It is the feast day of the brilliant Greek theologian, philosopher and spiritual writer St Maximus the Confessor (his icon is seen above), who died today in the year 662. He is famous for his theological bravery in arguing the Orthodox position that Jesus had two wills, human and divine, against the strongly opposing view of the Emperor Constans II. He wrote in depth – but also ‘summarizing many things in few words so that they can be seen at a glance to be easily memorized’ – about love and prayer, drawing on his own spiritual experience and the experience of the Church Fathers before him. He was arrested in Rome and taken captive to Constantinople, where he was tried as a heretic for his teaching on the two wills of Christ. Found guilty, he was tortured, had his right hand cut off and his tongue cut out – all at the age of 82. He died a few months later in exile on the Black Sea.
‘We know God not in his essence, but by the magnificence of his creation and the action of his providence, which present to us, as in a mirror, the reflection of his goodness, his wisdom and his infinite powers.’ Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Love
Today in 1949, Pauline Baynes signed a contract with the London publisher Geoffrey Bles to illustrate a new book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by CS Lewis. She had illustrated a JRR Tolkien book, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Lewis liked her style of drawing. Baynes illustrated all seven Narnia books, but was paid a flat fee of just £100 per book.
Today in 1596 saw the birth of Jean Bolland, a Jesuit priest who became the editor of the Acta Sanctorum, a proposed compilation of saints’ lives. Bolland, who took over the compilation in 1630, thought the Acta could be completed without too much fuss, but as he worked on it, the project grew into an immense, 68 volume encyclopedia that took centuries of work, with the last volume finished in 1940. The Acta Sanctorum was and continues to be looked after by the Bollandists, a still-existing association of critical hagiographers, if that’s not a contradiction in terms.
A Tuscan deacon was elected Pope today in 523, becoming the first Pope John. This is by far the most popular name for Popes, beating other frontrunners Gregory (16), Benedict (15), Clement (14) and Innocent (13). There have been 21 Pope Johns, plus three Antipope Johns, and there was no John XX. The most recent Pope John was John XXIII, who died in 1963. There was a gap of 624 years between Johns XXII and XXIII, because the name had become synonymous with bad Popes.
The Spanish polymath Michael Servetus unexpectedly turned up in John Calvin’s church in Geneva today in 1553. He had been condemned to death by the Catholic Inquisition in France for his anti-trinitarian heresies, partly on evidence supplied in a series of letters sent by Calvin. But he escaped from prison, and was in the middle of travelling to Italy when he decided, apparently on a whim, to take a detour to hear Calvin preach. He must have been surprised when he was recognised and arrested after the service, not to mention when he was burned to death two months later on a bonfire of his own books. Why not mark the day by skipping the sermon at church this week?
It is the feast of St Hippolytus of Rome, the 2nd-3rd century saint who wrote the first-ever Christian commentaries on two books of the Bible, Daniel and the Song of Songs.
Image: Jim Forrest