MAY 6
Alfred Battled for English Christianity (878)
“Last Saturday evening, when the Pope was at supper, I showed him some designs which Bramante and I had to test so, after supper, when I had displayed...”
Symonds, John Addington. The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
God’s Oath Cannot Fail (1803)
So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong...
Events
259
(probable date) After torture aimed at getting them to renounce their faith during the Valerian persecution, James and Marian are beheaded in a North Africa gorge.
Authority for the date: Butler, Alban. The Lives of the Saints, 1866.1237
The bones of St. Sava of Serbia are removed from the Cathedral of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Trnovo to the monastery Mileseva in southern Serbia, where they will remain for three hundred and sixty years until the Ottoman Turks dig them up and burn them.
Authority for the date: Catholic News Agency.1432
Dedication of the altarpiece for St. John’s Church in Ghent, Belgium, the work of aging Flemish artist Jan van Eyck.
Authority for the date: www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ghnt/hd_ghnt.htm1527
Forty thousand mercenaries from the army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, hired by Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, sack the city of Rome, killing, torturing, looting, and raping. They burn two thirds of the city. Pope Clement VII is forced to flee to the castle of St. Angelo disguised as a gardener.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1531
Twenty-year-old Pierre Viret, beginning a reformation work in his home town of Orbe, Switzerland, preaches his first sermon. He will later extend his preaching to France, where he will be a major player in the creation of the Huguenot movement.
Authority for the date: en.inforapid.org.1536
King Henry VIII of England orders that an English-language Bible be placed in every church in the nation.
Authority for the date: www.churchofengland.org.1619
The Canons of Dort, a Calvinist response to the Arminian Remonstrance, are promulgated in Dort’s Great Church before a large congregation.
Authority for the date: Vandergugten, S. “The Arminian Controversy and the Synod of Doredt.”1638
Death of Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, who inspired the Catholic reform movement known as Jansenism. Opposed to the teachings of the Jesuits and of Thomas Aquinas, he had adopted Augustine’s doctrine of irresistible grace, but his views on grace and predestination were condemned by the church.
Authority for the date: Encyclopedia Americana.1746
Death in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, of William Tennent. Born in Ireland, he had migrated to America where he operated a seminary in a log cabin, infusing his pupils with such evangelistic zeal that they became the leaders of the Great Awakening. They would found many influential frontier schools in their turn.
Authority for the date: Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography.1840
Death in Loretto, Pennsylvania, of Dmitri Gallitzin, a Catholic missionary known as the “Apostle of the Alleghanies.”
Authority for the date: Appleton’s Cyclopedia.1861
In a Commemoration Day sermon, Dr. William Selwyn, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, and a former Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, reminds his hearers that the college is celebrating “its seventh jubilee,” and pleads earnestly for the erection of a larger chapel. His plea will be successful.
Authority for the date: Scott, Robert Forsyth. St. John’s College, Cambridge.1928
A bandit army attacks Qinzhou City and one of the soldiers splits open the skull of thirty-three-year-old Wu Baoying, a Christian doctor who, after years of service with the China Inland Mission, founded the local hospital. His last words, when discovered the next morning in a pool of blood, are “The Lord is with us.”
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.1962
Pope John XXIII canonizes Martin de Porres (1579-1639), a mixed-race associate of the Dominican Order, remembered for his humility and for his charity in nursing the sick.
Authority for the date: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=306