Historical Writings

Louis IX of France is crowned at Rheims. Because of the sanctity of his life, he will be declared a saint in 1297, twenty-seven years after his death.

Death of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who had been Lord Chancellor of England. He says, "If I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs."

Death of Renaissance Italian composer and clergyman Claudio Monteverdi, who served as maestro di cappella at St Mark's Cathedral, Venice. An innovator, he developed techniques that flourished in baroque music. He wrote an opera that is still produced, secular madrigals, and many sacred pieces, including several serene masses.

The Massachusetts General Court issued a call for local pastors to learn the dialects of neighboring Indian tribes, as an aid toward converting them to the Christian faith.

The Congregational Church of Connecticut licenses African-American Lemuel Hayes to preach, making him the first African-American minister certified by a predominantly white denomination. He will later become the first African-American minister to pastor a white church in the United States.

Death in Rochester, New York, of Augustus H. Strong, known for his work in systematic theology.

Death of Agnes Ozman, the first student who had spoken in tongues at Charles Parham's Kansas school in 1901, sparking the Pentecostal movement.

A convention begins in Cleveland at which The Federal Council of Churches in America merges with seven other Protestant organizations to become the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

The Vatican announces that Archbishop Aloysius Stepanic, under house arrest in Yugoslavia, will be made a cardinal. This infuriates Tito's communist regime which protests vigorously, having convicted Stepanic of war crimes and collaboration with Nazis. The ceremony making Stepanic a cardinal will nonetheless take place on January 12, 1953.

In Nagpur, India, six church bodies - the Anglicans, the United Church of Northern India, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Church of the Brethren and the Disciples of Christ - merge to form the Church of North India.