Today is traditionally the anniversary of John the Baptist (above) losing his head, when Salome, the step-daughter of Herod Antipas, asked for it during dinner. Herod had imprisoned John for criticising his marriage to Salome’s mother, Herodias. When Salome danced for him at his birthday banquet, he promised to give her whatever she wanted. She replied, ‘Give me here on a dish the head of John the Baptist.’ The episode inspired the play and opera Salome, by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss respectively, which features the famous ‘dance of the seven veils’.
‘Salome, Salome, dance for me, I beg of you. I am rather sad tonight, so dance for me. Salome, dance for me! If you will but dance for me, then you may have whatever you decide. Your wishes shall be granted.’ Herod implores Salome in Richard Strauss’s opera, Salome, translated by Tom Hammond
Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1840s-70s, died today in 1877 in the city he founded, Salt Lake City. Young led an exodus of some 70,000 Mormon believers westwards from Illinois into what is now Utah, a feat of leadership that saw him hailed as the American Moses. Among the 12,000 people at his funeral were his notoriously numerous wives. Over his lifetime, it is estimated that Young married at least 55 times. January and February 1846 were especially busy, as he married 20 women in those months, five of them on one day. He provided for 16 of his surviving wives in his will.
It is the feast day of Edwold of Cerne, a 9th century saint from Dorset, England. According to legend, Edwold was an East Anglian prince, the brother of King Edmund. But he forsook the royal pleasures of the banquet and the hunt and instead sought out a lonely place near Cerne Abbas to live as a poor hermit, surviving on bread and water and working miracles. After he died, he became a famous saint for a century or two, and his relics drew pilgrims and wealth to Cerne Abbey. It has been suggested that the Cerne Abbas Giant, a naked, excitable, chalk-cut figure 55 metres tall in a local field, was once revered as St Edwold.
‘Midst the charms of the court, midst regal banquets, midst harmonies of tongue and lyre, midst the exultant rhythmic dances and singing of the city, in his heart was a song of sighs: O for the wings of a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest, that far I may fly and abide in the wilderness.’ Upon the Nativity of St Edwold, 11th century, translated by Tom Licence
John Wesley, founder of the Methodists, found it necessary to reduce the length of one of his church services, in Bristol, today in 1790:
‘Mr Baddiley being gone to the north, and Mr Collins being engaged elsewhere, I had none to assist in the service, and could not read the prayers myself; so I was obliged to shorten the service, which brought the prayers, sermon, and Lord’s Supper within the compass of three hours.’ John Wesley, Journal
Rev. William Archibald Spooner, inventor of the Spoonerism, where syllables are mixed up to amusing effect, died today in 1930. The final hymn at his funeral was ‘The gay thou davest, Lord, is ended’.
Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art