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August 5, 642: Oswald, the king of Northumbria who first began the official establishment of Christianity in England, is "martyred" in battle against the pagan Penda of Mercia. Converted at Iona, Scotland, Oswald erected a wooden cross before one of his earliest battles and commanded his soldiers to pray. When he defeated the English king in that battle, Oswald commissioned the Irish monk Aidan to begain establishing Christianity(see issue 60: How the Irish Were Saved).
August 5, 1570: Spanish Jesuits, intent on converting the Native Americans, arrive in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. Six months later, Native Americans massacred the group, and the Jesuits ended their work in the region.
August 5, 1604: John Eliot, the "Apostle to American Indians," is baptized. He succeeded in converting over 3,600 Native American, publishing the Bay Psalm Book (the first book printed in America), and forming the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
August 5, 1656: Eight Quakers from England arrive in Boston, where Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony immediately imprisoned them without trial. They were held until the ships that brought them were ready to take them back to England (see issue 41: The American Puritans).
August 6, 258: Emperor Valerian executes Bishop of Rome Sixtus II preaching a sermon in a cemetery. The emperor originally tolerated Christians, but switched to persecuting them because he believed they were responsible for the plagues, earthquakes, and other disasters that disturbed his reign (see issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church).
August 6, 1221: Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (or Dominicans), dies, having just confessed his darkest sin—that, though he had always been chaste, he enjoyed talking with younger women more than older ones. He left this "inheritance" to his followers: "Have charity among you, hold to humility, possess voluntary poverty." A mere five years earlier, he had six followers. At his death, he had thousands (see issue 73: Thomas Aquinas).
August 6, 1651: Francois Fenelon, Roman Catholic priest and mystical theologian, is born in Perigord, France. His 1697 Explication des Maximes des Saintes is still in print under the title Christian Perfection.
August 6, 1774: Ann Lee and a small band of her followers arrive in New York from Liverpool, England. Though known as the "Shaking Quakers" and later the "Shakers," the millenarian communal society preferred to call itself the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming. They initially did not receive a warm welcome, as they were British and advocated pacifism and celibacy.
August 6, 1801: Revival hits a Presbyterian camp meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Within a week, 25,000 were attending the revival services. It was the largest and most famous camp meeting of the Second Great Awakening (see issue 45: Camp Meetings and Circuit Riders).
August 7, 317: Constantius II, Son of Constantine the Great and Roman emperor from 337 to 361, is born. During his lifetime, he outlawed pagan sacrifice (see "The Emperor Strikes Back" in issue 57: The Conversion of Rome). But Constantius was also a devout Arian (a heresy his father had condemned at the Council of Nicea) and strongly opposed Athanasius (see issue 51: Heresy in the Early Church).
August 7, 1409: The Council of Pisa, convened by the cardinals to end the Great Schism that had divided Western Christendom since 1378, closes. The council deposed both warring popes as schismatics and heretics, and elected Alexander V. It didn't end the schism (as there were now three warring popes), but it paved the way toward a solution at the Council of Constance in 1417 (see issue 68: Jan Hus).
August 7, 1560: The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Calvinistic "Scottish Confession," which had been drawn up in four days principally by John Knox. The document remained the confessional standard until superseded by the Westminster Confession in 1647 (see issue 46: John Knox
August 7, 1771: Francis Asbury answers John Wesley's call for volunteers to go to America as missionaries; he would become the father of American Methodism (see issue 45: Camp Meetings & Circuit Riders).
August 8, 1471: Thomas a Kempis, Dutch mystic and devotional author of The Imitation of Christ, dies at age 91. In his classic, Thomas wrote, "We must imitate Christ's life and his ways if we are to be truly enlightened and set free from the darkness of our own hearts. Let it be the most important thing we do, then, to reflect on the life of Jesus Christ.
August 8, 1492: Albrecht Durer's art is published for the first time when one of his woodcuts serves as the title page for St. Jerome's letters. In a few years, he became one of the most famous painters and engravers in Germany.
August 9, 1788: American Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson, who during his missions work in Burma translated the Bible into Burmese and wrote the first Burmese-English dictionary, is born in Malden, Massachusetts (see issue 36: William Carey).
August 9, 1883: Robert Moffat, pioneer missionary to southern Africa and inspiration (and father-in-law) to David Livingstone, dies (see issue 56: David Livingstone).
August 10, 70: Roman troops, sent by Emperor Vespasian to put down a Jewish rebellion, break through the walls of Jerusalem and destroy the temple. Some said that the event occurred on the same day of the year as the earlier destruction of Solomon's temple by Babylonians.
August 10, 1760: Philip Embury, the first Methodist clergyman to come to America, arrives in New York. August 10, 1815
August 10, 1886: Joseph M. Scriven, Irish Plymouth Brethren hymnwriter, dies. He spent his life performing menial work for the destitute, and both of his engagements ended with the sudden deaths of his fiancees. Nonetheless, his best-known hymn is the uplifting "What a Friend We Have in Jesus.
August 10, 1760: Samuel Leigh, the first Methodist minister in Australia, arrives in Sydney. The Methodist denomination is now Australia's third largest, with an adherence of 10 percent of the population.
August 11, 1253: Clare of Assisi, a Benedictine nun known for her spiritual relationship with St. Francis and for founding the Poor Clares, dies. In 1958, citing a legend that Clare once saw and heard Mass being celebrated miles away, Pope Pius XII proclaimed her the patron saint of television (see issue 42: Francis of Assisi).
August 11, 1519: Johann Tetzel, the German Dominican priest whose peddling of indulgences inspired Martin Luther to write his 95 Theses, dies. Throughout Germany he infamously preached, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." Even the papal envoy eventually criticized him. As for Luther, though he once called Tetzel "the primary author of this tragedy," when he heard Tetzel lay dying, wrote the friar a letter of comfort: "Don't take it too hard. You didn't start this racket" (see issue 34: Luther's Early Years).
August 11, 1890: John Henry Newman dies. Ordained an Anglican in 1824, he later helped lead the Oxford Movement, aiming to restore the Church of England to its high church principles. In 1843 he left the church and became a Roman Catholic.
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