Pope Gregory VII (above) was elected by acclamation in Rome today in 1073. Hildebrand (his name before becoming Pope) was a powerful adviser to several previous Popes. There was just the little matter of him not even being a priest, let alone a bishop or archbishop, but that didn’t stop the crowd chanting ‘Hildebrand for Pope!’ before the old Pope was cold. He went on to become one of the great Popes of the Middle Ages, on a mission to reform the Church.
Immanuel Kant, the hugely influential Western philosopher, was born to a pietistic family in the Prussian city of Königsberg, today in 1724. Having been born, he believed, with innate conscience of right and wrong, he argued that morality is either a meaningless message from no one or evidence of the existence of God.
M Scott Peck, the American psychiatrist and author who wrote the bestselling book, The Road Less Traveled, was born today in 1936. When Peck offered his manuscript of the book to a New York publisher, they famously turned it down, saying that the final section, on grace, was ‘too Christ-y’.
As a result of the Coinage Act, passed by the US Congress today in 1864, US coins began to be marked with the phrase, ‘In God we trust’. The words became the official motto of the United States in 1956.
It is the feast day of St Theodore of Sykeon, an ascetic from Galatia who died today in 613. The son of a courtesan and a hippodrome acrobat who performed with camels, Sykeon became a hermit in his early teens and went on to become a significant bishop, whose prophesies were listened to by the Byzantine emperor.
Image: Wikimedia Commons