St Augustine (above) was baptized by St Ambrose tonight (or possibly early tomorrow) in 387, during the Easter Vigil. Ironically, for the Church’s greatest proponent of infant baptism, he was born into a Christian family who left it up to him to be baptised in his own time, which turned out to be when he was 33 years old. According to legend, Augustine and Ambrose improvised a call and response hymn together during the baptism, which became the Te Deum Laudamus (‘We praise you, O God’), part of the Western liturgy.
We praise you, O God,
we acclaim you as the Lord;
all creation worships you,
the Father everlasting.
To you all angels, all the powers of heaven,
the cherubim and seraphim, sing in endless praise:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Te Deum Laudamus, Common Worship
Anthony Trollope, author of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, a series of six novels telling the goings-on of the clergy and gentry in a fictional English county, was born today in 1815. His childhood was blighted by his father’s chaotic finances, but his mother, Fanny Trollope, became a successful novelist and was a formative influence on his own writing and novels.
William Flower made it into Foxe’s Book of Martyrs when he was executed today in 1555 in St Margaret’s churchyard, Westminster, for protesting a bit too strongly against the doctrine of transubstantiation. He attacked a Catholic priest during Mass with a wooden cleaver, spilling his blood into the chalice.
Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, which is claimed to be the first English novel, died today in 1731, probably while he was hiding from his creditors. He was buried in London’s Bunhill Fields.
‘In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the New Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to read a while every morning and every night… It was not long after I set seriously to this work till I found my heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life… I threw down the book; and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, “Jesus, thou son of David! Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour! Give me repentance!”’ Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Image: Manuel Ramírez Sánchez