Just a week after his election, Pope Gregory VIII (above) issued the encyclical Audita Tremendi (‘Hearing the terrifying severity of the judgment’) today in 1187, proclaiming the Third Crusade. Gregory’s announcement was in response to the Muslim commander Saladin’s reconquest of Jerusalem, the shock of which had killed the previous Pope. The Crusade was impressively led by the Kings of France and England, plus the Holy Roman Emperor, but it was a washout. The Emperor died in a freak swimming accident, and when his son pickled him and took him to Jerusalem in a barrel, most of his army turned for home. The French and English captured the port of Acre, but no more.
Today in 1390, Jeanne de Brigue, a young woman originally from the Ardennes, was tried as a witch in Paris. Hers was the first known secular trial of a witch in Paris. She was condemned to death and was burned at the stake the following August.
A protest meeting against the Nazi persecution of European Jews was held today in 1942 at the Royal Albert Hall. Organised by the Jewish Board of Deputies, the meeting included members of the Church of England, the Free Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church. The full horror of the holocaust was not yet fully understood in Britain, but the horrifying implications of Nazi actions against the Jewish people were presented by the speakers, who included William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
‘At first it seemed possible to explain the German demand for surrender of Jewish refugees in unoccupied France as a need for additional labour power. At first only men of working age were demanded. Later women were claimed with the option of leaving their children, and many, heart-broken, left their children not expecting to see them again but hoping that they might live to see the better day. Now the children also are being deported from two years old and upwards. There is every reason to fear that a large proportion of those deported are destined for the ghastly ghetto in Eastern Galicia, where thousands of Jews have already perished.’ Archbishop William Temple, 1942
Anton LaVey, the American author and occultist who founded the Church of Satan and the religion of Satanism in April 1966, died today in 1997. He was the author of The Satanic Bible, The Devil’s Notebook, and several other eye-catching books, and earned the nickname, ‘the St Paul of Satanism’.
Today in 1983, Pope John Paul II gave a speech to the World Medical Association about the dangers of genetic manipulation.
‘Genetic manipulation becomes arbitrary and unjust when it reduces life to an object, when it forgets that it is dealing with a human subject, capable of intelligence and freedom, worthy of respect whatever may be their limitations; or when it treats this person in terms of criteria not founded on the integral reality of the human person, at the risk of infringing upon his dignity. In this case, it exposes the individual to the caprice of others, thus depriving him of his autonomy.’ Pope John Paul II