Today is the feast of St Simeon the Holy Fool (above), who lived in the 6th century, and who is the patron saint of Ship of Fools. A Dead Sea hermit for 29 years, he left his cave one day and set out for the city of Emesa in Syria. Arriving at the city gate, he found a dead dog on a dungheap, tied its leg to the rope around his waist, and entered the city dragging it behind him. He then played the fool in order to mock the idiocy of the world and conceal his own identity as a saint. His behaviour was eccentric and scandalous, tripping people up in the streets, throwing nuts at the clergy, dancing with the arena girls, and eating vast quantities of beans during Lent with predictably noisy results. Why not celebrate by concealing your own holiness for the day?
It’s the birthday of Pope Sixtus IV, who was born today in 1414. He gave his name to the Sistine Chapel, which he built. But on the minus side, he founded the Spanish Inquisition, and gave lucrative jobs to a huge number of his relatives.
The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, which was later reckoned as one of the seven wonders of the world, burned down today in 356 BCE, a victim of either a lightning strike or arson. Dedicated to the Greek goddess Artemis (the Roman goddess Diana), the temple was eventually rebuilt. Some 400 years later, St Paul’s preaching caused rioting in Ephesus when it threatened the thriving tourist trade of Artemis.
‘Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash.’ City clerk of Ephesus calming the rioters, as reported in the Book of Acts
The Scopes Monkey Trial concluded today in 1925. The jury in Dayton, Tennessee, took just nine minutes to decide that John Scopes was guilty of teaching evolution in a public school (which had a few weeks earlier been made illegal in Tennessee), and the judge fined him $100. The sentence was later overturned by the Supreme Court of Tennessee on a technicality, and so the whole point of the trial – Scopes had set himself up to get convicted so the law could be challenged as unconstitutional – was defeated.
Today in 1495, Pope Alexander VI wrote to the Florentine friar and reformer Girolamo Savonarola, asking him to come to Rome to discuss his prophecies. Savonarola had been preaching a message of repentance and reform of the church, and prophesying flood, invasion and tribulation. Presuming that the Pope planned to have him silenced, he wrote back saying that he was a bit under the weather. Two years later, Savonarola was excommunicated, and a year after that, he was hanged and burned to death.