Christmas Every Day

1620

The Mayflower compact is signed. in July 1620 a band of English Separatist dissenters set sail from Holland for Virginia where they hoped to establish a colony that would allow them to practice their brand of Protestantism unmolested. Storms blew their ship Mayflower off course and they eventually made landfall in what is now Massachusetts. in order to frame their new government these “Pilgrim Fathers” bound themselves together in the following agreement:

 In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

1620

The birth of Avvakum Petrov, ecclesiastical rebel and founder of the Old Believers.

In 1652 Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow, instituted a number of reforms to the Orthodox Church, ostensibly to bring Russia closer to practices in other countries, or, according to his enemies, to centralize more authority in his hands. Where once the sign of the cross was made with two fingers, Nikon now commanded that it be done with three; two tiny amendments were made to the Creed; priests processed in a different direction and; “alleluia” was to be said three times instead of twice.

The changes to ritual aroused deep antagonism in large sections of the Church; opposition was led by archpriest Avvakum who protested to the Tsar and who attracted a considerable body of followers who would come to be known as the Old Believers. The Church cracked down hard on dissent; the old service books and those who clung to their use were all anathematized. Many Old Believers were arrested and some including Avvakum were sent into harsh Siberian exile north of the arctic Circle. For his continued defiance Avvakum was burnt at the stake in 1682.

1095

The Council of Clermont Will Summon the First Crusade

On this date Pope Urban II opened the Council of Clermont to which he summoned the leading churchmen and nobles of France. The chief order of business was to respond to a request for military aid made by the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus, whose country has been overrun by Seljuk Turks. What Alexius wanted was help recruiting some mercenary cavalry; what he got was a massive armed pilgrimage we know as the First Crusade.

Summoning the princes of the West to aid the Eastern Roman Empire served a number of purposes for Urban. It would give substance to his claim to the leader of Christendom. It would help to heal the damage done by the mutual excommunications of 1054 which had alienated the Eastern Church in Constantinople (and which would come to be known as the Great Schism). Best of all, it would turn the violence of the feudal knights against Islam instead of fellow Christians. The papacy of the eleventh century had been doing its best to civilize the baronial class with the Peace of God and Truce of God movements and a crusade would sanctify the brutal passions of these mail-clad warriors.

The kings of the West would ignore Urban’s plea but the cross would be taken up by a number of French and Norman dukes and counts who would lead their armies into Asia Minor and the Levant and recapture Jerusalem for the faith in 1099.

Although, O sons of God, you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do. Freshly quickened by the divine correction, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to another matter which concerns you as well as God. For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of [the Byzantines] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.

The Feast of St Margaret of Scotland

St Margaret of Scotland was not Scottish. A member of the royal family of England, she was born in exile in Hungary in 1045. The career of this pious woman shows the twists and turns that the life of a princess could take in the Middle Ages.

Eleventh-century England saw a confused and violent set of claims to the throne. Margaret’s family, descended from King Edmund Ironside, had fled England during the reign of Danish invaders, taking refuge in Hungary where she and her brother Edgar the Aetheling were born. The clan returned to England in 1057 during the rule of Edward the Confessor. When Edward died in 1066 three rival armies claimed the English crown: one led by a native noble Harold Godwinson, one of Vikings by Harald Hardrada, and one by the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard. When the smoke cleared, the Bastard had become the Conqueror. Because Edgar the Aetheling also had a claim to the throne, William kept him in Normandy for a time but when Margaret’s brother returned he allowed himself to be associated with a rebellion against William and the family had to flee after its failure.

The ship carrying Margaret was driven by a storm to land in Scotland where she came to the attention of the king, Malcolm Canmore (“Big Head”). A widower with sons, he married Margaret in 1070; together they had eight children, three of whom became kings of Scotland and one a queen in England.

Margaret’s piety was famous. She was known for her personal charity and patronage of the Scottish church which she urged toward reform in accordance with the great changes toward purifying religion sweeping Europe. She died on November 16, 1093 shortly after learning of the death of her husband and oldest son in battle against the English.

The story of her earthly remains is an interesting one. Margaret and Malcolm were buried in Dunfermline Abbey but in 1560 the reliquary containing her head was brought to Edinburgh at the command of Mary Queen of Scots, supposedly as a sacred relic to assist in Mary’s childbearing. In 1597 the head was in the keeping of the Jesuits in the Scottish college in Douai, France but it was lost during the destruction of churches and shrines during the French Revolution of the 1790s. Somehow, Philip II of Spain obtained other bits of Margaret and Malcolm and had them transferred to the royal palace in Madrid where they too have become lost. Margaret is a patron saint of Scotland.

1280

Death of the Universal Doctor. Albertus Magnus, Albert the Great, was a priest, bishop and one hailed as the most learned man of his day. Born c. 1200 into a German aristocratic family he joined the Dominican order, receiving his doctorate in theology at the University of Paris where he taught the young Thomas Aquinas.

This was the era when the Church was struggling with how best to deal with the writings of the newly-rediscovered Aristotle and the great philosopher’s Arab commentators. Albertus and Thomas Aquinas defended the synthesis of Christian thought and Aristotle against both those who drank too deeply from Averroes (the most influential of the commentators) and those who feared the intrusion of pagan philosophy. In doing so they built the foundations of Scholasticism which provided the Catholic Church with its approach to theology for centuries.

The thirteenth century was also a time of growing interest in the natural sciences. Those who claim that the Church ignored or suppressed science in the Middle Ages have to ignore the contributions of Albertus or his English Franciscan contemporary Roger Bacon. Botany, geography, mineralogy, chemistry, optics and physics were among the areas mastered by Albertus with an emphasis on observation and experimentation. In insisting that God had given humanity two guides to knowledge, scripture and nature, the work of Albertus helped lead to the first Scientific Revolution, one largely carried out by the clergy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

So wide was his learning that his contemporaries called him the miracle of the age; later admirers would say Nil tetigit quod non ornavit – “He touched nothing that he did not adorn”. He is the patron saint of philosophers and scientists.

354

Aurelius Augustinus is born in Thagaste, Numidia. As Augustine of Hippo he will be regarded as the greatest mind of Late Antiquity, a Doctor of the Church and patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, sore eyes and Kalamazoo.

The son of a pagan official and a devoutly Christian mother, Augustine was given an excellent education in the traditional Roman classics. As a young man he fell among Manichees and became a follower of that dualistic religion which was spreading from Persia. He became a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage and took a mistress who bore him a son, Adeodatus. In 383 he taught rhetoric in Rome but his friendship with the influential politician and scholar Symmachus won him as post of professor of rhetoric in the imperial capital of Milan. By this time he was disillusioned with Manichaeism and had become interested in Neoplatonism. In Milan he was taken up by the Christian bishop Ambrose whose combination of piety and learning drew Augustine closer to the faith of his mother. A conversion experience in 386 led to his Christian baptism. In 388 he returned to North Africa, where he gave most of his property to the poor and became a priest in the town of Hippo Regius. His renown as a preacher and scholar led to his becoming bishop, a post he was still occupying at his death in 430.

North Africa was the scene of many lively (and occasionally deadly) theological disputes. Augustine would preach and write not only against pagans, Manichaeans, Donatists, Arians but also Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians. Among his monumental works are The City of God Against the Pagans, with its sweeping understanding of human nature and history and Confessions, the first spiritual autobiography. His views on predestination were enormously influential in the development of Protestantism. He died while his city was under siege by the barbarian Vandals. His relics are enshrined in Pavia, Italy.