This Week in Christian History (October 30)

SOURCE:  ChristianityToday.com

October 30

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

October 30, 1451: Christopher Columbus, who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean both to spread Christianity and (as his crew members complained) to "make a great lord of himself," is born (see issue 35: Christopher Columbus).

October 30, 1821: Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevski, whose works (including Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamozov, and Notes from the Underground) reflect his deep Russian Orthodox faith, is born.

October 31

October 31, 1517: Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses in Wittenberg (see issue 34: Luther's Early Years).

October 31, 1825: George Muller, who founded orphanages that would house more than 10,000 orphans by his death in 1898, converts to Christianity at a Moravian mission.

October 31, 1992: Pope John Paul II formally admits the Roman Catholic Church's error in condemning Galileo Galilei in 1633 for believing the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe (see issue 76: Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution).

November 1

November 1, 451: The Council of Chalcedon (in modern Turkey) adjourns. The fourth and largest of all the ancient councils, attended by between 500 and 600 bishops, it repudiated the Eutychian heresy (that Christ has one nature, not two) and drew up a Christological statement of faith now known as the Definition of Chalcedon (see issue 51: Heresy in the Early Church).

November 1, 1512: After four years of work, Michelangelo Buonarroti unveils his 5,800-square-foot painting on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.

November 1, 1776: Spanish Franciscan missionaries found San Juan Capistrano Mission in California, one of 21 missions founded in the region between 1769 and 1823 (see issue 35: Christopher Columbus).

November 1, 1950: Pope Pius XII releases his "Munificentissimus Deus," proclaiming the "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary." The doctrine teaches that Mary was taken in body and soul into heaven at the end of her life. The belief was first propounded in Christian circles by Gregory of Tours in the late 500s.


November 2

November 2, 1164: Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, leaves for France for a six-year exile after being condemned in royal court for "ingratitude" toward England's Henry II, who had once been his dear friend.

November 2, 1533: Harried by Catholic authorities, John Calvin flees Paris by lowering himself out a window with a bedsheet rope and disguising himself as a farmer, complete with a hoe over his shoulder. He spent three years as a fugitive before settling in Geneva (see issue 12: John Calvin).


November 3

November 3, 753 (traditional date): Pirminius, the first Abbot of Reichenau (Germany) dies. His pastoral instruction book, Scarapsus, contains the earliest evidence for the present form of the Apostles' Creed.

November 3, 1534: The British Parliament passes the Supremacy Act, officially making England Protestant and putting the English monarch at the head of the nation's church (see issue 48: Thomas Cranmer).

November 3, 1600: Richard Hooker, an Anglican rector whose book Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is a classic on the relationship between church and state, dies in England.

November 3, 1966: John Lennon tells reporters that his band, the Beatles, is "more popular than Jesus," touching off a firestorm of controversy.



November 4

November 4, 1646: The Massachusetts Bay Colony makes it a capital offense to deny that the Bible is the Word of God.

November 4, 1740: English clergyman Augustus Toplady, author of the hymn "Rock of Ages," is born.

November 4, 1958: Angelo Roncalli becomes Pope John XXIII. Though his papacy was expected to be uneventful, his convening of the Second Vatican Council and his changing of the church's attitudes toward non-Catholics were milestones for Roman Catholics.




November 5


November 5, 1414: The Council of Constance opens to end the Great Schism. It deposed all three rival popes, but it also executed Bohemian reformers Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, and anathematized the teachings of John Wycliffe (see issue 68: Jan Hus).