‘Tis prophecied in the Revelation, that the Whore of Babylon shall be destroyed with fire and sword and what do you know, but this is the time of her ruin, and that we are the men that must help to pull her down?’
John Rogers, 1657

‘A thing that never was heard of, that so few men should dare and do so much mischief.’
Samuel Pepys, 1661

On this day in 1661 Thomas Venner was executed in London for treason, suffering the usual punishment of traitors: being hanged, drawn and quartered. He had led a rebellion against the English government in the name of the Fifth Monarchy, violently rampaging through London before being cornered in a tavern and his men shot to pieces.

The English Civil War of the 1640s had pitted defenders of the Stuart monarchy against supporters of a Puritan-dominated Parliament. The chaos engendered allowed a number of extravagant fringe movements to develop: “Ranters”, amoral pantheists who found virtue in blasphemy; “Levellers” who wanted an end to social distinctions; and agrarian socialist “Diggers”. Among the most radical were the believers in the Fifth Monarchy, an idea taken from the Book of Daniel where King Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of a final kingdom that would last forever. They were millennialists, confident that the End Times were near and they hoped to set up an English theocracy before witnessing the conversion of the Jews and Moslems and the return of Christ. Some Fifth Monarchy Men were hoping to accomplish their goals peacefully but others such as Thomas Venner, a London cooper, were prepared to use force to overturn the government. In 1661, hoping to prevent the re-establishment of the Anglican Church and the Stuart monarchy he led an uprising of a few hundred men under the slogan “King Jesus and the heads upon the Gates”. For a few days they controlled parts of London before being trapped and overcome by regular army troops. Wounded 19 times, Venner was placed quickly on trial and executed with other of his surviving men.

The Fifth Monarchy movement abandoned its violent wing and continued to press for reform and hope in the Second Coming well into the 18th century.

St Hilary’s Day

St Hilary of Poitiers (300-368) was a Gaulish bishop who was one of the most prominent defenders of Trinitarianism in the western empire. A convert from paganism, he turned his considerable learning against the Arian heresy which denied the divinity of Christ. The 325 Council of Nicaea had condemned this view of the Godhead but Arianism was protected by emperors and many churchmen in the middle of the fourth century — for these men the notion that Christ was a powerful but inferior creation was the best way to cling to monotheism. Like many who defended the Trinity in this era, Hilary was persecuted and sent into exile. In time, his writings won him recall to Poitiers and he spent the rest of his life battling the Arian heretics.  He said: “For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used — to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible. He fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding.” Hilary is the patron saint of those who suffer from snake-bite.

347

Birth of a Trinitarian emperor.

In the fourth century Christianity had, at last, become a legally-tolerated religion, able to own property, preach openly and overtly influence Roman society. Though the royal family of Constantine had accepted Christianity, the majority of the empire was still pagan and, moreover, the faith was harshly divided theologically. On one hand were the Arians who asserted absolute monotheism and who denied full divinity to Christ; on the other were the Trinitarians who saw a single God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Council of Nicaea in 325 had decided emphatically for the Trinitarian position but the emperors after Constantine were largely Arian.

Theodosius, born in Spain in 347, became a general and fought his way to the imperial throne of the eastern empire in 379 and ruler of the whole empire by 393, the last emperor to rule an undivided Roman realm. His reign was largely spent battling Germanic invaders and usurping generals but his career had great consequences for Christianity.

In 380 he decreed that the Trinitarian position was to be the true form of religion; he expelled Arian bishops and acted strongly against paganism. He disbanded the Vestal Virgins, banned animal sacrifice, halted the Olympic Games, ended state subsidies to pagan cults and closed polytheistic temples, decreeing that “no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created by the labor of man”.

A riot in Thessalonica in 390 resulted in the murder of some of Theodosius’s troops; in retaliation he ordered a massacre of the civilian population. This outraged Christian leaders and the bishop of Milan, Ambrose, demanded that Theodosius do penance for the crime and excommunicated him until he did so. (see the Van Eyck painting above) The submission of the emperor to the bishop was often cited for the next thousand years as a symbol of the relationship between church and state.

The death of Theodosius in 395 was a disaster for the Roman imperium and civilization. Rule was split between two of his incompetent sons and within a generation the western empire had fallen to the barbarians.

The fifth day of Christmas is St Thomas Becket’s Day

1170 The murder of Archbishop Becket.

The twelfth century saw the rise of powerful monarchies in western Europe whose kings were intent on increasing their revenues and scope of jurisdictions. This often brought them into conflict with the papacy, their national churches and the feudal nobility. In England, Henry II (1133-89) sought to repair the damage done by twenty years of anarchy and civil war. He asserted royal power to judge cases hitherto reserved to the local lords; he took back royal lands lost during the chaos; he centralized tax powers; and he intended to reduce the independence of the English church. To the latter end he named his friend Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury.

Becket was not a priest, though like most educated men of his time he took minor religious orders. He had studied canon law, been employed as a diplomat, and served Henry as Lord Chancellor. When Theobald of Bec died in 1162, Henry engineered the election of Becket who to the dismay of the king, took his new priestly vows seriously: he entered on a life of asceticism and defence of the liberties of the English church. In 1164 Henry attempted to introduce the Constitutions of Clarendon, 16 statements limiting the independence of the church, including an end to the abuses of “benefit of clergy” by which priests could not be tried by secular courts. Becket refused to agree and to avoid royal intimidation fled to the Continent. Pope Alexander III brokered a return to England for the Archbishop but Becket soon began opposing the royal will again, this time by excommunicating those clergy who had sided with the king.

When news of Becket’s actions reached Henry in Normandy, the furious monarch is said to have uttered a provocative complaint. Most historians have claimed that Henry said “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” but others have attributed to Henry the less pithy plea “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?” Taking this as a command, four of his knights crossed the Channel to Canterbury where they murdered Becket inside the cathedral.

This outrage caused an international reaction. The pope quickly canonized Becket; Henry II submitted to a whipping by the monks of Canterbury; and the site of Thomas’s tomb became one of Christendom’s great pilgrimage attractions, as we can see in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

St Thomas Becket is patron saint of London, the English secular clergy, those who hunt with hawks and hounds and those who have lost their horses.