Mary Baker Eddy (above) died today in 1910 in Newton, Massachusetts. She invented Christian Science, the greatest misnomer since the Holy Roman Empire, in 1866. Having been plagued with illness for years, she fell on ice on a street corner and was taken home to recover. Sitting up in bed, she read the story of how Jesus healed the man who was ‘sick of the palsy’. She tried it successfully on herself, and then taught others how to do it. The physical universe is an illusion, she said, so the way to be cured of diseases is to realise they don’t exist.
A storm of controversy broke out in the British press today in 1987 over the Crockford’s Preface affair. The new edition of Crockford’s, the annual who’s who of Church of England clergy, contained a preface which by long tradition was written anonymously and included criticism of the Church hierarchy. This year, though, the preface offered serious and sustained criticism of the Church for its liberalism, and also took a swipe at its Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie. The Bishops closed ranks and attacked the author with words designed to wound: cowardly, scurrilous, gutless, sour and vindictive. Under intense pressure from Church and media, the author – an Oxford priest and academic, Gareth Bennett – killed himself in the garage of his home with the car engine running.
‘He has the disadvantage of the intelligent pragmatist: the desire to put off all questions until someone else makes a decision. One recalls a lapidary phrase of Mr Frank Field that the Archbishop is usually found nailing his colours to the fence.’ Robert Runcie described in the Crockford’s Preface, 1987
Today in 1563, the Council of Trent, held by the Catholic Church in response to the Reformation, confirmed that Purgatory was still a going concern, despite attacks on the idea by the Protestant Reformers. But the council discouraged popular speculation about Purgatory – for example, that it is a place of purging fire, handily located next door to Hell, which supplies its heating system.
‘But let the more difficult and subtle questions, and which tend not to edification, and from which for the most part there is no increase of piety, be excluded from popular discourses before the uneducated multitude.’ Council of Trent, Decree on Purgatory
It’s the birthday of John Wallis, the English Presbyterian minister, born today in 1616. He was a cryptographer and mathematician, and invented the mathematical symbol for infinity. He was so brilliant at mental arithmetic that he once worked out the square root of a number with 53 digits in his head while trying to get to sleep.
The Emperor Diocletian died today in the year 311 in his seaside palace in what is now Split, on the coast of Croatia. He had taken the highly unusual step of abdicating six years earlier, due to ill-health, and spent his retirement in the palace gardens, growing prize cabbages. It was a peaceful end for the man who in 303 had launched the greatest of the Christian persecutions, with the aim of restoring faith in the Roman gods. A year after Diocletian’s death, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which allowed freedom of worship throughout the empire.
Photo: Library of Congress