Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space today in 1961, when his spacecraft, Vostok 1, blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union. During the flight, Gagarin supposedly said, ‘I see no God up here’, but the words were apparently spoken later by Soviet President Khrushchev. Gagarin was a member of the Orthodox Church and had his daughter baptised shortly before his historic flight.
Today in 627, the pagan King Edwin of Northumbria was converted to Christianity through the influence of a missionary bishop, Paulinus. The Venerable Bede recorded the event, famously telling the story of how Edwin consulted his elders and advisers about whether or not he should convert. One of them told him:
‘Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a moment of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.’ Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People
In possibly the ultimate example of ‘friendly fire’, the Sack of Constantinople began today in 1204. The besieging Crusader armies of the West, which were meant to be ‘freeing’ Jerusalem from the Muslims, broke through the walls of the city and slaughtered their fellow Christians.
It is the feast day of St Anthusa of Constantinople, an 8th-century Byzantine princess. Refusing her father’s requests to marry, and his successor the Empress Irene’s offer to share the throne, she instead wore an itchy hair shirt under her royal robes. She ate minimal food and drank nothing but water. ‘Tears were always in her eyes,’ we are told, ‘and hymns and psalmody never left her mouth.’ Sounds like a right pain in the pants.
Pope Julius I died today in the year 352, two years after he had declared 25 December to be the birth date of Jesus.
Image: Mark Morgan