All of CS Lewis’s books will come out of copyright today in 2034, including the Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity and Screwtape, as 70 years will have passed since November 1963, when Lewis died. The works of his fellow-Inkling, JRR Tolkien, will have to wait a further 10 years before they are released from copyright captivity.
The medieval Feast of Fools (Festa Stultorum) took place today and in the days surrounding it. The feast was a burlesque festival celebrated mostly in France and England, when high officials of the church swapped places with lower clergy, liturgy and ritual were turned upside down, a Bishop or Pope of Fools was elected, and there was dancing, dressing up, drinking, rude songs and riotous behaviour by masked revellers. The feast included properly organised church services where the disruptive themes in the story of Jesus were celebrated, including his teaching that ‘the last shall be first’, and the description of believers as fools for Christ.
‘All the mendicants, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, together with the scholars, went in procession to fetch the pasteboard tiara and the mock robe of the Pope of Fools. Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools hoisted him upon their shoulders. The roaring and ragged procession then moved off, to pass, according to custom, through the galleries of the interior of the Palace, before it paraded the streets and public places of the City.’ Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Today in 1901, at 11pm, Agnes Ozman became one of the first people in the modern church to speak in tongues. Ozman was a student of Charles Parham, a teacher at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, who encouraged Ozman and his other students to connect speaking in tongues with their desire for baptism in the Holy Spirit. At a watchnight service in the college’s ‘prayer tower’, Ozman’s fellow students laid hands on her head and she began speaking in Chinese, and the next day in Bohemian. Parham later sent one of his followers, the holiness preacher William J Seymour, to Los Angeles, where in 1906 he initiated the Azusa Street Revival, the birthplace of Pentecostalism.
‘It came into my heart to ask that hands be laid upon me that I might receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. As hands were laid upon my head the Holy Spirit fell upon me, and I began to speak in tongues, glorifying God. I talked several languages. It was as though rivers of living water were proceeding from my innermost being.’ Agnes Ozman
The Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli was born today in 1484, and on his 35th birthday, today in 1519, was appointed pastor of the Great Minster of Zürich. After his bust-up with Martin Luther he became the founding leader of the Reformed wing of Protestantism in which he was succeeded by John Calvin.
Today is the feast of St Odilo of Cluny, who made the Abbey of Cluny, France, the most important monastery in western Europe. He died on the last day of 1048. Odilo is also credited for creating All Souls Day (known in some countries as the Day of the Dead), when Christians who have died are remembered every year on 2 November.
Image: Simon Jenkins