Historical Writings

Death of St. Pirminius, first abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Reichenau (located in modern Germany). His name endures today as author of a book entitled "Scarapsus," which is the earliest known writing to contain the Apostles' Creed as it is worded in its present form.

Simeon Stumpf is deprived of his parish in Zurich and will be exiled the following month. With Conrad Grebel he had called for complete abolition of the mass. The Zurich town council had said it should be left up to each priest.

English clergyman John Eliot, 27, first arrived in America, at Boston. He afterward became the first Protestant minister to devote himself to evangelization of the American Indian.

Robert Raikes publishes a letter on the success of his Sunday schools in the Gloucester Journal which is seen by William Fox, who promotes a national Sunday school movement.

English clergyman Thomas Coke, 37, first arrived in America, at New York City. He was the first Methodist bishop to come to the New World.

A painter defaces the statue of King William III in Dublin. The statue is hated by Catholics because William had secured Ireland for Protestantism, and hated by Protestant students because the rump of its horse faces their university. The culprit will never be apprehended. In 1928 the statue will be blown up.

Pliny Fisk, 26, set sail for Palestine. Ordained by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Fisk became the first American missionary to journey to the Near East.

Isabella Thoburn sails with Clara Swain from Boston harbor for India, where she will found a school for women.

Death of Canadian Methodist Albert Carman, the last and greatest of the holiness Methodists in Canada. He had broken a hip some time before and never recovered.

The Pentecostal Ministerial Alliance was organized at St. Louis, MO. It became the forerunner of a new denomination, established in 1932 as the Pentecostal Church, Inc.

Orthodox priest Alexander Vasilyevich Nikulin serving in the village of Bolshaya Sosnova is arrested "for anti-Soviet agitation", and will be sentenced to three years in the prison camps. After his released he serves secretly despite a warrant for his arrest.

Lutheran bishops prepare The Christian in the DNR to show Lutherans how to live under communism with obedience but without violating their consciences.

Death of Charles Chidongo Chinula, a pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Malawi, who had translated Pilgrim's Progress into the Tumbuka language. He had been expelled from the Presbyterian church for his combative spirit and founded a "Free Church," but eventually rejoined the Presbyterians, deploring the schism he had caused.