Boethius (above), the author of The Consolation of Philosophy, was executed in Pavia, northern Italy, today in the year 524. A Roman philosopher, Boethius is famous for his translations and commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, but also for his own writings on theology, music, mathematics and logic. He was condemned to death by Theodoric the Great, the Gothic King of Italy, who suspected him of plotting his downfall. It was while Boethius was awaiting execution that he wrote his much-loved Consolation, which along with his other works had a profound influence on medieval Europe.
If you desire
To look on truth
And follow the path
With unswerving course,
Rid yourself
Of joy and fear,
Put hope to flight,
And banish grief.
The mind is clouded
And bound in chains
Where these hold sway.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by Victor Watts
Today was the first day of creation, according to Archbishop James Ussher, the Anglican Primate of Ireland. Ussher was among a number of scholars of his time, including Isaac Newton, who tried to work out the age of the Earth using scripture, ancient histories, the calendars of the Romans, Hebrew and Babylonians, plus astronomical knowledge. After Ussher had crunched the numbers, he determined that Heaven and Earth were created at 6pm the day before today (that is, 22 October) in 4004 BCE, making today, 23 October, the first of the seven days of creation. He announced this finding in his book The Annals of the Old Testament, published in 1650, which assigned precise dates to many biblical events, and told the story of world history up to the time of the Roman emperors. Ussher’s dates were so well respected that they were included in the King James Bible into at least the middle of the 20th century.
‘I incline to this opinion, that from the evening ushering in the first day of the World, to that midnight which began the first day of the Christian era, there was 4003 years, seventy days, and six temporarie hours.’ James Ussher, The Annals of the World, 1658
Jack Chick, the fundamentalist, Catholic-hating Christian cartoonist whose cheap comic strip tracts are said to have sold almost 1 billion copies around the world, died peacefully in his sleep today in 2016 – unlike the characters in his strips, who were frequently felled without warning by the Grim Reaper. Post mortem, Jack immediately appeared before a skyscraper-sized white throne on which a gigantic shining figure with no face judged him. Just like in the comics.
It is the Feast Day of St James, the brother of Jesus. Although his only appearance in the Gospels is in an episode where he is snubbed by Jesus, he was the leader of the Jerusalem church after St Peter became a globetrotting missionary. Highly respected by fellow Jews – unlike almost any other Christians – he seems to have upheld a far more traditional Jewish faith than radicals such as Paul.
Today in 1731, Ashburnham House in Westminster, with its collection of priceless manuscripts, ancient and modern, caught fire. A quarter of the library’s collection went up in smoke, but Richard Bentley, the librarian, rescued the 5th century Greek Bible, Codex Alexandrinus, by carrying it out under his arm. The rescue was timely, as the Codex had been declared the oldest and best manuscript of the New Testament a year earlier, by the Swiss theologian Johann Jakob Wettstein.
Today in 1678, Titus Oates appeared before the British Houses of Parliament to tell them about ‘the Popish Plot’, a Catholic conspiracy (created entirely in Oates’s own imagination) to bring down the government. A paranoid London had no difficulty believing it, and at least 15 innocent people were executed thanks to his efforts. Years later, his story was blown, and he was pilloried, flogged and imprisoned, only to be released a few years later by a particularly Protestant government, who gave him a pension of £260 a year.
Image: Glasgow University Library