Today in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian, was sentenced to death in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp for his association with the 20 July (1944) plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer (seen above in stained glass in a church in Berlin) had been held in a series of prisons for the previous two years. His final message, sent via a fellow prisoner, a British spy, was, ‘This is the end – for me the beginning of life.’
The fourth session of the Council of Trent, today in 1546, decreed the Catholic doctrine of scripture. Yes, the Bible has final authority over Christians, but since all interpretations that make the Bible disagree with the Catholic Church are wrong, the church has quite a lot of authority too. What’s more, the extra-biblical traditions of the church (such as Sunday worship) are just as binding as scripture. And in a curious call, the Latin translation of the Bible is declared more authoritative than the original.
‘The same sacred and holy Synod… ordains and declares that the old and Vulgate edition, which by the lengthened usage of so many years has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.’ Council of Trent
The new cathedral in Winchester was consecrated today in 1093. It replaced the Old Minster, the Anglo-Saxon cathedral founded in 642, which was demolished immediately after the new cathedral was consecrated. The footprint of the Old Minster is still visible next to the ‘new’ building.
Martin Chemnitz, the second generation Lutheran reformer, known in the Lutheran Church as the ‘second Martin’, died today in 1586.
Image: Sludge G