This Week in Christian History
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May 13
May 13, 1917: Three shepherd children report that the Virgin Mary appeared to them in Fatima, Portugal.
May 13, 1925: Florida's House of Representatives passes a bill requiring schools to conduct daily Bible readings.
May 13, 1963: A.W. Tozer, Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor and devotional author of The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy, dies.
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May 14, 1572: Gregory XIII, who reformed the Julian calendar into the calendar used toDay and celebrated the killing of French Huguenots (Protestants) with a Te Deum (a Latin hymn), is named pope (see issue 71: Huguenots and the Wars of Religion).
May 14, 1607: Robert Hunt holds the first Anglican service in the New World Day after the Virginia Company lands in Jamestown.
May 14, 1759: Anglican evangelical John Berridge preaches his first outdoor sermon. Outdoor preaching became a prominent feature of his ministry, as it did for George Whitefield, John Wesley, and the early Methodist movement as a whole (see issue 2: John Wesley, issue 38: George Whitefield, and issue 69: The Wesleys).
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May 15, 1265: Poet and politician Dante Alighieri, author of "The Divine Comedy," is born in Florence, Italy. Dante finished the epic poem just before his death, and it was quickly recognized as brilliant. His epitaph begins: "Dante the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom" (see issue 70: Dante's Guide to Heaven and Hell).
May 15, 1525: Radical reformer Thomas Munzer and his followers are killed in the Battle of Frankenhausen. Though many of his beliefs were rejected by later, nonviolent Anabaptists, his emphasis on suffering discipleship, his rejection of infant baptism, and his call for judgment of the church became key teachings in the movement (see issue 5: The Anabaptists).
May 15, 1886: American poet Emily Dickinson, author of many poems on death, eternity, God, and the afterlife, dies. Only 7 of her 1,775 poems were published at the time.
May 15, 1948: Father Edward Flanagan, founder of the U.S. Home for Homeless Boys (later called Boys Town) in Omaha, Nebraska, dies. "There is no such thing as a bad boy," Flanagan believed.
May 15, 1984: American evangelical Francis A. Schaeffer dies in Rochester, Minnesota. Many of his books, which include The God Who is There (1968) and How Should We Then Live (1976), argue that moral relativity is responsible for social ills.
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May 16, 583 (traditional date): Brendan the Navigator, founder of a Celtic monastery in Clonfert, Ireland, dies. Some Irish scholars have asserted that Brendan was among the first Europeans to reach America, nine centuries before Columbus (see issue 60: How the Irish Were Saved).
May 16, 1805: Henry Martyn, a well-educated Englishman, arrives in India to aid William Carey with translation work (see issue 36: William Carey).
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May 17, 1844: German biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen is born. His controversial theory about the Pentateuch—that it is a compilation of four literary sources (J, Jahwist; E, Elohist; D, Deuteronomist; and P, Priestly Editor), laid the foundation for most subsequent Old Testament criticism.
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May 18, 1291: The last Christian territory taken by the Crusaders, Acre, falls to the Sultan of Egypt (see issue 40: The Crusades).
May 18, 1834: Sheldon Jackson, Presbyterian missionary to the frontier West and Alaska, is born in Minaville, New York. Jackson's reputation for ministering to the spiritual, physical, and social needs of both natives and settlers earned him the nicknames "Bishop of All Beyond" and "Apostle to Alaska" (see issue 66: How the West Was Really Won).
May 18, 1920: Karol Wojtyla (who would take the name John Paul II when elected pope) is born in Wadowice, Poland (see issue 65: The 10 Most Influential Christians of the Twentieth Century).
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May 19, 804: Alcuin of York, an English scholar who became an adviser to Charlemagne and the most prominent figure in the Carolingian Renaissance (the rebirth of classical learning under Charlemagne), dies. He also devised a handwriting system using both small and capital letters for easier reading.
May 19, 1805: Joshua V. Himes, best known for promoting William Miller's Second Advent movement, is born. Miller predicted the Second Coming between 1843 and 1844. When this did not happen, many followers deserted; others reorganized themselves as Seventh-Day Adventists (see issue 61: The End of the World).
May 19, 1971: The musical Godspell, based on Matthew's gospel, opens at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York.