Chartres Cathedral (above) was re-consecrated today in 1260. Most of the building had burned to the ground 66 years earlier, leaving only the towers and the western entrance standing. The townspeople had been grief-stricken that they might have lost the cathedral’s greatest treasure, the tunic worn by the Vigin Mary when Jesus was born, but the relic was recovered from the smoking crypt. The new building, dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX, still stands today.
Springing up anew, now finished in its entirety of cut stone beneath elegant vaults,
It fears harm from no fire ’til Judgment Day;
And salvation from that fire appears to many
Through whose aid the renewed work was brought about.
William the Breton, Philippide, 1225
The TV evangelist and leading exponent of prosperity theology, Jim Bakker, was sentenced to 45 years for fraud today in 1989, for prospering irregularly from the Praise the Lord TV network. The oversized sentence was handed down by Judge Robert Potter, who was known as Maximum Bob in North Carolina for good reason. On appeal, Bakker served five years, during which he wrote a long book called I Was Wrong, which is pretty much all you need know about prosperity theology.
Lucian Pulvermacher, an ex-Capuchin monk, was elected Pope today in 1998 and took Pius XIII as his papal name. He had been a missionary in Japan, but became disillusioned by the Catholic Church, believing it had apostatized at the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, making all the Popes elected since then invalid. He moved back home to Wisconsin to live with his parents, and celebrated Mass the good old way, in Latin, in a private chapel. He ruled at the same time as another traditionalist Antipope, Linus II, who lived in Hertfordshire, England.
On this day in 1945, the United Nations charter came into force, promoting ‘universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.’ The charter had been signed the previous June by delegates from 50 nations around the world.
Today in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia finally ended the Thirty Years’ War, one of central Europe’s bloodiest conflicts, which was partly a struggle between Protestants and Catholics. The conflict devastated the Holy Roman Empire through extremes of violence, plague and famine, and it is thought that 5 million people were killed, amounting to one-third of the German population. In its aftermath, areas of central Europe were a wasteland for decades, and it took half a century and more for the population to recover. From this point onwards, Europe decided to give up fighting over religion in favour of fighting over politics.
It is the birthday of Domitian (born in the year 51), the Emperor who ruled the Roman Empire when the Book of Revelation was being written, and who cruelly persecuted Christians. The 20th century classicist Robert Graves, in his book The White Goddess, proposed Domitian as the answer to a biblical puzzle that has fascinated readers of the Book of Revelation ever since its ink dried. The puzzle is in the last verse of the 13th chapter, which talks about a mysterious figure, the Beast, who is identified by the cryptic number 666. Graves translated the number into Latin, DCLXVI, and proposed that the letters stood for Domitius Caesar Legatos Xti Violenter Interfecit – ‘Domitian Caesar violently killed the envoys of Christ’.
Image: Francisco Anzola