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September 2, 459 (traditional date): After spending 36 years on top of a pillar praying, fasting, and occasionally preaching, Simeon Stylites dies. At first he sat on a nine-foot pillar, but he gradually replaced it with higher and higher ones; the last was more than 50 feet tall. After his death, the Syrian ascetic—who had won the respect of both pope and emperor—inspired many imitators (see issue 64: Antony and the Desert Fathers).
September 2, 1192: The Third Crusade, which had the mission of retaking Jerusalem (it had fallen to Muslim general Saladin in 1187), ends with the signing of a treaty. Though Christians had not won back Jerusalem, Richard I (later king of England) negotiated access to the holy city (see issue 40: The Crusades).
September 2, 1784: John Wesley consecrates Thomas Coke as the first "bishop" of the Methodist church by John Wesley. An indefatigable itinerant minister, Coke crossed the Atlantic 18 times, all at his own expense (see issue 2: John Wesley and issue 69: Charles and John Wesley).
September 2, 1973: Scholar, novelist, and devout Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), dies at age 81 (see issue 7: C.S. Lewis; issue 78: J. R. R. Tolkien).
September 3, 590: Gregory I ("the Great") is consecrated pope. Historians remember him as the father of the medieval papacy and last of four Latin "Doctors of the Church." He was the first pope to aspire to secular power, the man for whom Gregorian Chant is named, and one of the main organizers of Roman liturgy and its music. He was also one of the prime promoters of monasticism.
September 3, 1752: This day and the next 10 never happen in Great Britain as the kingdom adopts the Gregorian Calendar (developed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582) to replace the inaccurate calendar created by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. Riots break out as Brits argue the government just stole 11 days from their lives.
September 3, 1894: American neo-orthodox theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, professor at Yale University and author of Christ and Culture (1951), is born.
September 4, 1736: Robert Raikes, an English newspaper editor who founded Sunday schools (which met from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) to educate poor children, is born in Gloucester (see issue 53: William Wilberforce).
September 4, 1842: After a 284-year hiatus, construction of the Cologne Cathedral continues. And you thought road crews took long breaks!
September 4, 1965: Albert Schweitzer, German theologian, organist, and medical missionary, dies in what is now Gabon. He wrote The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
September 5, 1888: Sensational preacher Billy Sunday marries Helen Amelia Thompson, who became his evangelistic campaign adviser. Her organizational talents helped raise him to national prominence.
September 5, 1997: Mother Teresa, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Missionaries of Charity (now with 517 missions worldwide) dies in Calcutta, India (see issue 65: The Ten Most Influential Christians of the Twentieth Century).
September 6, 1620: With 101 colonists and 48 crew members aboard, the Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England. Thirty-five colonists board ship, Separatists from Leiden, Holland, and later known as the Pilgrims (see issue 41: The American Puritans).
September 6, 1651: Obadiah Holmes, who had been arrested for preaching Baptist doctrine, is given 30 lashes with a three-corded whip in Boston Commons. During the beating, he was so filled with divine joy that he told the magistrates, "You have struck me with roses." His punishment occasioned the conversion of Henry Dunster, president of Harvard, to the Baptists, and led to the founding of Boston's first Baptist church.
September 7, 1807: English missionary Robert Morrison, 25, becomes the first Protestant missionary in China. Catholic missionaries beat Protestants by some 225 years—Jesuit Matteo Ricci first arrived in 1582 (see issue 52: Hudson Taylor).
September 8, 1157: Richard I (Lion-Heart) of England, leader of the Third Crusade, is born (see issue 40: The Crusades).
September 8, 1565: Settlers form the first Roman Catholic Parish in America is formed in St.Augustine, Florida.
September 8, 1636: Massachusetts Puritans found Harvard College, America's first higher education institution, a mere six years after arriving from England. They founded the college to train future ministers (see issue 41: American Puritans).
September 8, 1845: English clergyman John Henry Newman converts to Roman Catholicism. Newman had been a leading member of the Oxford Movement, which aimed to reform the Church of England, but he became convinced that the Anglicans had lost their episcopal moorings and had wrongly severed themselves from apostolic succession.
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