Historical Writings

Boniface is consecrated a bishop by Pope Gregory II for the work he will do as a missionary to the Germans.

Thomas à Becket crosses the English Channel, returning to his post at Canterbury after a six-year exile in France. Four weeks later, knights of King Henry II will murder him.

The Fourth Lateran Council closed, under Innocent III. It was this council that made first official use of the term "transubstantiation," with reference to the Eucharist (Lord's Supper).

German reformer Martin Luther remarked: 'Whenever I happen to be prevented by the press of duties from observing my hour of prayer, the entire day is bad for me.'

Roman Catholicism was (briefly) restored to England, under the reign of Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. In the process, "Bloody Mary" had Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and nearly 300 other Protestant leaders burned at the stake.

Birth of Samuel Seabury, first bishop of the American Protestant Episcopal Church. (Following the American Revolution, Seabury helped formulate the constitution which made the American Protestant Episcopal Church independent and autonomous from the Church of England.)

Moravian missionaries on Saint Thomas island allow Andreas and Petrus, two Afro-Caribbeans, to share the Lord’s Table, a first for the island’s slave population.

Harriet Newell, one of America's first women missionaries to a foreign land, dies of consumption near India. She had lost a baby shortly before, owing to a severe storm, and was prostrate from the experience.

John Geddie sails from Nova Scotia for Polynesia where he will labor for many disappointing years on Aneiteum in the New Hebrides before seeing a spiritual breakthrough. Once the islanders are converted, however, they will be so zealous for Christ that they will send missionaries to other islands.

Death of F. J. A. Hort, Bible scholar who had worked with B. F. Westcott on a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, the foundation for almost all modern English translations of the New Testament.

In Naperville, Illinois, seven groups of the Evangelical Association withdrew from the organization to form the United Evangelical Church. (In 1922 the two denominations reunited.)

State burial of Aberi K. Balya, in Uganda. He had helped translate the Bible into the Runyoro/Rutooro language, became a bishop in the Church of England, and established many schools.