A local woman, Giovanna Monduro, was burned to death for witchcraft today in 1471 in the village of Miagliano, in the Piedmont region (above) of northern Italy. Accused by her family and neighbours, she refused to agree that she was a witch over the course of three interrogations, even when her inquisitor, Giovanni Domenico, tortured her in the third session. But in the agony of the fourth interrogation, she gave Domenico the answers he wanted, and a later recantation failed to save her from the fire.
The third order of Franciscans (for people who follow the way of St Francis without living in a monastery) was established today in 1289. Pope Nicholas IV issued the bull Supra Montem (‘Upon the mountain’), some 60 years after the death of St Francis. Third order Franciscans around the world follow a rule of life which values living simply, serving others, and spreading the gospel of Jesus.
‘Let the brothers commonly be dressed in cloth that is humble in price and colour, not utterly white nor black… Let the brothers as well as the sisters have nothing fancier than lambskins, purses made of hide, and shoe-ties made simply without silk, putting off the other vain ornaments of this age, in accord with the sober counsel of Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles.’ Pope Nicholas IV, Supra Montem
The Virgin Mary appeared in the branches of a tree today in 1798, in the rainforest of Vietnam, carrying the child Jesus and flanked by two angels. The apparition, in which Mary was wearing a traditional Vietnamese tunic and silk trousers, was reported by a group of Catholics in La Vang, in the province of Quảng Trị. They had fled into the forest to escape persecution, and gathered at the tree to pray for relief from fear, hunger and disease. The site is now a shrine to Mary and draws some 50,000 pilgrims from Vietnam and the surrounding countries at this time each year.
John Claydon, a London leather-worker, was tried by the Archbishop of Canterbury today in 1415 on a charge of heresy. He had already spent five years in gaol on a previous charge, and pleaded that since then he had mended his ways. But he was betrayed by a prohibited book, The Lantern of Light, whose author was said to be John Wycliffe, which was found in his house. It called the Pope ‘a cruel beast, the son of perdition, and antichrist himself’, and denounced the prelates and priests who made themselves rich with earthly goods. The book was thrown on a bonfire, and the Archbishop sent Claydon to suffer the same punishment. He was burned alive at Smithfield shortly afterwards.
St Drythelm, an 8th century saint who lived on the Scottish borders, is celebrated today in the Eastern Orthodox Churches. After an illness, he died in the night, but suddenly sat up at daybreak, to the shock of everyone around his deathbed. Drythelm became a monk, and revealed that while he was dead he had been given a guided tour of purgatory, hell and the garden of paradise, by ‘a handsome man in a shining robe’. The tour stopped at the threshold of heaven, where he could hear sweet singing, but his guide told him he must return to his earthly life. Drythelm’s short, colourful account of the afterlife anticipated Dante’s Divine Comedy by about 600 years.
‘We came to a very broad and deep valley of infinite length. The side to our left was dreadful with burning flames, while the opposite side was equally horrible with raging hail and bitter snow blowing and driving in all directions. Both sides were filled with men’s souls, which seemed to be hurled from one side to the other by the fury of the tempest. For when the wretches could no longer endure the blast of the terrible heat, they leaped into the the heart of the terrible cold.’ The vision of Drythelm, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Image: Mænsard vokser