May 10
1310: Fifty-four Knights Templars are burned alive in Paris. Philip the Fair of France, who wanted to seize their vast wealth, is said to have trumped up the charges of blasphemy and homosexuality against them to convince Pope Clement to disband the order.
1508: Michelangelo begins work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the request and insistence of Pope Julius II. He wrote this note for himself, “On this day, May 10, 1508, I Michelangelo, sculptor, have received on account from our Holy Lord Pope Julius II five hundred papal ducats toward the painting of the ceiling of the papal Sistine Chapel, on which I am beginning work today.”
1787: Demise of Synesius of Siberia, a renowned and much revered monk in the Orthodox Church.
1812: Birth of Frances Elizabeth Cox, an English translator, who also contributed 56 hymns to the collection Sacred Hymns from the German (1841), including “Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above.”
1828: John Henry Newman, English church leader, reflected in a letter, “I wish it were possible for words to put down those indefinite, vague and withal subtle feelings which quite pierce the soul and make it sick. What a veil and curtain this world of sense is. Beautiful, but still a veil.”
1859: Birth of Wilhelm Wrede, a German Bible scholar, who held that the gospels reflect the theology of the primitive Church rather than the true history of Jesus. Subsequently, Albert Schweitzer’s theological classic bore the title, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: From Reimarus to Wrede (1906).
1908: One of the first Mothers’ Day services is held at a church in Philadelphia on the request of Ana M. Jarvis’s.
1910: Death of hymn-writer Anna Laetitia Waring , a former Quaker who had converted to the Anglican church and became a social reformer. She is known for the hymn, “In Heavenly Love Abiding.”
1912: The first Southern Sociological Congress closes in Nashville; a four-day convocation to address the “social, civic and economic problems” of sixteen Southern states, it was an example of government, social agencies and the Church working together for social betterment.
1917: Death of Bible scholar Henry Barclay Swete in Hitchin, England. He was an Anglican who defended the Bible against the attacks from modern science, founded the Journal of Theological Studies, authored the work The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint, and was often described as a “pillar of Christian learning and a pattern of Christian life.”
1939: Reunion of the Methodist Protestant Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with the parent denomination the Methodist Episcopal Church in the U.S. through the Declaration of Union, after their separation in 1830 and in 1844 respectively.
1941: German bombers destroy the International Headquarters of the Salvation Army in London, burning many documents of historic interest.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org