Historical Writings

Death of St. John the Almsgiver, Cyprus-born Patriarch of Alexandria. Upon taking office, he had found that the Monophysites held a large number of Egyptians in their sway, but through symapthy and charity, he won much of the population back to Orthodoxy.

Death of Theodore the Studite, a champion of icons.

The Fourth Lateran Council was convened by Pope Innocent III. It was the council which first defined "transubstantiation," the Catholic belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist change invisibly into the body and blood of Christ.

The "Mayflower Compact" was signed by the 41 Separatists among the passengers of the "Mayflower," serving as the basis for combining themselves "into a civil body politic." Democratic in form, the Compact comprised the first written American constitution, and remained in force until 1691.

English founder of Methodism John Wesley wrote in a letter: 'You cannot live on what He did yesterday. Therefore He comes today.'

Five months after setting sail for India, English pioneer missionary William Carey, 32, reached Calcutta. (Later, Carey founded the Baptist Missionary Society, the first of the British Protestant missions agencies.)

Baptist preacher Nat Turner is hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia, having led a slave insurrection that resulted in the deaths of fifty-five white people. (Whites killed two hundred or more African-Americans in retaliation.)

Elizabeth Ryder Wheaton claims she has had a vision of Christ. Afterward she will become a social reformer and evangelist.

Death of David Lipscomb, a Disciples (Churches of Christ) editor and author, and one of the founders of Nashville Bible School, which will later be renamed Lipscomb University.

Death of English theologian and educator P. T. Forsyth, who wrote The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, stressing man's need for atonement and Christ's voluntary provision of it. He had been principal of Hackney Theological College in Hamstead, London.

Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," a song that she thought she was not going to like. It will become her signature song.

Death of Jesuit bishop Tsiang Beda of Shanghai in a communist prison. He had refused to head the Chinese "reform" church.

The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren voted to merge into one denomination in the U.S., afterward to be called the United Methodist Church. (The "declaration of union" took place officially on April 23, 1968.)