It is the feast day of St Anne (above, centre), grandmother of Jesus and mother of Mary. Anne doesn’t make an appearance in the four Gospels, but she’s an important character in the 2nd century apocryphal Gospel of James, which gives Mary a backstory, including details of her childhood family. Anne is the patron saint of the childless, as she had to wait a long time before an angel told her that Mary was going to be born.
‘Every day, the child grew stronger. When she was six months old, Anne put her on the ground to see whether she could stand, and she walked seven steps and came into her mother’s arms. Anne picked her up, and said: “As surely as the Lord my God lives, you won’t walk on this earth again until I bring you into the temple of the Lord!”’ The story of Anne and Mary in the Gospel of St James
Cayetano Ripoll, a schoolmaster in Valencia, Spain, was hanged today in 1826 for heresy, which makes him the last known person put to death at the instigation of the Spanish Inquisition. The inquisitors had wanted him burned at the stake for his Deist views, which included him teaching schoolchildren that they didn’t need to make the sign of the cross. After his death, the church authorities put his body in a barrel with flames painted on the sides, which was then either buried or burned. Eight years later, the Inquisition was abolished.
Titus Brandsma, the Dutch friar and professor of philosophy, died in Dachau concentration camp today in 1942 when an SS nurse gave him a lethal injection. He had long spoken out against Nazi ideology, and was arrested as he was delivering letters to the editors of Catholic newspapers urging non-cooperation with the Nazis. The Church regards him as a martyr, and he was beatified in 1985.
The Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I was killed in battle in Bulgaria today in the year 811. He had invaded the country and had twice defeated the armies of Khan Krum, the country’s ruler, sacking the capital city with sickening brutality. But in a third battle, the Byzantines were defeated and Nikephorus was killed on a dunghill. Whereupon Khan Krum had him decapitated and his skull turned into a drinking cup, a grim comic prop which he used for ever after.
Jacques Gruet, a passionate opponent of John Calvin in Geneva, who was also a poet and had been prosecuted for dancing, was executed today in 1547. He had been accused of writing a note threatening Calvin’s life, for which he lost his own. Two years later, secret writings were found in his house, accusing the Virgin Mary of lechery and Christ of being a fool who got the death he deserved.
Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum