Antoine Augustin Calmet (pictured above), a French Benedictine monk and Bible commentator, was born today in 1672. He produced a hefty 23-volume commentary on the entire Bible in the early 18th century, but more surprisingly, he also produced a popular book on magic, witchcraft and the vampires of Hungary. Voltaire, an outspoken critic of Christianity, was a fan of Calmet.
Today in 1616, Galileo was called to the residence of Cardinal Bellarmine, and given an ultimatum about his scientific discoveries. He was told to ‘abandon completely the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.’ Two days earlier, the Inquisition had declared the idea that the earth goes round the sun as ‘formally heretical’.
Born today in 1361 was King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. He is perhaps most famous for commissioning the Wenceslas Bible, a hand-illuminated, multi-volume work, using one of the earliest translations of the Bible into German. The Wenceslas Bible was produced 150 years before Martin Luther’s famous German translation.
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