Today in 1979, the German Catholic theologian Hans Küng (above) lost his licence to theologize. Eight years earlier, he had publicly challenged the Catholic Church’s doctrine of papal infallibility in his book Infallible? In response, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition) declared that Küng could ‘no longer be considered a Catholic theologian’ and demanded he lose his post at Tübingen University. The university removed him from its Catholic faculty and gave him a professorship in ecumenical theology. Küng later wrote that this was his ‘personal experience of the Inquisition’.
Charles Wesley, the English Methodist leader and prolific hymn writer, was born today in 1707. The 18th child of the family (his brother John was the 15th), he was several weeks premature, and did not cry or open his eyes until the time he would normally have been born. On his fifth birthday, today in 1712, his mother Susanna gave him his first reading lesson, and he was soon reading the Book of Genesis. It is estimated that he wrote some 6,500 hymns. One of them, popular at this time of year, almost didn’t become famous until the revivalist George Whitefield rewrote the opening lines. Wesley’s version began:
Hark how all the Welkin rings
Glory to the Kings of Kings,
Peace on Earth, and Mercy mild,
God and Sinners reconcil’d!
Charles Wesley
God Save the Tsar! became the national anthem of Imperial Russia today in 1833, following a competition. Written by Vasily Zhukovsky, the Russian Romantic poet and tutor to the children of the tsar, the anthem remained in place until the Russian Revolution of 1917. A literal translation of the lyrics reads:
God, save the Tsar!
Strong, sovereign,
Reign for glory, for our glory!
Reign to make foes fear,
Orthodox Tsar!
God, save the Tsar!
Vasily Zhukovsky
Revolt broke out in the Muslim quarter of Granada today in 1499 against the forced conversion of Muslims to Christianity. Islam had been on the retreat in Spain for the previous two centuries, and eight years earlier, a deal had been struck where Granada’s new Christian rulers would guarantee religious toleration to the Muslim population. But when the severe Archbishop of Toledo (the future Cardinal Ximénez of Spanish Inquisition fame) arrived in Granada, he ordered Arabic manuscripts to be burned and sent Muslims to prison if they refused to convert. The revolt spread to the towns and villages of the region and were put down with massacres, executions, enslavement, and mass baptisms.
It is the – admittedly not very well known – feast of the Expectation of the Virgin Mary, celebrated in southern Europe and Poland. The feast is a preparation for Christmas and focuses on Mary, pregnant, expecting the arrival of Jesus.
Image: Nationaal Archief / CC0. 1.0