Category: On This Day
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Catherine of Siena
Today (April 29) is the day Catherine of Siena died in 1380. Catherine was a Dominican Tertiary, that is, not a nun, but a layperson so associated with monastic life that she participated in many ways, and wore the habit. The Roman Catholic Church has identified her as a saint (1461), as a patron saint…
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Farewell, O Travel’d Goat
On this day, April 28, in 1772, a goat died. But not just any goat. This goat had traveled twice around the world, providing a steady supply of milk for the sailors on two long journeys. A good, well fed milk goat will give a quart or two of sweet milk per day, and this…
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Peter Böhler, who Witnessed to Wesley
Peter Böhler (b. 1712) died on this day (April 27) in 1775. Böhler was a pastor and missionary from the Protestant group called the Moravians. About the Moravians, and their founder Hus, and their leader Zinzendorf, and their ancient ecumenical entanglements, much could be said! But as for this particular Moravian, Peter Böhler, his theology and…
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Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation
Today (April 26) in 1518, Martin Luther engaged in a public debate now famous as the Heidelberg Disputation. The occasion was the General Chapter meeting of the Augustinian monastic order in Germany. It would have been just another meeting, but in late 1517, Luther had posted the 95 Theses for debate. The general meeting in…
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Happy Birthday, Charles E. Fuller
Today (April 25) is the day when Charles E. Fuller was born in 1887. Fuller is famous for the classic radio show The Old Fashioned Revival Hour, and for founding Fuller Theological Seminary. Charles Fuller started broadcasting in 1925, and the Revival Hour started in 1937, but it already sounded intentionally old-fashioned then. And Fuller…
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Happy Birthday, Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889)
Today (March 7) is the birthday of Alfred Edersheim, the nineteenth-century Bible scholar who really made the grand tour: He was born in Austria, converted from Judaism to evangelical Christianity in Hungary, studied theology in Edinburgh and Berlin, was a missionary to Jews in Romania and a preacher in Scotland. He was ordained in the…
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Claus von Stauffenberg: German Patriot and Hitler’s Would-Be Assassin
Today, November 15, is the one-hundred and fourth birthday of Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a Catholic aristocrat and officer of the German Wehrmacht who led the anti-Nazi resistance within the German war machine. On the 21st of July, 1944, this man, along with two other German army officers, Henning von Treskow and…
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Vatican II
Today (October 11) is the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Vatican II meant a lot of things to Roman Catholics on the ground (from changes in practices of fasting, to rumors that everything was about to blow wide open), but here is a theological overview of this epochal Roman…
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The Battle of Roncesvalles: History and Legend
Today, August 15, marks the 1,233rd anniversary of the Battle of Roncesvalles, a pitch battle fought by a contingent of Charlemagne’s army led by Roland, the prefect of the Breton March, against a Basque attack on the Roncesvalles pass while Roland’s men were on the retreat. This battle gave birth, about four-hundred years later, to…
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Baptism of Aethelbert
Today (June 2) is the day King Aethelbert of Kent was baptized into the Christian faith by Augustine of Canterbury in the year 597. Bede tells us that Aethelbert “was the third English king to become High-King (Bretwalda) of all the provinces south of the river Humber, but he was the first to enter the…
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Protestants, not Protesters
Today (April 19) is the anniversary of the 1529 Protestation of Speyer, which is generally regarded as the first time that the word “Protestant” was used to refer to a religious position distinct from Roman Catholicism. A coalition of German princes and leaders refused to abide by the imperial ban on Luther’s teachings, and called…
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Algernon Crapsey’s Heresy Trial
Algernon Crapsey worshiped telegraph poles, but that’s both better and worse than it sounds. It was April 18 in the year 1906 that Reverend Algernon Sidney Crapsey (1847-1927) was put on trial by the Episcopal Church in the state of New York for teaching, preaching and writing contrary to the Christian faith. He was found…