Today in 1942, Bishop Gorazd of Prague, head of the Orthodox Church in Bohemia, was executed by Nazi firing squad, together with his cathedral priests and lay officials. The killings were in reprisal for the assassination of high-ranking Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo, architect of the Final Solution and possibly the most feared man in the Third Reich. The two assassins, who fatally wounded Heydrich as he commuted into Prague in his open-top car, fled into the cathedral crypt, where they were eventually killed in a shoot-out with 750 SS troops (as witnessed by the bullet-pocked cathedral wall above). Bishop Gorazd offered himself to the Nazis as completely to blame for the cathedral becoming a hideout, but the reprisals engulfed not only the cathedral, but the villages of Lidice and Ležáky, where 373 people, adults and children, were murdered.
The Gothic Cathedral of St Paul’s finally caught fire today in 1666, on the third and worst day of the Great Fire of London, and burned to the ground. According to reports, flying embers from houses burning nearby ignited the roof timbers, and within half an hour, the six acres of lead covering the roof started to melt, pouring into the streets below. The building was totally lost in the inferno. The destruction enabled Christopher Wren to replace the old church with his domed masterpiece, which was consecrated 31 years later.
‘Now the Fire gets into Black-fryers, and so continues its course by the water, and makes up towards Paul’s Church, on that side, and Cheap-side Fire besets the great building on this side, and the Church though all of stone outward, though naked of houses about it, and though so high above all buildings in the City, yet within a while, doth yield to the violent assaults of the conquering flames, and strangely takes Fire at the top; now the lead melts and runs down, as if it had been snow before the Sun; and the great beames and massy stones, with a great noise fall on the Pavement.’ Thomas Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City, 1667
Today in 2020, Pope Benedict XVI became the longest-lived Pope ever. At an impressive 93 years, four months and 16 days, he surpassed the previous holder of the record, Pope Leo XIII, who had died at precisely that age in 1903.
The theologian and organist Albert Schweitzer died today in 1965, in the hospital he and his wife Helene had founded in Lambaréné, in what is now Gabon, Africa. He was a doctor three times over, in theology, medicine and music, making major contributions in each field. His book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), rejected the liberal, romantic view of Jesus that had taken root in the 19th century, and instead depicted a Messiah driven by the belief that the end of the world was imminent. His insight that ‘the end times’ were a major focus of the New Testament has proved to have enduring value.
‘Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time, but his spirit, which lies hidden in his words, is known in simplicity, and its influence is direct. Every saying contains in its own way the whole Jesus. The very strangeness and unconditionedness in which he stands before us makes it easier for individuals to find their own personal standpoint in regard to him.’ Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, the author of the influential 1970s book, Small is Beautiful – memorably subtitled, ‘A Study of Economics as if People Mattered’ – died today in 1977. Originally an atheist, he converted to Catholicism late in life.
Image: Honza Groh