Historical Writings

Early Church Father, Ambrose, 34, was consecrated Bishop of Milan, Italy. His influential works on theology and ethics made Ambrose (along with Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great) one of the "four doctors" of the Western (Latin) Church.

At the Synod of Rome, Cyril of Alexandria, 54, formally condemned the doctrine of the Antiochene monk Nestorius, who had claimed that there were two separate Persons in the Incarnate Christ (one Divine, the other Human).

(traditional date) Birth of Columba, who becomes an Irish monk, educator, bishop, and missionary. He will undertake evangelization in Scotland and Northern England, founding a monastery on the isle of Iona.

Death of Pope Innocent IV. His reign had been marred by perpetual strife with German emperors, a bull allowing the Inquisition to use torture and anonymous denunciations, and pressure on French king Louis IX to undertake disastrous crusades.

Emperor Charles V places a reward of one hundred gold guilders on the head of the peacable Anabaptist leader Menno Simon.

Death of Roman Catholic composer Adrian Willaert, a founder of the Venetian school. He had composed masses, hymns, psalms, and motets of the highest caliber, developing an antiphonal style (that is, a style in which alternating groups respond to each other).

Under pressure from the British Parliament, the American Colony of Massachusetts suspended its Corporal Punishment Act of 1656, which had imposed harsh penalties on Quakers and other religious Nonconformists.

Death of Pomare II, the Christian king of Tahiti.

Five Franciscan nuns, exiled by the policies of Bismarck, drown in the wreck of the ship Deutschland off the coast of England during a storm. Gerard Manley Hopkins will write a celebrated poem about the event.

African clergy and laypeople write a letter protesting attempts to declare Samuel Adjai Crowther’s service as the first African bishop in Nigeria unsuccessful. They point to thousands of conversions and the establishment of many schools and churches under Crowther. British missionaries paint the deceased Crowther as unsuccessful so as to convince the Anglican church to maintain white leaders in Nigeria.

The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches formally reconciled themselves by reversing a mutual excommunication of each other, dating back (over 900 years!) to July 1054.

In Atlanta, the Presbyterian Church in America formally instituted its missionary organization, PCA Mission to the World. It was an outgrowth of the newly established denomination.

Pakistani authorities arrest Tahir Iqbal, a Christian paraplegic, declaring he had insulted Mohammed by underlining passages and making margin notes in a copy of a Koran. He died in prison, having declared, "I will kiss my rope, but I will never deny my faith."