Today is the feast of St John of Egypt, who lived on top of a cliff in the Nitrian Desert in Egypt, and died in his nineties in the year 394. He lived on dried fruit and vegetables, rolled large rocks here and there, watered dead trees and finally walled himself up in his desert cell, leaving just a tiny window for food deliveries and through which he could preach.
Today in 1309, Pope Clement V excommunicated Venice. Venetian soldiers were occupying the city of Ferrara, which was a papal fiefdom, and despite the epic conflict of interest, Clement retaliated by withholding the mass, Easter, and other feasts of the church from Venice.
Pope John XXII issued a bull, In Agro Dominico (‘In the field of the Lord’), today in 1329, condemning a selection of writings of the German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart as heretical. The bull cast a cloud over Eckhart’s reputation in the Catholic Church which the Vatican has yet to publicly dispel.
Image: Mark Fischer