September 16
655: Passing away of Pope St. Martin I, after he was imprisoned and then banished by Emperor Constans II. Since the controversy of Monothelitism (that Christ had only one will) had led to a division between the eastern and western churches, Emperor Constans II had forbade any discussion on the topic through the order Typos. The Pope convened the Lateran Council of 649 which condemned both Monothelitism and Typos. St. Martin I was later declared a martyrer, the last Pope to be declared so.
681: The Third Council of Constantinople (Sixth Ecumenical Council) concludes, after condemning Monothelites, who believed that Christ’s human will was lost in the divine, as heretics. It reaffirmed that Christ had a divine will and a human will (Dyothelitism).
1224: After a long period of prayer and fasting, St. Francis of Assisi, receives the stigmata (crucifixion scars of Christ) on Mount Alvernia, in Italy. Francis is called the greatest of all the Christian saints.
1498: Death of Tomás de Torquemeda, the notorious head of the Spanish Inquisition, who is said to have burned many hundreds of victims and tortured even more.
1589: Demise of Michael Baius at Louvain, a Catholic theologian whose teachings had influenced Cornelius Jansen, a founder of the Jansenist movement. His works were censured by the popes twice.
1620: The ship “Mayflower” set sail from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World, carrying 101 colonists, apart from its 48 crew members.
1672: Repose of Anne Bradstreet, the first poet of New England’s Puritans.
1810: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Mexican Catholic priest, announces revolution against the Spanish, by ringing a church bell. Indians and mestizos captured many cities; the authorities managed to capture Hidalgo and they shot him the following year.
1863: Robert College (the present Bogaziçi University) opens in Constantinople. Cyrus Hamlin – educator, inventor, architect, and missionary – becomes its first President. He had been stationed in Turkey where he worked with the Armenian minority and established a seminary for pastors and teachers.
1906: Birth of J.B. Phillips, an Anglican clergyman, who authored Your God is Too Small (1951), and is best remembered for his biblical paraphrase, The New Testament in Modern English, first published in 1958.
1924: Repose of Maria Buelah Woodworth-Etter, a tent evangelist, revivalist, and faith healer in the US, and widely regarded as a precursor of the Pentecostal evangelists.
1945: Demise of John Augustine Ryan in Minnesota, a Roman Catholic priest, educator, and proponent of economic theories which envisaged distributive justice. His doctoral dissertation was titled A Living Wage.
1976: The 65th Triennial General Convention of the Episcopal Church (in Minneapolis) officially approves ordination of women to the priesthood.
1995: Demise of Tulinawo Luhomano Msinjili, the first provincial chairman of the Moravian Church in Southwest Tanzania.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org