The musical Godspell, based on the Gospel of Matthew, opened on London’s West End today in 1972. It featured Jesus and the disciples Gilmer, Herb, Jeffrey, Joanne, Lamar, Peggy, Robin, Sonia… plus Judas, all dressed as 70s hippies. The actor Jeremy Irons, who played Judas, said, ‘Every night before curtain-up we’d do a huddle and say the Lord’s Prayer. If you do that show without a real respect for God and for Christianity, it doesn’t work.’
Today in 1077 (and for three days in total), Emperor Henry IV stood barefoot in the snow outside the castle where Pope Gregory VII was staying to plead for his excommunication to be reversed. This was Henry’s way of saying sorry for deigning to appoint his own bishops and trying to depose Gregory. The sincerity of his repentance is somewhat undermined by the fact that seven years later he declared war on the Pope and invaded Rome.
Today is the feast of St Polycarp, an early Christian bishop and martyr, who died in the city of Smyrna in the year 155. When the Roman proconsul of the city told him he would die unless he cursed Christ, Polycarp replied, ‘Eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King and Saviour?’
General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum in 1885, resisting an Islamic revolt against Ottoman rule. He died ‘the most famous man on earth’, but his fame faded with the end of the British Empire.
‘His example will be one that fathers hold up to their sons in England, and as long as any faith in God remains to us as a Nation, and that we continue to be manly enough to revere the highest form of courage and devotion to duty, so long will he be quoted and refered to as the human embodiment of all manly and Christian virtues.’ General Lord Wolesley
Image: Broadway Tour