Tag: History
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How Augustine Died
Today (August 28) is the day Augustine of Hippo died in the year 430. His first biographer, Possidius, tells us how it happened in his Life of Augustine. Augustine died in the city of Hippo, which was under siege by barbarians throughout his final illness (he contracted a fever “in the third month of the…
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Caesarius of Arles
Today (August 27) is the day Ceasarius, Bishop of Arles, died in the year 542. He is most important because of things he didn’t write. Caesarius never wanted to be original, and he wasn’t. He was a conservator and transmitter of the Christian tradition as he received it. He had been a monk at Lerins…
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Karl Bahrdt, Worst Theologian Ever
Today (August 25) is the birthday of Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792), a theologian so bad that it is hard to find anything good to say about him. (He liked tolerance. There, I said one good thing about him.) He was, says one encyclopedia, “a caricature of the vulgar rationalism of the eighteenth century.” A Lutheran…
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Trinitarian Gallstones of Clare of Montefalco
What you need, as a Christian, is Jesus in your heart and the Trinity in your guts. At least that’s what Clare of Montefalco had. Today (August 18) was the day that Clare of Montefalco (1268-1308) died. Clare entered the Augustinian convent at age nine. By the end of her life she was abbess of…