Today: Jan 20
It Happened Today
FRANCIS GRIMKÉ, EX-SLAVE AND LEADING PASTOR IN DC (1878)
"The persecutions of the Armenians have reached hair raising proportions and all points to the fact that the Young Turks want to seize the opportunity,..."
You cannot tempt the dead (1847)
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God —Colossians 3:3 (ESV). We all know how vain it is to...
Procopius of Sycthopolis is martyred as the first of the Palestine victims in the Diocletian persecutions.
Authority for the date: users.erols.com/saintpat/ss/0708.htm.
[or 787] Death of St. Willibald, a pupil of St. Boniface.
Authority for the date: Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church.
Dedication of a golden shrine to display the effigy of Thomas à Becket. It had been created by famed goldsmith Walter of Colchester.
Authority for the date: www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/08/euwb/hod_2001.310.htm
The Pragmatic Sanctions of Bourges, issued by King Charles VII of France, asserts Gallican liberties against the papacy.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.
The Zurich council summons Conrad Grebel and three of his friends and forbids them to speak out against monks during their sermons.
Authority for the date: cat.xula.edu/tpr/people/grebel/
John Berridge is admitted to the vicarage of Everton, an obscure village on the edge of Bedfordshire, England. He will retain the position for the rest of his life, even after he becomes a famous evangelist.
Authority for the date: Hatfield, Edwin F. Poets of the Church. New York: Anson D.F. Randolph & Company, 1884.
The cornerstone is laid for the United States' first Catholic cathedral, the Cathedral of the Assumption (now called the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) in Baltimore, Maryland. The design is by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the United States Capitol. Archbishop John Carroll is behind the project but will not live to see its completion.
Authority for the date: www.baltimorebasilica.org/index.php?page=timeline
Walter Scott arrives in New York from Scotland, and soon will become a leader and educator in the growing Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement.
Authority for the date: http://www.christianchronicler.com/History2/walter_scott.html
Moravians at Okkak, Labrador, report that the sky toward the west becomes black at 7 AM and soon their settlement is plunged into darkness. They are forced to use candles until about 10 AM after which the sky becomes fiery red. Some Eskimos at sea will report afterward that something like ash fell upon their boat.
Authority for the date: John O. Choules and Thomas Smith, The Origin and History of Missions. p.130
Archbishop Hughes of New York approves the rules drawn up by Isaac Hecker and his companions for the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle (the Paulists) to convert Americans to Roman Catholicism.
Authority for the date: O'Brien, John A. Giants of the Faith. New York: Image Books, 1960.
Episcopalian bishop William Jones Boone the elder consecrates Samuel Schereschewsky with deacon's orders in St. George's Church, New York. Schereschewsky will become a notable missionary to China and a bishop.
Authority for the date: "Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky." http://www.stsams.org/patron.htm
Lottie Moon is appointed to China by the Foreign Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention.
Authority for the date: Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archives
Francis J. Grimké is ordained a Presbyterian minister. He will emphasize honesty, hard work, thrift, and eternal values. "It is only what is written upon the soul of man that will survive the wreck of time," he declares. He will also join in organizing the American Negro Academy in 1897.
Authority for the date: Compton's Encyclopedia.
The Gospel Missionary Union becomes the first "faith mission" to enter Ecuador in the persons of J. A. Strain, F. W. Farnol, and George Fisher.
Authority for the date: "The Rise of Latin American Christianity." images.acswebnetworks.com/1/2320/TurningPoints
Death of Anna Louisa Walker Coghill at Bath, England. She had authored many poems and the popular hymn "Work, for the Night Is Coming."
Authority for the date: Cyberhymnal
Death in Alexandria, Egypt, of Orthodox patriarch Meletius Metaxakis, a zealous reformer who had also taken steps to create a Greek Archdiocese in North America. He was the only man successively to lead three autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Churches. He had also sought to bridge the gap between Orthodoxy and the Anglican Church.
Authority for the date: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Meletius_IV_(Metaxakis)_of_Constantinople
Death of George Washington Truett, who had pastored the largest Baptist church in the world—the First Baptist Church of Dallas.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias