April 21
847: Passing away of Otgar, the archbishop of Mainz; Rabanus Maurus, a famous educator and scholar, was unanimously elected as his successor.
1109: Demise of Anselm of Canterbury, English theologian and a father of medieval scholasticism, known for his ontological argument for the existence of God,.
1142: Repose of theologian Pierre Abelard at Cluny, whose “conceptualism” changed the development of philosophy. Although often accused of heresy, he remained a popular teacher.
1380: A stroke leaves Catherine of Siena, a mystic and nun famous in the catholic church, paralyzed from the waist down.
1555: Twelve Jesuit priests, sent by Ignatius of Loyola, arrive in Prague to help Canisius in founding a college at the heart of Hussite country. They face lots of opposition and threat until the Archduke of Bohemia deploys guards and warns of severe punishments for any injury done to them.
1649: The Toleration Act is passed by the Maryland Assembly, which envisaged to protect Roman Catholics within the American colony against Protestant harassment, which was on the rise as Oliver Cromwell’s became extremely powerful in England.
1783: Birth of English churchman and hymn-writer Reginald Heber, who published his first hymn at 28. Among his best remembered hymns today are: “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “The Son of God Goes Forth to War” and “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”
1828: John Henry Newman, English churchman, writes in a letter to his sister, “May I be patient! It is so difficult to make real what one believes, and to make these trials, as they are intended, real blessings.”
1847: Rev. Henry Lipowsky, a former lieutenant in the Austrian Army, opens the St. John Nepomuk Church of St. Louis in Missouri, the first Bohemian-American church in the United States.
1855: Sunday school teacher Edward Kimball talks to Dwight L. Moody at his workplace about the love of Christ; Moody got converted and devoted his life to serve God, becoming a notable American evangelist.
1869: Thomas Huxley uses the term “agnostic” for the first time in public to describe intellectuals who, like himself, are unable to come to certain conclusions on big issues such as the existence of God.
1878: Leo XIII publishes the encyclical, “Inscrutabili dei consilio,” which outlined a program of reconciling the Catholic Church with modern civilization, reversing many policies of his predecessor, Pius IX.
1897: Birth of A. W. Tozer, one of the most popular and influential pastors from the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. Being a prolific writer, he has the best-sellers “The Pursuit of God” (1948) and “The Root of Righteousness” (1955) to his credit.
1947: John Ajayi Agbona gets the call to do ministry with the Christ Apostolic Mission Church of Nigera on his 27th birthday. He was later instrumental in founding eighty churches in five nations as well as some schools in Nigeria. He was also known for miraculous healings.
1991: Egypt grants the Coptic Orthodox Church of Mayiet Bara the permit to repair its toilet, publishing the edict in a semi-official newspaper, leading to an outrage among the Christians and moderate Muslims that the simple repair of a lavatory in a Christian house of worship cannot proceed without the written consent of the Minister of the Interior.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org