Historical Writings

Death of St. Columba (born 521), pioneer missionary to Scotland. From the Isle of Iona, Columba evangelized the mainland of Scotland and Northumbria.

In England, Parliament established a uniformity of religious services and the first Book of Common Prayer, as Anglicanism became the newly established national faith.

Death of Jeanne D'Albret, queen of Navarre, who had skillfully kept her country Protestant during the tense and religiously violent sixteenth century. Her son Henry, a Huguenot leader, had displeased her by converting to Catholicism to become king of France.

Death of Jesuit missionary and poet Jose de Anchieta at Retirygba, Brazil. He had helped establish São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Death at Blois, France, of Madame Guyon, a Roman Catholic mystic who claimed union with Christ. She had deeply influenced François Fenelon.

Englishman James Oglethorpe received a royal charter to form the American colony of Georgia. It was to be a place of refuge for sectarian Protestant believers, persecuted in England.

In the first step toward formal organization of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., Father John Carroll was appointed superior of the American missions by Pius VI.

English Baptist missionary pioneer William Carey died at 73. Having translated portions of Scripture into as many as 25 languages, he is known by some today as the 'father of modern missions.'

Thérèse of Lisieux makes her Act of Oblation (an offering of herself to God's love).

John Joseph Burke is ordained a Roman Catholic priest. He will become an influential Paulist and the editor of The Catholic World.

Death of Carry Nation, American temperance leader. After an unhappy marriage to a drunkard, she had joined the prohibitionists. In 1899 she began her notorious career by wrecking all the saloons in Medicine Lodge, Kansas. She used an ax in her 1901 crusades against the saloons in Wichita and Topeka. She did much to spur the prohibition movement in the U.S.

The Soviets, attempting to placate the anger of the Perm populace following the execution of Archbishop Andronicus, summon the Orthodox priest Vladyka Theophanes to Perm to take his place. This will cost Theophanes his life. He will be arrested in October and murdered on Christmas Eve by being repeatedly lowered nude by the hair of his head through a hole chopped in a frozen river.

Japanese Christians issue a statement of repentance for World War II, vow to take up their crosses anew, and promise to evangelize their islands for Christ and to assist those suffering hunger and poverty after the war.

Death in Nairobi of Roland Allen, whose approach to creating indigenous missions will become prevalent later in the twentieth century.