Historical Writings

Pope Vigilius issues his Judicatum against the Three Chapters. As a result, the Bishops of Africa, Illyria, and Dalmatia, with two of his own confidential deacons, withdraw from his communion. Two years later, the African bishops will anathemize him and he will eventually withdraw the Judicatum.

Assassination of Bishop Stanislaus of Krakow, Poland, murdered while he celebrates mass. He had incurred the enmity of King Boleslaw by excommunicating him for his many crimes.

Repose (death) of James the Abbot of Zheleznoborov. An ascetic monk, he was famous for predicting the recovery of Sophia, wife of the Great Prince Basil, when she was seriously ill, and foretelling the safe birth of a son, which happened. He founded a monastery at Iron Pines, which was destroyed by Tatars in 1429. James and his monastic community survived by hiding in deep woods, rebuilt the place, and fed starving peasants.

The foundation stone of the new St. Peter's Basilica was laid under the patronage of Julius II. (The church was not completed, however, until 1626.)

Richard Allen of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, becomes the first African-American bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Birth of Marcus Dods, Scottish clergyman and biblical scholar. His published works in New Testament studies helped popularize modern biblical scholarship in Great Britain.

English philanthropist George Mueller opened his famous orphanage on Wilson Street in Bristol. (By 1875, Mueller's orphanage was providing care for over 2,000 children.)

Death of John England, the first Roman Catholic bishop of Charleston, with a see embracing North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, where he had planted numerous churches and left a well-organized clergy.

Sarah Platt Haines Doremus of New York City becomes the first president of the Women’s Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands. She will become known as the “Mother of Missions.”

Death in Lichfield, England, of George Augustus Selwyn, first bishop of New Zealand.

The Handel and Haydn Society of Boston gives a full performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Passion according to St. Matthew.

Death at Salem, India, of K.T. (Kanakarayan Tiruselvam) Paul, first Indian-born National General Secretary of the National Council of YMCAs of India. He had been a promoter of rural construction, Chairman of the National Christian Council of India, and the holder of other prominent positions.

Khotan rebels enter Yarkant, China. They soon round up Muslim converts to Christianity. The first killed is twenty-year-old Habil, a Christian teacher, who had come to protect his thirteen-year-old sister from rape. Before being executed he had drawn a cross on a mud wall and above it a crown, saying, “First the cross, then the crown.” His sister Hava will be forced to marry a syphilitic Muslim and will contract the disease. When she is at the point of death, Swedish missionaries will rescue her, but she will die before she is twenty.

French-born American Trappist monk Thomas Merton affirmed in his "Secular Journal": 'If we are willing to accept humiliation, tribulation can become, by God's grace, the mild yoke of Christ, His light burden.'

Pope John XXIII issues his Pacem in Terris encyclical regarding the establishment of universal peace.

The Full Gospel Fellowship of Churches and Ministers International, formed in Dallas in 1962, changed its name to Christ for the Nations. This charismatic missions agency specializes in fund-raising and support for church construction and Christian literature distribution worldwide.