MAY 23
How Hotheads in Prague Started a Thirty Year War (1618)
“Almost as much enchanted by Mr. Wilberforce s book the pamphlet Abolition as by his conduct. He is the very model of a reformer. Ardent without turbul...”
Sir James Mackintosh’s journal; quoted in Great Men and Famous Women: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history, ed. Charles F. Horne. New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher, 1894.
Spirit and Body Need to Be Clean
Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit—2 Corinthians 7:1 (ESV). We are led by this admo...
Events
1381
Metropolitan Cyprian of Moscow is received with rejoicing after long being denied the position because he is a Serbian. He will be declared a saint by the Russian church.
Authority for the date: Obolensky, Dmitri. Six Byzantine Portraits. Clarendon, 1988.1430
Joan of Arc is taken captive by Burgundians during a sally from Compiegne, where she was besieged. For a large payment, the Burgundians will surrender her to the English who will execute her.
Authority for the date: Michelet, Jules. Trial and Execution of Jeanne d’Arc, A.D. 1431.1498
Italian reformer Girolamo Savonarola, who had preached aggressively against the corruption of northern Italy’s church and society, is hanged for heresy in Florence; then his body is burned.
Authority for the date: Durant, Will and Ariel. The Reformation.1551
Philip Neri, who has already been doing spiritual work for many years in Rome, is ordained. He will found the Oratian order and develop the musical form known as the oratorio.
Authority for the date: New Catholic Encyclopedia.1568
Battle at Heiligerlee. Dutch Protestant rebels beat the forces of Catholic Spain in Friesland.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1663
Samuel de Champlain takes power in Quebec, replacing Huguenot Emery de Caen as governor of New France [Canada], after which time he bans Protestant colonists from permanent settlement.
Authority for the date: Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Em1832
Inspired by recent revivals of religion, Amalie Sieveking, with twelve other women, founds a society in Germany that aims to help people help themselves by providing “material and spiritual assistance” to impoverished sick people and their families.
Authority for the date: https://www.ohio.edu/chastain/rz/sieverkg.htm1832
Execution of Baptist deacon and ex-slave Samuel Sharpe, who had led a recent uprising (the Baptist War) against slavery in Jamaica in which as many as 60,000 slaves participated.
Authority for the date: www.jnht.com/site_sam_sharpe_square.php1854
As Seventh-day Adventist evangelists James and Ellen White prepare to board a train in Jackson, Michigan, Ellen feels a premonition of danger. A group of friends prays. Aboard the train, Ellen feels compelled to leave their car and move to the rear of the train. Soon afterward, the train derails, killing engineer and fireman instantly and injuring many passengers. The White’s car is unharmed, having inexplicably uncoupled from the wreck without breaking the chain or bolt that secured it to the other cars.
Authority for the date: Lest We Forget: Adventist Pioneer Library, Vol. 4 No. 4 (1994) 3.1873
Death in St. Louis, Missouri, of Pierre-Jean De Smet, a frontier missionary in the United States and Canada.
Authority for the date: Wikipedia.1887
Death in Christiana, Norway, of Ludvig Mathias Lindeman. He had contributed greatly to the cause of good church music among the Scandinavians, so that it was said he had taught the Norwegian people to sing.
Authority for the date: Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal.1891
Evangel, the first of several Baptist rail cars was dedicated in Cincinnati Ohio. Ten feet wide and sixty feet long, it will seat one hundred worshippers. Northern Pacific Railroad’s General Manager orders his workers to take the car on any of the company’s trains at no charge.
Authority for the date: McKernan, Mary. “How the West Was Really Won.” Christian Reader (September - October, 1996).1903
Death of American Congregational missionary Henry Blodget. He had served forty years in China and helped translate the New Testament into colloquial Mandarin.
Authority for the date: Schaff, Philip. New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.1918
Death of Ludwig Nommensen, Lutheran missionary to Sumatra, Indonesia, where he won many converts.
Authority for the date: www.elca.org/dgm/country_packet/indonesia/hkbp.html1941
The scarred and disfigured body of the Orthodox bishop Platon of Banja Luka is found in the village of Kumsale, Croatia. Along with thousands of others he was killed in ethnic cleansing by the Ustashe, a Croatian fascist organization.
Authority for the date: http://orthodoxwiki.org/Platon_of_Banja_Luka2009
The Nepal Defense Army, advocating for a Hindu state in Nepal, bombs the Catholic Church of the Assumption in Kathmandu. Six days later the organization will release a statement demanding that all one million Christians in Nepal leave the country, under threat of having each of their homes bombed.
Authority for the date: Persecuted: the global assault on Christians.