St Helena (above), mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and patron saint of archaeologists, has her feast day today. When her son embraced Christianity, he sent Helena on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she found the site of Jesus’ crucifixion in Jerusalem, lying beneath a Temple of Venus. Helena had the temple destroyed, and beneath it found three crosses, one of which had healing powers and was taken back to Rome as the true cross. She is said to have built the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the stories of her visit inspired pilgrims to flock to the places where Jesus had lived and died for centuries to come.
‘The pill’, offering women birth control, went on sale for the first time today in 1960. It enabled women to control their fertility, plan their families and their careers – and also provoked an almighty conservative pushback against ‘the permissive society’. Eight years later, The Catholic Church gave its verdict when Pope Paul VI condemned all artificial methods of contraception, the pill included.
Today in 1503, the infamous Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, was either murdered, or died of fever. In the morning, ill in his Vatican bed, he received mass with a small group of cardinals, and in the evening he died. Rumours immediately spread that the Pope had been posioned by one of his many enemies at a lunch party, either by spiked wine or jam. Modern historians think it more probable that he died of the Roman fever, but poisoning remains an attractive theory, since it was a speciality of Borgia hospitality. At the funeral, the Pope’s body swelled up in the August heat, and it was with great difficulty that he was persuaded into his coffin.
‘The two carpenters had made the coffin too narrow and too short. They laid the mitre by his side, covered him with an old carpet and helped with their fists to fit him into the coffin. All this without torches or any other illumination, without a priest or any person who took care of his body!’ Liber Notarum of Johann Burchard, Papal Master of Ceremonies
It is the feast of St Alberto Hurtado, or ‘Padre Hurtado’ as he is popularly known in Chile, who died today in 1952. Born into a poor family, he had an experience of Christ on the street when he was a young Jesuit. He met a homeless man, sick and shivering, who could not find shelter on a rainy night. Hurtado gave him his overcoat, the man stepped back and looked at him, and then disappeared into the shadows. Hurtado dedicated his life to the poor, founding the Hogar de Cristo (‘Home of Christ’) which rescued children in need of food, clothes and somewhere to stay. He was also active in the labour movement, founding a trade union and writing books which grounded the social teachings of the Church. He was made a saint in 2005, and remains popular and beloved as the second Chilean saint.
‘Christ stumbles through our streets in the person of so many poor who are hungry, thrown out of their miserable lodgings because of sickness and destitution. Christ has no home! And we who have the good fortune to have one and have food to satisfy our hunger, what are we doing about it?’ St Alberto Hurtado
Today is also the feast of St Fiacre, a 7th-century Irish hermit whose fame as a holy man became so great that he sailed for France to escape the crowds. He lived in the forest, kept a garden, cared for travellers and healed the sick in what is now Saint-Fiacre in the Île-de-France. Somehow his ability to cure haemorrhoids and grow fruit led to haemorrhoids being called ‘St Fiacre’s figs’ in medieval times.
Image: Cincinatti Art Museum, Bequest of Mary M. Emory, public domain