Shortly after midnight this morning in 1898, Secondo Pia, an amateur photographer, developed the first-ever photograph of the Turin Shroud (above), the linen cloth claimed to be the burial sheet of Christ. Pia watched in shock as his first negative plates emerged from the developing tank. Since the image on the Shroud is itself a negative, the face on the cloth was now revealed for the first time in positive, revealing details that had never been seen before. He almost dropped the plates when he saw them, and his pictures made headlines around the world, including the over-enthusiastic: ‘Photographs of Christ’s body found by science.’ The discovery triggered the first scientific investigations into the Shroud.
Today is the feast of Bona of Pisa, the 12th century girl with a serious case of wanderlust. She set off for Jerusalem at the age of 14 to visit her crusader father, got captured by pirates on the way home, but ended up liking travel so much that she made it her vocation. She led large groups of pilgrims from her home in Pisa to Santiago de Compostela in Spain – a round trip of 3,800 kilometres – nine times. On her tenth attempt, she was taken ill as she was setting out, and died today in 1207. She is the patron saint of travellers, tour guides, and cabin crew, invoked equally in the aisles of planes and churches.
GK Chesterton, the English writer, apologist, novelist and creator of Father Brown, the fictional priest turned detective, was born today in 1874. He became famous for debating the intellectuals of his day, including (his friend) George Bernard Shaw, plus Bertrand Russell, HG Wells, and even Clarence Darrow, US lawyer in the Scopes Monkey Trial. The range of his writing is huge, covering history, theology, literature, fiction, ethics, and murder mystery. His apologetics book, The Everlasting Man (1925), had a profound influence on CS Lewis, and his strikingly original and witty thought was in everything he wrote.
‘There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.’ GK Chesterton, A Defence of Heraldry
Pope John Paul II visited Canterbury Cathedral in his tour of Britain on this day in 1982. He was the first Pope to visit since 1531, and the country’s Catholic bishops marked the occasion by forming a company, Papal Visit Ltd, to design a logo and license papal tat. Official items included a clock featuring the Pope’s face, bags of holy travel sweets, JPII spoons, flags and shopping bags, but not papal ashtrays or Pope-Soap-on-a-Rope, which were thought to be lacking in dignity.
The Council of Constance deposed the antipope John XXIII today in 1415, after he had been tried on 54 charges of scandalous misconduct. The historian Edward Gibbon drily commented: ‘The more scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was accused only of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest.’
Image: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra