Jonathan Swift (above), the Irish clergyman, satirist, pamphleteer, author of Gulliver’s Travels, and Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, died today in 1745. His religious satire includes a passage in Gulliver’s Travels where the Empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu are endlessly at war over a disagreement about whether you should break open a boiled egg at the round or the pointy end. Swift was unusually well prepared for death, as he had written his own obituary a decade earlier, in a comic poem satirising public figures as well as himself.
Behold the fatal day arrive!
‘How is the Dean?’—‘He’s just alive.’
Now the departing prayer is read;
‘He hardly breathes.’—‘The Dean is dead.’
Jonathan Swift, ‘Verses on the Death of Dr Swift’
The world came to an end at 8 o’clock this morning in 1533 – in the apocalyptic imagination of Michael Stifel, an early Lutheran theologian and mathematician. The previous year, his pamphlet Ein Rechenbüchlein vom Endchrist (‘An Arithmetic Book of the Antichrist’) had announced the Day of Judgment, which led Stiffel’s followers to sell everything and go to church on the big day to wait for last trump. When it turned out that the last trump had been postponed, the followers were furious and Stiffel was put in prison. He was eventually released thanks to his close friendship with Martin Luther, and went on to be a brilliant mathematician.
The San Felipe, a Spanish galleon sailing from the Philippines, was wrecked on the coast of Japan today in 1596. The ship’s pilot, Francisco de Olandia, in conversation with a daimyo (feudal lord) Mashita Nagamori, let slip that Spain’s method of adding new lands to its empire was first to send in missionaries to convert the local people, and then to send conquistadors, who would conquer the land with the help of the new converts. As a direct result, 26 missionaries and Japanese converts were rounded up and crucified in Nagasaki the following February. They are remembered as the 26 Martyrs of Japan.
The relics of St Seraphim of Sarov were launched into space aboard the Soyuz MS-02 today in 2016. St Seraphim, one of the most inspiring and beloved saints of the 19th century, has been declared by the Russian Orthodox Church to be the patron saint of Russia’s nuclear weapons – an astonishing act of sacrilege by a major world Church.
The Polish Catholic priest Jerzy Popiełuszko was murdered by three members of the country’s security service tonight in 1984. Popiełuszko was an eloquent critic of the Communist regime, encouraging peaceful resistance on Radio Free Europe, and taking part in work’s strikes led by the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement, which was a focus of opposition to Communism. He was kidnapped late at night, beaten, tied up with a stone bound to his feet, and drowned in a reservoir. His martyr’s death shocked Poland, and strengthened the resistance to Communist rule, which collapsed five years later.
Today in 1489, two men, Domenico and Francesco, who had been running a racket in which they forged papal bulls for cash, were hanged in Rome. Domenico was a Vatican scribe, while Francesco was a canon, which gave them access to genuine bulls. They doctored them for clients in need of a plausibly legal document, such as a priest who wanted a dispensation to marry his concubine. They even issued a bull giving the priests of Norway permission to say Mass without wine. Their scheme made them as much as 2,000 ducats for a forged document.
Image: The Met / The Glenn Tilley Morse Collection, Bequest of Glenn Tilley Morse, 1950