MAY 20
MICHAEL SATTLER DEFENDED HIS ANABAPTIST FAITH TO THE END (1527)
“This day my only son left me in bitter wringings of heart he is again launched on the ocean, God s ocean. The Lord saved him from shipwreck, brought h...”
Graham, Isabella. The Power of Faith. American Tract Society, 1843.
Christ Wears Many Crowns (1850)
On his head were many crowns—Revelation 19:12 (KJV). Jesus passed through many trials, engaged in many conflicts;...
Events
1277
Scholarly Pope John XXI is crushed to death at Viterbo, Italy, when his study ceiling collapses on him.
Authority for the date: Britannica1506
Death of Christopher Columbus at Valladolid, Spain. The explorer had opened the Americas to colonization and considered it his mission to bring Christianity to the New World.
Authority for the date: www.biography.com/people/christopher-columbus-92542091521
A cannonball strikes Spanish soldier Iñez "Ignatio" Loyola, breaking his right leg. While recovering, he reads the lives of saints and determines to imitate them. He will write a famous guide to Christian meditation, the Spiritual Exercises, and found the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).
Authority for the date: Malachi Martin. The Jesuits. Linden Press, 1987.1527
Austrian authorities torture and kill the Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler as an archheretic.
Authority for the date: Yoder, John Howard. Legacy of Michael Sattler. Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1973.1535
Pope Paul III makes a cardinal of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Fisher has long opposed King Henry VIII and even invited Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to invade England. Henry declares that he will send Fisher’s head to Rome to get his cardinal’s hat—and soon will have him beheaded.
Authority for the date: Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation.1560
The scholar John Feckenham is taken to the Tower of London in England for refusing to take the oath of supremacy. He will spend twenty-four years there.
Authority for the date: Taunton, Ethelred Luke. The English Black Monks of St. Benedict. London: John C. Nimmo, 1897. p.195.1690
Death of John Eliot, missionary to the American Indians, in the parsonage at Roxbury. He had translated the entire Bible into the Algonquin Indian language and published the first Bible printed in America.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.1732
Death at Ettrick, Scotland, of Thomas Boston, an influential Scottish minister and author of The Crook in the Lot.
Authority for the date: Wikipedia.1930
Orthodox church worker Michael Alexeyevich Golikov, already in prison camp under a sentence of three years, is sentenced to ten years for trying to communicate to the West the terrible conditions of the camps. He will die, still imprisoned, in 1938.
Authority for the date: Moss, Vladimir. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.1930
Three days after sentencing him to death, Soviets shoot Mark Arsenyevich Dannik, warden of the Orthodox church in Ustyanka, Loktevsky Region. He is executed for anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation—that is, for speaking against the wickedness of the Soviet regime.
Authority for the date: Moss, Vladimir. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.1937
Jesse Overholtzer founds Child Evangelism Fellowship in Chicago.
Authority for the date: Rohrer, Norman. Indomitable Mr. O.1943
Smith College awards Wu Yi-fang, first Chinese woman to head a Chinese college (Ginling Women’s College), an honorary Doctor of Law degree.
Authority for the date: sophia.smith.edu/blog/smithipedia/international-connections/ginling-college-and-wu-yi-fang/1945
The Christian Airmen’s Missionary Fellowship is officially born. Later it will change its name to Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF). Betty Greene, an American wartime pilot, had written an article in which she suggested using planes to help missionaries. Jim Truxton, a Navy pilot, saw it, contacted Betty and suggested organizing to implement her idea.
Authority for the date: “Betty Greene: Pioneer Missionary Pilot.” http://www.trailblazerbooks.com/books/HeroTales/Hero3-Smpl.html