At 1 o’clock this morning in 1662, Blaise Pascal (above), the French theologian and mathematician, died in Paris. His final words were Que Dieu ne m’abandonne jamais! – ‘May God never forsake me!’ – before he slipped into a coma from which he never woke.
The bestselling erotic novelist Enea Silvio Piccolomini was elected Pope today in 1458 and adopted the name Pius II. His short novel, The Tale of Two Lovers, tells the story of a beautiful young woman of Siena, Lucretia, who falls in love with a handsome courtier, despite being married to a wealthy man. Piccolomini wrote the book 14 years before he became Pope, and in the meantime had been a diplomat, historian, and poet laureate of Germany. He is the only Pope known to have written smutty fiction.
‘Euryalus, full of joy despite the two perils he had encountered, scaled the wall and entered by the open window. He found Lucretia sitting by the hearth, with refreshments ready, awaiting him. And she rose, when she saw it was her lover, and kissed him full on the mouth. Embraces followed, kisses were exchanged, and they spread their sails for Cythara; and when Venus wearied of the journey, Ceres refreshed her, and Bacchus.’ The Tale of the Two Lovers, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 1444
John Bunyan preached his last sermon today in 1688, a Sunday, ‘at Mr Gamman’s meeting-house near Whitechapel’ in London, according to someone who was there. A few days earlier, he had ridden 40 miles from Reading to London in heavy rain, which soaked him to the skin. The Tuesday after he preached, he took to bed with a fever, and died serenely 10 days later, on the last day of the month. He was 60 years old. His friends laid him to rest in Bunhill Fields, London’s burial ground for dissenters.
‘If you be the king’s children, live like the king’s children. If you be risen with Christ, set your affections on things above, and not on things below. If you are the children of God, live together lovingly.’ John Bunyan’s last sermon
The cathedral which Stalin blew up with dynamite; which was replaced by a giant outdoor swimming pool; and which 60 years later was completely rebuilt, was dedicated today in the year 2000. Moscow’s colossal Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was destroyed in 1931, as part of communism’s attempt to eradicate religion. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church, with the help of donations from 1 million Muscovites, rebuilt a facsimile of the fallen cathedral. The building is two blocks from the Kremlin, and stands 103 metres high, the third tallest Orthodox Church in the world.
Today in 1612 saw the second and final day of the Pendle Witch Trials, the first such trial in English history to be documented. Nine women and two men from the forest villages surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire were put to trial for murder by witchcraft, and 10 of them were found guilty and executed by hanging. The following year, an account of the trial, detailing the ‘most barbarous and damnable practices, murthers, wicked and devilish conspiracies’ was published by the court clerk, Thomas Potts, in his book, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.
Image: Wellcome Collection