St Methodius (who alongside his brother Cyril brought the Christian faith into central and eastern Europe) died today in 885. As part of their missionary work, they created an alphabet to translate the Gospels and church prayers into the language of the Slavs, which eventually became the Cyrillic alphabet, still used in Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. Methodius, along with Cyril and Benedict of Nursia, is one of the three patron saints of Europe. Icons of both saints are seen above in an Orthodox procession.
Emanuel Swedenborg, scientist and inventor, entered a spiritual phase of his life today in 1744, on the weekend of Easter. While staying in Delft, he experienced dreams and visions, which he wrote down in a Drömbok, or Dream Diary. The dreams led to a spiritual awakening in which he was able to visit heaven and hell and speak with angels and demons, and in which Christ commissioned him to write a ‘heavenly doctrine’ to reform Christianity.
‘In short, I was in heaven and heard a speech which no human tongue can utter wath the life that is there or the glory and inmost delight that flow from it.
Except for this I was awake, as in a heavenly ecstasy, which is also indescribable.’ Emanuel Swedenborg, Drömbok, 6 April 1744
Today in 1593, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, two Puritan leaders of the London Underground Church in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, were executed for leaving the Church of England and inventing denominations. They had been sentenced on 23 March and had twice been brought out to be hanged, once even making the journey to Tyburn, but then sent back to prison. But on this day, 6 April, it was for real.
Ian Paisley, the ferociously uncompromising Ulster Protestant leader, was born today in 1926 in County Carmagh, Northern Ireland. He started preaching when he was 16, and by the time he was 25 was splitting a denomination to form his own.
Image: Testus