Historical Writings

Theodore of Tarsus arrives in Canterbury to serve as Archbishop. He will visit the whole of England, establishing the Roman date for Easter and settling bishops in all the sees except London.

Robert Guiscard, a Norman adventurer, enters Rome at the request of Pope Gregory VII. He liberates the pope and reduces half the city to ruins. His men will rape even the nuns and sell thousands of Romans into slavery.

Archbishop Ruthard hides 1,300 Jews from anti-Semitic mobs, but the rioters find and massacre all but a handful.

A council of bishops in Constantinople declares heretical the views of Eastern Orthodox theologian Barlaam the Calabrian. Barlaam and his supporters had argued against the hesychast method of prayer and against the theological teaching that the light at the transfiguration and the fire in the burning bush were examples of the uncreated energies of God. After his condemnation, Barlaam will become a Roman Catholic.

Anabaptist Elizabeth Dirks is drowned in a bag in the Netherlands. Her Catholic captors, in an attempt to get her to betray the name of the person who baptized her, had tortured her with thumbscrews until blood spurted from under her fingernails, and crushed her legs in screws until she fainted from agony. (Her death is sometimes, mistakenly, said to have been on 27 March.)

Death at Geneva of John Calvin, reformer and theologian.

Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyle, is beheaded at Edinburgh on accusations of treason because of his involvement with the Scottish Covenanters.

Colonial theologian Increase Mather, 24, was installed as minister of Boston's Second (Congregational) Church. He remained there until his death in 1723.

Death at Clermont of Jesuit author Dominique Bouhours, best known for biographies of Loyola and Xavier.

Birth of George Washington Doane, American Episcopal clergyman. One of the foremost promoters of Episcopal missions in his day, Doane also authored many hymns, including "Fling Out the Banner! Let It Float" and "Softly Now the Light of Day."

Lyman Beecher and former opponents of Charles Finney's revival methods publish a letter saying that the general interests of religion will not be served by continued controversy on the subject. Finney is among the signatories of the letter.

Christian explorer Jedediah Smith is surrounded and killed by Comanche Indians at a water hole near the Cimarron River.

Benedict XV promulgated the "Codex iuris canonici." Divided into five books and 2,414 regulations, the CIC was the first revision of canon law in the Catholic church in modern times, and went into effect at Pentecost the following year.

The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, meeting at Springfield, Maryland, repealed its ban on dancing and theater attendance.

Birth of Ralph Carmichael, a popular sacred composer whose works flourished most during the 1960s-1970s. Among his oftªsung arrangements are "The Savior is Waiting" and "He's Everything to Me."

Billy Graham gets his start in big-city evangelism at a Youth for Christ rally at Orchestra Hall in Chicago ten days before D-Day.

Death in Atlanta, Georgia, of Luther B. Bridgers, author of the hymn “There’s Within My Heart a Melody.“

Xu Chenping becomes the Catholic bishop of Hong Kong where he will seek to implement the instructions of Vatican II.

Authorities beat to death Yu Zhongju, a twenty-seven-year-old Christian woman, in China’s Hubei Province merely because she happens to be present when they arrest another Christian. Before her death, she is sexually abused, tortured with electricity, and burned with cigarette butts along with other Christian women.

Abune Dioskoros, the fourth patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewhado Church is installed. His predecessor, Abune Antonios, is under house arrest at the time for criticizing the government for interfering in church activities and for persecuting evangelical Christians.