Athanasius Kircher (above), the prolific, bestselling Jesuit author, was born today in 1601 (or 1602 – he didn’t know which) in Thuringia, central Germany. He has been compared to Leonardo da Vinci for his encyclopedic output, writing about China, volcanoes, Egyptian hieroglyphs, fossils, micro-oragnisms, magnetism, Atlantis, plague prevention and music theory, among other subjects. Keen on rolling his sleeves up and getting involved, Kircher peered down microscopes, designed a speaking statue, and was lowered into the crater of Vesuvius while it was active. He has been called ‘the first scholar with a global reputation’.
Joan Bocher, the English radical, was burned to death in Smithfield, London, today in 1550. The Church of England, then in its most Protestant phase, during the reign of King Edward VI, had found her guilt of the heresy of believing that Jesus’ body was created in Mary’s womb from nothing. She had been arrested at the age of 60 for eating meat during Lent.
It is St Athanasius’ day. The greatest early church champion of the deity of Christ, and leader of the resistance to Arianism, he was the Bishop of Alexandria, although his uncompromising approach made him powerful enemies. He was sacked five times and spent 17 years in exile.
‘We were the cause of his becoming flesh. For our salvation he loved us so greatly as to appear and be born in a human body… no one else but the image of the Father could recreate men in God’s image; no one else but our Lord Jesus Christ, who is life itself, could make the mortal immortal…’ Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word
Today in 1559, the formidable John Knox returned to Scotland from his exile in Geneva, and went on to become leader of the Scottish Reformation. He was obliged to take the long route home, though, because his infamous pamphlet, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, published a year earlier, had infuriated the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth I so much that she denied him passage through England. The pamphlet announced that the rule of a ‘wicked woman’ was abominable to God, and Elizabeth, unsurprisingly, took it personally.
‘I fear not to say, that the day of vengeance, which shall apprehend that horrible monster Jezebel of England, and such as maintain her monstrous cruelty, is already appointed in the counsel of the eternal.’ John Knox, writing about Queen Mary, predecessor of Elizabeth I, in his badly timed The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
It is the feast of St Boris I of Bulgaria, who converted in the year 864 to Eastern Christianity, established an independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and brought unity to his religiously divided country. In the Orthodox Church he is known as the baptizer of Bulgaria.
Image: Rijksmuseum