The Campanile of St Mark’s, Venice, standing at 99 metres (323 feet), collapsed at 7 minutes to 10 this morning in 1902. Cracks had started to open up in the 10-12th century bell tower two days earlier, but St Mark’s Square (above) was evacuated only 23 minutes before the collapse. The sole fatality was the Campanile cat, who lived with the custodian of the tower. By 1912, the structure had been rebuilt to the same design, but on stronger foundations.
It is the feast of St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, who lived in the second half of the 18th century. Nicodemus, who joined a monastery on Mt Athos while he was in his 20s, collaborated with fellow monk Macarius to produce the Philokalia (‘Love of Beauty’), a collection of spiritual writings by the Desert Fathers and other Eastern saints who lived from the 4th to the 15th centuries. Its focus is on prayer of the heart, stillness and the spiritual disciplines. Published in 1782, the Philokalia is said to be second only to the Bible in the way it has influenced Orthodox Christians.
‘A man may conquer passions but he cannot uproot them. He is given the power not to do evil, but not the power not to think of it. Yet real righteousness not only means not doing evil, but also not thinking of it. He who thinks of evil has no purity. For how can a heart be pure in a man who is defiled by unclean thoughts, as a mirror is dimmed by dust?’ Philokalia, St Simeon the New Theologian
This afternoon in 1789 the French Revolution was kickstarted with the storming of the Bastille. The revolution disestablished the Catholic Church in favour of religious toleration, but then banned all religion in favour of national atheism. It then invented its own religion of reason to replace atheism, and finally returned to Catholicism. A complete revolution, in fact.
John Keble preached a sermon, ‘On National Apostasy’, today in 1833. This launched the Oxford Movement, which aimed to restore Catholic thinking and practice to the Church of England, and ended with its leaders going all the way and returning to Rome. So it’s ironic that the main thrust of Keble’s sermon was to protest against the Church of England making political concessions to Catholics.
Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1880s and 90s, and creator of Nine Lessons and Carols, was born today in 1829. Benson led the first-ever Nine Lessons service in 1880, while he was Bishop of Truro, and at a time when it was still a novelty to sing carols in church, as they had previously only been sung out of doors. When Benson moved to Canterbury, the service gained popularity first in the C of E, and then around the world.
Susan Howatch, author of a sequence of novels about ecclesiastical goings-on in the C of E, was born today in 1940. The six novels are set in the fictional Diocese of Starbridge in the mid 20th century.