August 21
1245: Passing away of Alexander of Hales, an English scholastic theologian, who is also regarded as the founder of the Franciscan school of theology.
1552: The trial of Juan Gil (also known as Doctor Egidio), the founder of a little Protestant community at Seville, comes to a close. He was found guilty of having preached to the nuns of Santa Clara on the uselessness of external works, having rejected prayer to saints since image-veneration as idolatry. He was sentenced to a year of confinement, with no permission to leave Spain, suspending him from all priestly ministries and from participating in disputations for ten years. He was also obliged to abjure some propositions publicly.
1732: Count von Zinzendorf lays his hands on Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann, commending them to God as the first Moravian missionaries.
1799: Birth of Alexander R. Reinagle, English church organist and the composer of many hymns, including ST. PETER, the melody to the hymn, “In Christ There is No East or West.”
1815: Priestly Ordination of Joseph Mohr in the Roman Catholic Church, who wrote the most beloved Christmas carol “Silent Night.”
1831: Nat Turner, a Baptist preacher and former slave, leads a violent insurgency in Virginia.
1843: African-American clergyman Henry Highland Garnet calls it a moral duty of the African Americans to rebel against slavery, since the slave-owners forbid them from reading the Bible, from rearing their children in godliness, and oblige their women to behave as whores.
1874: Henry Ward Beecher, a popular 19th century preacher is accused by Theodore Tilton of committing adultery with his wife, which later proved to be false.
1920: Sergius Frolovich Dmitrievsky, an Orthodox priest serving in a Cossack parish in Omsk, is arrested by Communists. He was later convicted for “counter-revolutionary activity,” and was sentenced to death.
2009: Communist police beat up the protestant church leaders Phan Nay, Vong Kpa, and Hnoi Ksor at the Ploi Ksing village in the Gia Lai Province of Vietnam.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy:Â www.studylight.org