Christmas Every Day

1497

The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Florence in the 15th century was at the heart of the Italian Renaissance, the engine of humanist scholarship and great works of art and architecture produced by the likes of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi and Donatello. The patronage of the leading Medici family inspired Florentine institutions and nobles to support these efforts but in the 1490s the city was taken over by someone with far different ideas. This was the monk Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98).

Savonarola was a fiery Dominican who benefited at first from the patronage of the Medici ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent but who then turned against him. Preaching furiously against the corruption, of the pope (the Borgia, Alexander VI), the Medici clique and the rich magnates of the city, Savonarola sparked the coup that ejected the Medici and established a ‘godly’ republic. Bands of young followers dressed as angels patrolled the city, punishing gambling, swearing and drunkenness. Telling Florentines that the End of Time was near, Savonarola organized “Bonfires of the Vanities” where people were urged to divest themselves of all that could separate them from concentrating on the spiritual life: fancy clothes, jewels, cosmetics, rich furniture, classic manuscripts and fine art. These objects were hauled to public fires and burnt. A particularly spectacular demonstration was held this day in 1497. Paul Strathern’s Death in Florence describes the scene:

The bonfires in each neighbourhood around which people had traditionally danced in abandoned fashion during the pre-Savonarolan Carnival were now all amalgamated into one massive bonfire in the Piazza della Signoria, which was intended to accommodate all the vanities that Savonarola’s boys had collected. An eight-sided wooden pyramid had been constructed, with seven tiers, one for each of the seven deadly sins. The vanities were placed on these tiers, and the inside of the pyramid was filled with sacks of straw, piles of kindling wood, and even small bags of dynamite (intended to spread the flames throughout the pyramid, as well as cause incendiary firework effects such as bangs and showers of sparks). In the end, this ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ rose to sixty feet, and the circumference at its base was 240 feet. At its peak was placed wooden effigy made to look like the traditional image of the Devil, complete with hairy cloven-hoofed goats’ legs, pointed ears, horns and a little pointed beard.

It should be noted that in this drive to consume corruption by cleansing fire he was following the example of the earlier wandering Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444).

590

Gregory the Great is elected pope.

It would be hard to name a more influential pope of the early Middle Ages than St. Gregory I (540-604), called the Great. (Supporters of the claim of Leo I, also the Great and also a saint, may send their arguments on a postcard to St Margaret’s Church, Winnipeg.) Born into a wealthy Roman family with a pope and many high-ranking officials on his family tree, he was superbly educated in the liberal arts and entered at an early age into political life, becoming Prefect of Rome (the highest rank in the city) by his early 30s. He took office at a miserable time in the history of Rome with Italy ravaged by the barbarian Lombards and still recovering from the depopulation and chaos caused by the Byzantine attempt at reconquest and the plague.

On the death of his father he converted his family villa into a monastery and became a monk, soon rising in influence in the Church. In 579 he was chosen by the pope to lead an embassy to the emperor in Constantinople to whom Rome still owed allegiance. His attempt to convince the emperor to send troops to Italy to stop the Lombard advance was fruitless.

In 590, much against his will, he was elected Pope to replace Pelagius II who died of the plague. He took on this task with great energy and succeeded by the time of his death 14 years later in elevating the status and reach of the Roman papacy. For the previous century the bishops of Rome had had little positive influence on the lands of the western empire which had been lost to the Germanic invaders. Britain had lost contact with civilization for almost a century; Spain was dominated by Arian heretics; and the Church in Gaul was in the hands of the Frankish landowners who had little thought for evangelism. Under Gregory the papacy reached out to assert the international leadership of the Bishop of Rome once more. One of his great achievements was sending the mission of Augustine, a monk from his own monastery, to England to spread Christianity to the German tribes there. He reformed the liturgy and encouraged the music we now call Gregorian chant. He reformed the management of church lands which came to provide food and revenue for the poor of Rome. His book Pastoral Care was translated by Alfred the Great into English and was one of the civilizing books every church had to have a copy of.

1516

Erasmus dedicates his revised version of the New Testament to Pope Leo X.

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was the leading public intellectual of his time, a humanist who used new attitudes and techniques to critique the Christian Church of the early modern period. Born the illegitimate son of a Catholic priest, he became a priest himself but spent his life pursuing humanistic studies and being supported by a series of patrons of the new learning. He travelled widely and became something of a literary celebrity, winning fame for his works in Latin such as Utopia and Praise of Folly, which was critical of Church teaching on purgatory and indulgences.

Influenced by John Colet’s historical approach to Scripture, Erasmus applied his knowledge of Greek and Latin to produce a revised version of the New Testament, amending numerous errors in the Vulgate, the 1,000-year-old Latin version. Though his translation work had papal approval, Erasmus’s Greek New Testament was a spur to many vernacular versions including Luther’s highly influential German version.

Erasmus had enemies on both sides of the religious wars that soon erupted. He and Luther disagreed on the possibility of free will and the nature of the Eucharist while later popes placed his works on The Index of Prohibited Books.

314

Accession of Pope Sylvester I.

Few popes could have reigned at a more important time in the history of the Church. It was during his pontificate that the emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity and that religion began to openly flourish in the Roman empire. This was also the time when the first great churches were erected, especially St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which endured for over 1,000 years before it was levelled to make way for the neo-classical building that now exists on that site.

Sylvester may be even more important for the legends that surrounded him after his death than anything he accomplished in life. Early in the sixth century stories began to be written about an especially close relationship between Sylvester and Constantine, stories in which the emperor, out of gratitude for being cured of leprosy, is said to have elevated the bishop of Rome above all other church figures and submitted himself to him. By the 700s this legend took the form of one of the great forgeries of all time, the Donation of Constantine, which claimed that Constantine, before moving east to his new capital in Constantinople, had granted the papacy sovereignty over the western empire. This document was used by later popes in their political quarrels with emperors and kings before being exposed as fake in the 1400s by Lorenzo Valla.

1550

The birth of Henri, Duc de Guise.

Guise was the leader of the ultra-Catholic faction during that phase of the French Religious Wars known as The War of the Three Henrys, in which Guise battled the centrist monarch Henri III and the Protestant leader Henri de Navarre. Guise, who had urged the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of French Huguenots, was assassinated by Henri III in 1588.

1561

Death of Menno Simons.

Simons (1496-1561) was a Dutch Catholic priest who converted to Anabaptism in 1536 after the death of his brother Pieter who had been a follower of the radical Münsterites. Simons rejected the violent path that his brother and other Anabaptists had taken, preaching a pacifist message of separation from the world and adult believer baptism. Many Anabaptist denominations sprang up following his teachings.