Historical Writings

Archbishop John Chrysostom leaves Constantinople under arrest, never to return.

Clement VII and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed the Peace of Barcelona, which ended attacks on Rome by the Lutheran armies.

The first Diet at Augsburg gathers. The Augsburg Confession will be presented on the 25th.

Although not a bishop himself, Martin Luther consecrates Nicolaus von Amsdorf as bishop for Naumburg. Elector John Frederick had ousted the regularly elected Roman Catholic bishop, Julius von Pflug.

The Synod of Diamper reunited a native church in India with Rome. Discovered in 1498 by Portuguese explorers, this isolated pocket of worshipers traced their Christian origins back to the missionary efforts of the Apostle Thomas.

The Schwenkfelders leave Rotterdam on what will prove to be a hard voyage to America.

Anglican clergyman and hymnwriter John Newton wrote in a letter: 'A Christian is not of hasty growth...but rather like the oak, the progress of which is hardly perceptible, but in time becomes a deep-rooted tree.'

Birth of Dorothy Ann Thrupp, English devotional writer and author of the hymn, 'Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us.'

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain awaken eighteen-year-old Princess Victoria, a Christian, at five in the morning, to inform her she is now the Queen of England and Empress of its far-flung empire.

Death of Samuel R. Brown, missionary-educator to China and Bible translator in Japan.

A band of Moravian missionaries landed on the shores of Alaska and founded the Bethel Mission. During the first year of their mission work among the, eskimoes, winter temperatures outside their makeshift housing plummeted to 50 degrees below zero!

America’s Presbyterian General Assembly opens dialogue with Baptists and Methodists for organizing Protestant mission work in the Philippines, which have recently been ceded to the United States following the Spanish-American War.

Robert A. Torrey receives his DD from Wheaton. He will become a prominent evangelical leader and write the popular What the Bible Teaches.

Minnie Kennedy, mother of Aimee Semple McPherson, tries to end speculation about the evangelist's sudden disapperance by holding a memorial service for her at Angelus Temple. Three days later McPherson reappears with a tale of having been kidnapped.

Death of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and mathematician, who had been one of the first to recognize that Einstein's equations required an expanding universe with a beginning at a measurable time in the past. Eventually the so-called "Big Bang" theory will refine and improve similar concepts.

Death of Traian Dorz, a Romanian poet who served as leader of the Orthodox revival movement known as The Lord's Army. He had suffered imprisonment, harrassment, and restriction by a hostile government and hostile church authorities.

Militant Muslims gun down two Christian businessmen at Dairut, Assiut, and spray responding police officers with machine gun fire, killing two.

All the Christian communions who share control of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre agree to install a new exit door in the church. A century and a half earlier, dozens of Christian pilgrims had been trampled to death when fire broke out in the church.