Today in 1616, the epoch-making Nicolaus Copernicus book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) was added to the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books. The book (pictured above) had been published 73 years earlier. Catholics were eventually allowed to read it after nine sentences about the earth orbiting the sun were edited out.
Today is the feast day of St Ciarán the Elder, a 5th century Irish bishop, who built a monastery with the help of a fox, a badger and a wolf.
It’s also the feast of St Gerasimus, the 5th century saint who founded a monastery near Jericho and had a pet lion named Jordan. Gerasimus found the lion in pain, with a thorn in its paw, and after treating its wound, the lion was devoted to him. True story.
John Badby, a tailor, was burned to death in a barrel at Blackfriars in London today in 1410, for holding the anti-Catholic heresies of the Lollards (such as denying transubstantiation and the papacy). The future King Henry V tried to talk him out of his heresies, but failed. When he was in the flames, the prince took his cries for repentance, and had the fire put out and offered him a handsome pension. Badby explained that he had only been screaming in pain and was put back.
Main image: Wikimedia Second image: Wikimedia