted in Les Rois maudits (The Accursed Kings), a series of historical novels written by Maurice Druon.