Today in Christian History
Thursday, January 29
570
(probable date) Death of Gildas, thought to have been an abbot, who gave us the earliest history we have of the British Celts. Because of the scarcity and inaccuracy of records from that era, the date and place of both his birth and death will remain uncertain into the twenty-first century.
993
St. Ulrich, who lived c.890-973, and was Bishop of Augsburg from 923, was canonized at a Lateran Synod. With this action by Pope John XV, St. Ulrich became the first individual in Roman Catholic history formally elevated to sainthood.
1430
(probable date) Death of Andrei Rublev at Andronikov Monastery. He will be considered the greatest medieval Russian painter of icons and Christian frescoes.
1499
Birth of Katherine von Bora, the former German nun who became Martin Luther’s wife in 1525 when he was 41 and she 26. During their 21-year marriage, Katie bore Martin 3 sons and 3 daughters. Her death in 1552 followed six years after her husband’s in 1546.
1555
Agents of Mary Tudor degrade and condemn the Protestant bishop John Hooper along with John Rogers, Rowland Taylor, and other preachers of the Reformation. Hooper will be executed the following month.
1663
Death of Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln, whose biography was included as one of Izaak Walton’s Lives. Siding with the Royalists, Sanderson had been deprived of his living after the Puritans took power during the Commonwealth.
1780
Pioneer American Methodist bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal: ‘My soul is more at rest from the tempter when I am busily employed.’
1877
Death in New York of Sarah Doremus, sometimes called the “Mother of Missions” because of her strenuous efforts in behalf of foreign missions.
1882
“Cotty” Peabody arrives in Tombstone a few months after the shootout at O.K. Corral where he will establish Arizona territory’s first Protestant church.
1918
Death in Chicago of Sarah Dunn Clarke, co-founder of the Pacific Garden Mission and its “mother.”
1921
The Congregational Holiness Church was formally organized, following a split the previous year with the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Headquartered today in Griffin, GA, most CHC churches are located in the Southeast US.
1929
Death in Baxter Springs, Kansas, of Charles Fox Parham, early American Pentecostal innovator and theologian.
1967
Pope Paul VI and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny conferred at the Vatican in the first meeting in history between a Roman Catholic pontiff and the head of a Communist state.
2005
Bulus Marwa becomes the pastor of Victory Baptist Church, Alamuderi, Maiduguri, Nigeria, where he will serve until December 24, 2010, when members of the militant Muslim group Boko Haram murdered him along with several other Christians.
