Fidel Castro (above), leader of the Communist revolution in Cuba, was excommunicated today in 1962 by Pope John XIII. Despite his Catholic baptism and Jesuit education, Castro expelled hundreds of priests and nuns from the country and suppressed Catholic institutions, including schools and publications.
Also excommunicated today in 1521 was Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation. He was thrown out of the Church by Pope Leo X in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem (‘It befits the Roman Pontiff’). The bull specified that Luther’s excommunication should be marked by a big church service during which ‘the banner of the cross shall be raised, the bells rung, the candles lit and after a time extinguished, cast on the ground and trampled under foot.’ Luther and his students responded by adding Decet Romanum Pontificem to all the papal writings they could find, and had a bonfire. In 2008, the Vatican confirmed that it had no intention of lifting Luther’s excommunication.
‘Martin and the rest are excommunicate, accursed, condemned, heretics, hardened, interdicted, deprived of possessions and incapable of owning them.’ Decet Romanum Pontificem, 1521
JRR Tolkien, creator of the Hobbit, and the writer of Britain’s favourite book of the 20th century, The Lord of the Rings, was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, today in 1892. His father, a bank manager, died when he was three, and he was brought up by his mother in Sarehole, a Worcestershire village, where he would visit his Aunt Jane at her farm, ‘Bag End’, a name made famous as Bilbo Baggins’ home in The Hobbit. His mother was initially a Baptist, but converted to Catholicism, which remained Tolkien’s firmly held faith all his life.
‘The unpayable debt that I owe to him [CS Lewis] was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.’ JRR Tolkien, letter, 1965
Gladys Aylward, the evangelical missionary who travelled in 1930s to China on the Trans-Siberian Railway, died in Taiwan today in 1970. She left London with ninepence in coins, £2 in traveller’s cheques, and a Bible concealed in her corset. In Yangcheng, China, she and a Scottish missionary turned a decrepit house into an inn, The Inn of the Eighth Happiness, which they used for low-level missionary work. In 1938, during the Japanese invasion of China, she led 100 orphaned children across the Yellow River to safety in Sian after an epic walk across the mountains. Her story was the inspiration for a film in 1958, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman, which to Aylward’s mortification turned her experiences into a love story.
An early Pope, Anterus, died today in the year 236. He was Greek, and possibly a freed slave. His predecessor, Pope Pontian, had been sentenced to work in the mines of Sardinia by the Emperor Maximinus, where he died, and it is claimed that Anterus might also have been a victim of persecution. In 1854, his tomb was discovered in the Roman catacombs, the broken monument bearing the simple inscription Episcopus (‘Bishop’) in Greek.
Image: Library of Congress