Source: https://neatnik2009.wordpress.com/2016/01/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 11:50:40+00:00

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St. Aldhelm comes to my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days from the Roman Catholic Church and The Church of England.
St. Aldhelm was a scholar, poet, and churchman. Our saint, a relative–perhaps a brother–of King Ine of Wessex (reigned 688-726), studied at Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, where Maildubh (died in 675), an Irish monk and scholar was abbot. For a time St. Aldhelm studied at Canterbury under the tutelage of St. Adrian/Hadrian (died in 710). Bad health forced our saint to return to Malmesbury, where he served as a monk under Abbot Maildubh until succeeding him in 675. St. Aldhelm introduced the Rule of St. Benedict to the monastery, made the abbey a center of learning, oversaw the construction of a new church on the grounds, and expanded the land holdings of the monastery.
St. Aldhelm was a literary figure. He was, as far as historians know, the first Anglo-Saxon to write in Latin. His Latin writing style reflected his erudition, for it was abstruse and sesquipedalian. His works were standard in English ecclesiastical schools for centuries, declining after the Norman Conquest (1066). Our saint also wrote in Old English, but none of his writings in that language have survived.
St. Aldhelm, who had a strong devotion to Mary and the saints, became the first Bishop of Sherborne in 705, after the division of the large Diocese of Winchester. He held that post until he died at Doulting, Somerset, on May 25, 709.
Two Ancient English Scholars: St. Aldhelm and William of Malmesbury: Being the First Lecture on the David Murray Foundation in the University of Glasgow Delivered on June 9th, 1931 (1931), by Montague Rhodes James.
From the calendar of saints of The Church of England comes Apolo Kievebulaya, Apostle to the Pygmies, to my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days.
The life of our saint began in the Kingdom of Buganda, on the northwest coast of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Waswa Munubi, one of five children, entered the world circa 1864. His parents raised him to become a traditional healer, but he became disillusioned after learning that a local healer was a fraud. Our saint converted to Islam and became a soldier instead. Arab traders had introduced Islam to Buganda. Muteesa I (reigned 1856-1884), the Kabaka of Buganda, had political-military problems with them by 1875, when he began to accept European weapons and Christian missionaries of various denominations.
At first Apolo worked as a catechist after studying at Kampala. He catechized in the Toro region in 1895 then at Nyagawi (near the Rwenzori Mountains) in 1895-1896. In 1896 our saint became the catechist in Boga. Apolo had to contend with major challenges. He had to face hostility because of his opposition to certain traditional practices, such as polygamy and drinking. Furthermore, Chief Tabaro forbade the construction of a church building. Then, in 1898, Tabaro scapegoated Apolo. The chief’s sister, living in Apolo’s household, had fallen accidentally on a spear and died. Apolo faced legal charges and spent months in prison until the dismissal of those charges. Then Tabaro welcomed Apolo back, befriended him, and converted to Christianity.
Apolo’s next phase of ministry was as a member of the clergy. He became an Anglican deacon on December 21, 1900, and a priest in June 1903. He never married. Our saint had been engaged, but his intended died. Afterward Apolo concluded that life as a single man was most conducive to his vocation. Our saint received the name “Kivebulaya,” meaning “European,” for he wore a suit underneath his vestments. He worked hard for Jesus, converting many people. Apolo was a man of the people in the borderlands of Uganda and the Belgian Congo. He lived among them, slept in their homes, and ate the food they offered. He traveled in western Uganda and the northeastern Belgian Congo (the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016). A border adjustment in 1915 meant that Boga (and therefore Apolo’s home base) became part of the Belgian Congo. Among the groups to which our saint introduced the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the Pygmies, starting in 1921.
Our saint died in Boga on May 30, 1933.
whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of Uganda and the Belgian Congo.
Jiri Tranovsky comes to my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days via Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), the service book-hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).
Tranovsky was ethnically Polish. The native of Teschen, Silesia (now Cieszyn, Poland), entered the world on April 9, 1592. He studied at Guben (now in Germany) and, from 1605 to 1607, at Kolberg (now Kolobrzeg, Poland) then, starting in 1607, at the University of Wittenberg, where he began to write poetry in Latin and Czech. He traveled to Bohemia and Silesia in 1612. Then our saint taught at St. Nicholas Gymnasium, Prague, before serving as rector of a school in Holesov, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), from 1613 to 1615. In 1615 and 1616 Tranovsky taught in the school at Mezirici (now in the Czech Republic), where he also led the local singing society.
Tranovsky was a Lutheran minister. Following his ordination at Mezirici in 1616 he served in that town until 1621. The turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the official religious intolerance of King Ferdinand II of Bohemia and Hungary (reigned 1617-1637; Holy Roman Emperor, 1619-1637), persecutor of Protestantism, forced Tranovsky and his congregation into exile in 1621. 1624 was a terrible year for the flock and its shepherd. Wartime conditions contributed to a plague, so Tranovsky had to bury three of his children and half of his congregation. Later that year authorities imprisoned our saint. They exiled him to Silesia the following year. There he became the court preacher to the castle in Bielitz (now Bielsko, Poland). Wartime conditions forced Tranovsky to move again in 1628, so he became the court preacher to Orava Castle (now in Oravsky Podzamok, Slovakia). Our saint’s health was failing.
Tranovsky translated and wrote texts. In 1620 he translated the Augsburg Confession into Czech. Eight years later he was hard at work on Odarum Sacrarum sive Hymnorum (1629), a hymnal containing 150 Latin texts for congregational singing. Tranovsky included several original tunes. From 1631 to his death in 1637 he was the senior pastor at Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas, Upper Hungary (now Liptovsky Mikulas, Slovakia), where he wrote his masterpieces. Phiala Odoromentorum (A Vial of Sweet Incense, 1635), was a prayer book. The Cithara Sanctorum (Harp of the Saints, 1636), also known as the Transocius, was a hymnal containing 414 hymns, 150 of which were his. This volume became the basis of Czech and Slovak Lutheran hymnody.
Tranovsky suspected that he would die before the age of 50 years. He was correct, for he died on May 29, 1637, aged 45 years.
“Make Songs of Joy to Christ, Our Head” (1978), in the Lutheran Service Book (2006).
I have also found a Vajda translation of an anonymous text from the Tranoscius (1636) in slightly older Lutheran hymnals. The Worship Supplement (1969) and the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) contain “God, My Lord, My Strength, My Place of Hiding” (1969).
I wonder what treasures among Tranovsky’s hymnody remain untranslated into English.
Jiri Tranovsky and others, who have translated hymn texts.
With this post I add two essential civil rights attorneys to my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days. Their lives remind us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has political and social dimensions. The name of Thurgood Marshall comes to me via The Episcopal Church’s Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (2010), which notes his affiliation with the denomination and assigns the feast day of May 17, the date in 1954 on which the U.S. Supreme Court announced its seminal and unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Adding Marshall’s mentor and colleague, Charles Hamilton Houston, to this post is logical.
He guided us through the legal wilderness of second-class citizenship. He was truly the Moses of that journey.
Our saint came from a Christian home in which he learned about selflessness and the imperative of justice. His parents were former teachers. William LePre Houston (1870-1953) attended the night school of the Howard University School of Law, Washington, D.C., from 1906 to 1909 then began to practice law. Mary Ethel Hamilton Houston, who married William in 1892, worked as a hairdresser to prominent Washingtonians. The parents sacrificed for the best interest of their son, thereby helping him to succeed. Houston attended Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, from 1911 to 1915, graduating as one of six valedictorians. Then he taught at Howard University for two years.
Houston might have become an obscure university professor if not for World War I. He served in the racially segregated U.S. Army from 1917 to 1919, encountering institutional and personal racism. These negative experiences fixed his course; he resolved to become an attorney and fight via the courts for those who could not defend themselves from the racism of others. He attended the Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1922; D.J.S., 1923), became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, and studied civil law at the University of Madrid in Spain. He, admitted to the bar in 1924, joined his father’s law practice, which became the firm of Houston and Houston (1924-1939) then Houston, Houston, Hastie, and Waddie (1939-1950).
Houston influenced many people as well as American society via his work at the Howard University School of Law and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was the Vice-Dean of the School of Law from 1929 to 1930 then the Dean thereof from 1930 to 1935. He reformed it and transformed it into a more rigorous institution that earned accreditation from the American Association of American Law Schools. Among the students Houston mentored was Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993).
Marshall was a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and a descendant of slaves. His father, William Marshall, was a Pullman porter, and his mother, Norma Marshall, was a teacher. In 1929 Marshall married his first wife, Vivien Burrey, who died in February 1955. After graduating from Lincoln University (in Pennsylvania) our saint attended the Howard University School of Law. He had applied to the law school of the University of Maryland, but a segregationist admissions policy kept him out. Marshall graduated first in his class at the Howard University School of Law in 1933 then began to practice law in Baltimore. In 1934 he began to represent the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, suing the University of Maryland to force it to abandon its segregationist admissions policy. He succeeded in Murray v. Pearson (1936).
The method by which Marshall worked for civil rights was through the legal system. This fact angered some radical activists, but, in the context of Jim-Crow dominated America, the efforts of Houston, Marshall, and others like them were relatively radical. De jure segregation on the basis of skin color had been the law of the land since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896); the U.S. Supreme Court had said so, using the absurd argument that separate facilities were legal as long as they were equal. They were inherently unequal, however. Overturning that infamous ruling was a goal, one which took decades to accomplish. Houston, who did not live long enough to witness Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), established the strategy that led to that seminal ruling.
From 1935 to 1940 Houston served as Special Counsel for the NAACP. He deployed attorneys, including Marshall, to sue for the equalization of teachers’ salaries in the U.S. South, for White teachers made more than their African-American counterparts. Houston also argued on behalf of Lloyd Gaines (1911-disappeared in 1939) before the U.S. Supreme Court in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1939). The court held that the law school of the University of Missouri had no legal right to deny Gaines admission because of his skin color.
Marshall argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won 29 of them. His first such case, which he won, was Chambers v. Florida (1940). Authorities had denied four African-American suspects legal representation and used forced confessions to obtain convictions in the case of the murder of a White man. The Supreme Court overruled those verdicts.
Marshall brought that passion for justice to the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which he founded in 1940 and led. That year Houston became a member of the NAACP’s Legal Committee, of which he became chairman in 1948. Both he and Marshall argued civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Houston argued Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company et al. (1944) and Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, Ocean Lodge No. 76, et al. (1944), in which the court ruled that railroad unions must represent African-Americans fairly. He also argued Hurd et al. v. Hodge et al. (1948), in which the court ruled against racially discriminatory housing covenants.
Tell Bo I did not run out on him but went down fighting that he might have better and broader opportunities than I had without prejudice or bias operating against him, and that in any fight some might fall.
Houston devoted his professional life to the service of his society. Not only did he pursue a legal strategy for civil rights but he also served in other capacities. He sat on the District of Columbia Board of Education from 1933 to 1935, the American Council on Race Relations from 1944 to 1950, and the Fair Employment Practices Committee from 1944 to 1945. Houston was indeed like Moses, for he worked hard for an important goal yet did not live to see it come to fruition. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) via Brown v. Board of Education (1954). That was a landmark case, one which Marshall argued, but it was, in a way, just a beginning, for massive resistance and calls for the impeachment of “activist” federal judges ensued.
Houston received much posthumous recognition, which he deserved. The NAACP awarded him its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1950. The Howard University School of Law eventually named its main building after him. The Washington Bar Association created the Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit. And the Harvard Law School established the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice as well as the Charles Hamilton Houston Professorship.
Marshall’s career led to him becoming a federal appellate judge (1961-1965), the Solicitor General of the United States (1965-1967), and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1967-1991). He advocated for individual rights, civil rights, and women’s rights. He also considered the death penalty unconstitutional.
Marshall died of heart failure at Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993. He was 84 years old. President William J. Clinton awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Marshall’s legacy continues in various forms, including his family. Via his second wife (from December 1955), Cecilia Suyat, are two children. Thurgood Marshall, Jr. (born in 1956), is a prominent attorney who served as the secretary of the presidential cabinet during the Clinton Administration. John William Marshall (born in 1958) has had a distinguished career in law enforcement, having served as, among other things, as the Director of the U.S. Marshals Service and as Virginia’s Secretary of Public Safety.
Whenever the consensus of a society is to restrict the range of opportunities of a large portion of its members, that society agrees to curtail its potential and lower its horizons. This has occurred frequently, unfortunately. It also continues, unfortunately. The reality of life together in society is that each of us depends upon the labor of others. Whatever we do to others, we do to ourselves.
Houston and Marshall understood this well.
With this post I add to my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days three holy men from The Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints. The Episcopal Church has, for logical reasons, assigned each man to a different date. I, for my logical reasons also, have moved Chandler and Hobart to Hare’s feast day, May 17. This is, after all my weblog, and the Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Says and Holy Days is my project. I have concluded that the stories of these three men’s lives, told in one post, constitute a compelling account of active Christian faith across generational lines. Also, combining what would have otherwise been three posts into one enables a readier to notice connections more easily.
The intergenerational story begins with Thomas Bradbury Chandler. He was one of ten children of William J. Chandler (1698-1754) and Jemima Bradbury Chandler (circa 1703-1779) of Woodstock, Massachusetts. Our saint grew up on the family farm and attended Yale College, from which he graduated in 1745. He became the catechist and lay reader of St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1747. The congregation had no priest at the time, and the consensus at St. John’s was that Chandler should fill that vacancy. In 1751 our saint traveled to England, where Thomas Sherlock, the Bishop of London, ordained him to the priesthood and designated him the Rector of St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown.
Chandler spent most of the rest of his life as the Rector of St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, and became beloved there. He also traveled in the Northeast, functioning as a missionary. Our saint, a stickler for doing things decently and in order, refused to permit the Anglican-Methodist revivalist George Whitefield (1714-1770), who visited Elizabethtown in 1763 and 1764, to fill the pulpit.
What Think Ye of Congress Now? Or an Enquiry How Far the Americans are Bound to Abide by and Execute the Decisions of the Late Congress (1775).
Chandler had to leave Elizabethtown and America in 1775, for he was receiving threats from the Sons of Liberty. He spent the next ten years in England.
The vestry of St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, invited Chandler to return in 1785. He accepted the offer. By the time our saint arrived his health did not permit him to conduct regular services, but the vestry insisted that he be the official rector and reside in the rectory anyway. In 1786 Chandler received word that he was the first choice of the Archbishop of Canterbury to become the first Church of England bishop in North America, headquartered in Nova Scotia. Our saint, who had not sought the position, declined it for health reasons. The post went to Charles Inglis (1734-1816), Rector of Trinity Church, New York, New York, from 1777 to 1783 instead.
Chandler died at Elizabethtown on June 17, 1790. He was 64 years old, and Then Episcopal Church was less than one year old, having completed the process of separating from The Church of England in 1789.
Chandler had written The Life of Samuel Johnson, D.D., the First President of King’s College in New York yet not published it during his lifetime. The volume became available in print in 1805.
Chandler’s legacy continued via his family. His wife was Jane Emott Chandler (circa 1732-1801). Their youngest daughter, Mary Goodwin Chandler (1774-1847), married a young clergyman named John Henry Hobart (1775-1830, who became the Bishop of New York.
John Henry Hobart was a great missionary bishop and a man of strong opinions. He funded educational institutions, started congregations and left a legacy which even many who argued with him bitterly had to respect.
Hobart was a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Enoch Hobart (1726-1776) and Hannah Pratt Hobart (1732-?). Our saint studied at the Episcopal Academy, Philadelphia, before matriculating at The University of Pennsylvania. He remained there for two years before transferring to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), graduating with his A.B. in 1793. He worked in a counting house in Philadelphia for a few worlds, but commerce was not his vocation.
Hobart, realizing this fact, turned toward theology. In 1797 and 1798, while working as a tutor at the College of New Jersey, our saint pursued theological studies under the direction of William White (1747-1836). White was the Rector of St. Peter’s Church and Christ Church, Philadelphia (1779-1836), the Bishop of Pennsylvania (1787-1836), Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (1789, 1795-1836), and the Chaplain of the United States Senate (1790-1800). White ordained Hobart to the diaconate on June 3, 1798, and to the priesthood in 1800. Our saint served the yoked congregations of Trinity Church, Oxford, Pennsylvania, and All Saints Church, Perkionmen, Pennsylvania, in 1798 and 1799. He served briefly at Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1799 and 1800. On May 6, 1800, Hobart married Mary Goodwin Chandler (1774-1847), youngest daughter of Thomas Bradbury Chandler (1726-1790). At the end of 1800 Hobart became the Assistant Rector of Trinity Church, New York, New York. In 1811 he became both the Rector of Trinity Church and the second bishop coadjutor in the Diocese of New York. He served as rector and bishop until his death, in 1830.
The first Bishop of New York was Samuel Provoost (1742-1815), who served in the diocese from 1787 to 1815 and as the Chaplain of the United States Senate (1789-1790) and the Presiding Bishop of the denomination (1792-1795). Benjamin Moore (1748-1816) had become the first bishop coadjutor in the Diocese of New York in 1801. When Provoost died Moore succeeded him and became the second Bishop of New York. Moore died in February 1816, so Hobart automatically became the third Bishop of New York. This made official was had been unofficial reality for several years, for both Provoost and Moore had not been well, so Hobart had been administering the diocese.
Hobart was an effective bishop. Between 1816 and 1820 he increased the number of clergy in the diocese by a factor of two and the number of missionaries by a factor of four. By the end of his tenure (and life) our saint had started missionary work among the Oneida Indians and planted a church in every major town in the state previously lacking one. In 1817 Hobart helped to found the General Theological Seminary, New York, New York. He served as its first dean and taught pastoral theology. Our saint expanded education in the western part of the state, selecting the site of Geneva College (opened in 1822), Geneva, New York. (It became Hobart College then Hobart and William Smith Colleges.) Hobart also visited churches in Connecticut and New Jersey during times of vacancies in the episcopates of those dioceses.
This hard work damaged our saint’s health. He took a sabbatical in 1823-1825 to recover while traveling in Europe.
Hobart was also a controversialist. The bishop was a pre-Oxford Movement High Churchman. The Oxford Movement, which started in England in the 1830s (after Hobart’s death), had a strong liturgical emphasis. Hobart’s High Churchmanship pertained to questions of baptism and Apostolic Succession. There were competing theologies of baptism and the episcopate. Our saint argued strongly for his interpretations and cautioned against ecumenical cooperation with denominations with different understandings. These matters, he insisted, were crucial.
One might recognize Apostolic Succession as one of four standards in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886 and 1888). The other three standards for Christian unity there are the Old and New Testaments, the Nicene Creed, and the sacraments of baptism and the Holy Eucharist.
Hobart died at Auburn, New York, on September 12, 1830, two days before his fifty-fifth birthday. Among the bishops who met a Chicago, Illinois, in 1886 to discuss the Quadrilateral was his grandson, William Hobart Hare (1838-1909), the Missionary Bishop of South Dakota (1883-1909), and a son of Elizabeth Catherine Hobart Hare (1810-1883).
Hobart’s immediate successor was Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk (1791-1861).
The Christian Bishop Approving Himself Unto God (1827), preached at the consecration of Henry Ustick Onderdonk (1789-1858) in the Diocese of Pennsylvania.
The Correspondence of John Henry Hobart (1911), Volumes I, II, III, IV, V, and VI.
William Hobart Hare shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with people in the Dakotas, Japan, and China.
Our saint was a son of the church. His family tree included, among others, Thomas Bradbury Chandler (1726-1790) and John Henry Hobart (1775-1830). Hare’s parents were George Emlen Hare, Sr. (1808-1892), and Elizabeth Catherine Hare (1810-1883), daughter of Bishop Hobart. George Emlen Hare, Sr., was a prominent Episcopal priest and Biblical scholar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He taught at and served as the dean of Philadelphia Divinity School (extant 1857-1974). At the time of our saint’s birth in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1838, George Emlen Hare, Sr., was the Rector of Trinity Church in that city. He wrote Christ to Return: A Practical Exposition of the Prophecy Recorded in the 24th and 25th Chapters of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (1840) and Visions and Narratives of the Old Testament (1889).
Our saint became an Episcopal priest. He attended yet did not graduate from The University of Pennsylvania. Then he studied at the new Philadelphia Divinity School. Hare became a deacon in 1859 and a priest in 1862. At first he was assistant at St. Luke’s Church, Philadelphia, where Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (1808-1895), later the first Bishop of Central Pennsylvania from 1871 to 1895, was the rector. In 1861 Hare transferred to St. Paul’s Church, Chestnut Hill, and on October 30, married Howe’s daughter, Mary Amory (May 4, 1837-January 7, 1866). The couple’s brief marriage produced one child, Hobart Amory Hare (September 22, 1862-June 15, 1931), a physician and author of medical texts. The Hares spent parts of 1863 and 1864 in Michigan and Minnesota for Mary’s health. Then, in 1864 Hare became the Vicar of the Church of the Ascension, Philadelphia, He remained there until 1870, becoming rector in 1867.
Hare entered the missions field in 1870, when he became the Secretary and General Agent of the Foreign Committee of the Board of Missions. He nearly left that job the following year, when the House of Bishops elected him to become the Missionary Bishop of Cape Palmas (in western Africa), but the House of Deputies concluded that he was invaluable in his then current position. On All Saints’ Day 1872, however, the bishops elected him the Missionary Bishop of Niobrara, with a territory spanning the Dakotas. The consecration occurred on January 9, 1873.
From 1873 to 1883 Hare administered the affairs of the Missionary District of Niobrara, ministering to Sioux and pioneers alike. He divided the district into ten departments, each led by a priest. This manner of organizing his see proved to be quite effective. He wrote annual letters, published as pamphlets, to raise funds for the schools. One such letter was Christian Schools Among the Indians: Bishop Hare’s Circular (1874).
Hare’s job was demanding. Nevertheless, our saint doubled as a missionary bishop in Japan in 1891 and in Japan and China in parts of 1891 and 1892, with a return to South Dakota separating those two tenures. Furthermore, Hare’s health became an issue. Thus he traveled in Europe from October 1895 to April 1896. The work of the church in South Dakota continued, as another pamphlet, Indian Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Dakota: Letter from Bishop Hare (1899), attested. Hare eventually requested a bishop to assist him. Answering that request affirmatively entailed altering the denominational canons. In 1905 Frederick Foote Johnson (1866-1943) became the Assistant Bishop of South Dakota.
Hare visited sisters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, from time to time. He died at Atlantic City during one such visit on October 23, 1909. He was 71 years old.
Johnson succeeded our saint as Missionary Bishop of South Dakota then left to become the Bishop Coadjutor of Missouri, serving under Daniel Sylvester Tuttle (1837-1923), Bishop of Missouri from 1886 to 1923 and Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church from 1903 to 1923. Foote served as the Bishop of Missouri from 1923 to 1933, when he retired.
Zitkano Duzahan, Swift Bird: The Indians’ Bishop; a Life of the Rt. Rev. William Hobart Hare (1915), by Mary B. Peabody.
I ponder the contributions of these three men to the glory of God, to The Episcopal Church, to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and to the lives of the people they touched in positive ways then stand in awe of them. These were men of God whose influences (both direct and indirect) was great. I join others in standing on the shoulders of such giants.
Gabriele taught Italian at King’s College, London. Bad health forced his resignation in 1847, harming the family’s financial status. In 1853 and 1854 Christina and her mother operated a school at Frome, Somerset. That venture failed, so Christina and her parents moved in with her brother, William Michael, in 1854. Gabriele died later that year. The family remained under one roof until 1876. William Michael married artist and painter Lucy Madox Brown (1843-1894) in 1874. (Maria Francesca Rossetti, Christina’s sister, had been Lucy’s governess.) Christina and her mother moved to Bloomsbury in 1876. There the mother died ten years later. Christina dwelt there for the rest of her life, having never married, despite several opportunities to do so.
The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (1892).
The Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti; With Some Supplementary Letters and Appendices (1908).
Those who sing from hymnals created by committees with good taste might know some of our saint’s poems as hymn texts. The two primary examples these days are “Love Came Down at Christmas” and “In the Bleak Midwinter.” In the latter Rossetti wrote of the weather as it was in England, not in Palestine.
“Love Came Down at Christmas” is also wonderful.
Christina was ill for much of her life. She found comfort in her faith, as evident in her published works. In 1871 she came down with Graves’ Disease, a disorder of the thyroid gland. It affected her appearance negatively. Then, in 1891, she received the diagnosis of cancer, which caused her death three years later.
and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
We know little about the early life of St. Mellitus. He was probably Italian and of noble birth. He might also have been the Abbot of St. Andrew, Rome, leader of the monastery to which St. Augustine of Canterbury and St. Gregory I “the Great” had belonged. We do know, however, that St. Gregory I, as the Bishop of Rome, had sent St. Augustine and a team of missionaries a few years before he, at the request of St. Augustine (then the Archbishop of Canterbury) another team of missionaries. The leader of that second team was St. Mellitus.
St. Mellitus became an important figure in the English Church in the 600s. St. Augustine consecrated him a bishop in 604. St. Mellitus, apostle to the East Saxons, established his headquarters at London. He had to go into exile for at least a year in the late 610s because he refused to give sacramental bread to pagan princes. His eventual successor (after decades of a vacancy) as bishop in that region was St. Cedd of Lastingham. St. Mellitus became the third Archbishop of Canterbury in 619. His tenure, during most which he was prone to bad health, was mostly uneventful. He died in office on April 24, 624.
Foundational figures fascinate me, for I know that I am fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants. My faith has much to do with that St. Mellitus, who left his homeland, settled in a foreign country, and engaged in missionary work there. My ancestry is mostly British, so I owe a debt of gratitude to the founders of British Christianity, especially Roman Catholic missionaries to England in the late 500s and early 600s.
whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of England.

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