The poem, ‘And death shall have no dominion’, by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, was published for the first time today in 1933, in the New English Weekly. Thomas had written it the month before. Drawing on Romans 6:9 (‘death no longer has dominion’) and other biblical imagery, the poem asserts the dethroning of death and the triumph of love. Three years later, a revised version of the poem was included in Thomas’s second collection of poems, Twenty-five Poems.
Today is the feast of St Theodotus of Ancyra (now Ankara, capital of Turkey), who lived in the 4th century and is the patron saint of pub landlords.
Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was born today in Wadowice, Poland, in 1920. As well as becoming one of the longest-reigning Popes ever, he created more cardinals and canonised more saints than any other. As the first global Pope, he raised the prestige of the papacy in the world, and had a decisive influence in the fall of communism in Europe, while theologically retreating from the progressive spirit of Vatican II.
Pope John I died in a prison in Ravenna today in the year 526. He had been sent, unwillingly, on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople by Theodoric the Great, the Arian king of the Ostrogoths, who controlled most of western Europe. John’s mission was 90 per cent successful, but when he reported back, Theodoric had him thrown in prison anyway.
The Scottish Reformer John Knox had the opportunity to stop publication of his infamous pamphlet, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, today in 1558. The pamphlet attacked the Catholic Queen Mary of England, and the rule of women over men in general. Knox had received a letter from John Foxe (soon to be author of Foxe’s Book of Matryrs), who said that Knox’s pamphlet displayed his ‘rude vehemencie and inconsidered affirmations, which may appear rather to proceed from choler than of zeal or reason.’ But Knox replied that ‘it is enough to say that black is not white,’ and went to press anyway.
Image: Simon Jenkins