Five monks were publicly burned to death in Ghent (above) after being found guilty of ‘sodomy’ today in 1578. The previous year, Calvinists had seized political power in the city, and they were keen to stir up popular hatred of Catholics by slandering the monastic houses of Ghent. Earlier that day, three other monks had been expelled from the city after being whipped and having their hair burned off. What followed was a summer of terror in which 14 monks were burned alive.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the founder of the Romantic movement, was born today in 1712 in Geneva. His mother died a few days later. As a child, his father read him adventure stories, which they both found so absorbing, they stayed up all night reading. Rousseau said that these readings implanted Romantic feeling in him, and later, reacting against the intellectualism of the Enlightenment, he called for a return to nature, feelings and some kind of divine spirit.
‘I can understand how it is that the inhabitants of cities, who see nothing but walls, streets and crimes, have so little religious belief; but I cannot understand how those who live in the country, especially in solitude, can have none. How is it that their soul is not lifted up in ecstasy a hundred times a day to the Author of the wonders which strike them?’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
Today is the feast of St Irenaeus, the 2nd century Church father and Bishop of Lyon, France. Irenaeus is famous for writing persuasively against the Gnostics, and he was one of the first people to say that the gathered writings of the Gospels and letters by Paul and others form a New Testament alongside the Old Testament. At a time when the Gnostics were developing a large number of Gospels, claiming they contained the secret teaching of Jesus, Irenaeus championed the idea of there being only four authentic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
‘It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.’ Irenaeus, Against Heresies
Pope Paul IV was born today in 1476, one of the claimants to worst Pope ever. He forced the Jews of Rome to live in a ghetto, making them pay the cost of building the wall which separated them from the rest of the city. He had 25 marranos (Jews forcibly converted to Christianity, but accused of secretly practising Judaism) burned to death by the Inquisition. He was so unpopular, his death was followed by three days of rioting and he was buried without ceremony before the mob could throw his corpse into the Tiber.
Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum