April 12
352 Passing away of Pope St. Julius, a staunch defender of Athanasius, who also gave him asylum when he was forced into exile by the empire’s Arian faction.
1204 The armies of the Fourth Crusade capture Constantinople and establish the Latin Empire.
1343 Pope Clement VI orders the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV to renounce his imperial dignity, considering the many crimes he has committed and the emperor concedes.
1523 William Farel, a Reformation evangelist, is forbidden from preaching in Meaux, France. He later shifted his endeavors to Switzerland.
1525 A Holy Mass is offered in Zurich for the last time as it was abolished by the reformers who dominated the society.
1557 Protestant converts Thomas Loseby, Henry Ramsey, Thomas Thirtel, Margaret Hide, and Agnes Stanley are burned to death during the reign of Mary Tudor.
1572 Theodore Beza, a French-born Swiss reformer and the successor of John Calvin reminds Scottish reformer John Knox in a letter, “They whose citizenship is in heaven ought to have their whole dependence on heaven.”
1626 The King of Tibet lays the foundation stone for the first Christian church in Tibet, moved by the preaching of the Jesuit priest Antonio de Andrad. However, the work was soon ended, as the envious Buddhist monks overthrew the king and shut down the mission.
1704 Demise of Jacques-Beniqne Bossuet, the bishop of Meaux, well known as orator, philosopher, and historian. He however supported the divine right of kings, defended the freedom of the French church and monarchy against popes, upheld the Catholic doctrines against Protestants. He even obtained the church’s condemnation for some of the writings of François Fenelon, the Quietist bishop.
1730 Demise of Acacius the Younger of Mt. Athos, an extreme ascetic and warrior of prayer also through night-long vigils; he was revered as a saint in the Orthodox Church.
1797 Thomas Cadell publishes William Wilberforce’s work A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity; the book became influential in changing the character of the British society.
1799 The Church Missionary Society is formed in London under the original name of the Society for Missions in Africa and the East. This Anglican agency is currently active in Africa, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Iran, Palestine and the Far East.
1846 Baptism of Huang Guagcai, an orphan who later became the first Chinese deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in China and later its first ordained clergyman.
1850 Repose of Adoniram Judson, the pioneer Baptist missionary to Burma, who later translated the Bible into Burmese.
1882 Creation of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Northwest Germany by royal decree from the king of Prussia, who ordered the 124 “reformed” congregations scattered throughout the region to become incorporated as an independent territorial church.
1914 An 11-day constitutional convention ends in Hot Springs, Arkansas, during which the Assemblies of God denomination was founded.
1917 Patriarch Tikhon raises Vladimir Nikolsky to be the archbishop of Perm, who later took the name Andronicus. The following year Andronicus was shot at and buried alive by the Soviets who were furious because he stood for the old regime against their atheism and resisted their attempts to loot the Russian Orthodox churches.
1978 Arrest of 200 members of the Makarere Church in Uganda under the cruel regime of Idi Amin.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org