Pope Gregory XVI (above) died today in 1846. Not a notably liberal pontiff, he had devoted his reign to fighting such modern ideas as freedom of conscience, which he regarded as revolutionary and left wing. He banned railways from the Papal States, explaining that chemins de fer (railroads) were chemins d’enfer (roads to hell).
On this day in 1670, Charles II of Britain signed a secret treaty with Louis XIV of France to restore Britain to Catholicism. Louis promised to pay Charles the vast sum of £230,000 a year, and to send 6,000 French troops to fight Charles’s own people if they rose up in rebellion against him. The treaty was never implemented, and remained secret for 101 years.
Today in 1494, a monk from a monastery in Fife, John Cor, was permitted by King James IV of Scotland to distil aqua vitae (whisky) from ‘eight bolls’ of malt. No one uses bolls any more, but it was a seriously huge amount of malt and might have made something like 800 gallons of whisky. Cor’s whisky is the first official mention of the drink in history.
It is the birthday of Robert Powell, the actor famous for starring in the made-for-TV film, Jesus of Nazareth. He was born today in Salford, England, in 1944. Powell played Jesus as a very white, blue-eyed Messiah. He (Powell, not Christ) later married Babs, a member of the minimally clothed dance troupe Pan’s People.
Today in 1607, Dominican philosopher Tommaso Campanella dedicated his brand new book, the ambitiously titled, Atheism Conquered. The idea was to set out the ridiculous arguments of atheists, and then knock them flat with brilliant Christian replies, but sadly, Campanella proved to be a lot better at atheism than Christianity. The Church censored his manuscript and impounded copies of the book when it was published. Atheism Conquered is possibly the worst ever work of apologetics, and is also known by the title, The Bible for Atheists.
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