Lives of the Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Lives of the Saints’
The Roman Emperor offered to unite the world’s squabbling churches – but it was the kind of offer you can’t refuse.
English bishops met at Hatfield in 680, on the eve of a major Church Council at Constantinople. In the Imperial capital, the talk was all of uniting the world’s churches, but Pope Agatho wanted Britain’s support for something more radical: he meant to declare the gospel, even if he went the way of his predecessor, Martin.
While the besieged citizens of Novgorod huddled for protection in the city gaol, Archbishop John remained in his cathedral to pray.
After the death of his father Yuri Dolgoruky, Prince of Kiev, in 1157, Andrey Bogolubsky, Prince of Vladimir, Rostov and Suzdal, began to pursue his dream of ruling all Rus’. He drove Prince Mstislav II from Kiev in 1169, and in February 1170 a little matter of unpaid tribute gave him an excuse to besiege Mstislav’s son Roman in the historic city of Veliky Novgorod.
It is one of the world’s most recognisable works of art, and a symbol of God’s blessing on all Christian Rus’.
The Theotokos of Vladimir is an icon of Mary embracing her child Jesus, which came to Kiev from Constantinople in the 1130s. Not only has it become one of the world’s most recognisable works of sacred art, but on several occasions it has been credited with delivering the Christians of Rus’ from seemingly inevitable disaster.
A fiery fanatic wins support for the suppression of Christianity in its very cradle.
The Apostle St Paul had been given the name Saul by his parents, after the first King of Israel, but he changed it to Paul in honour of his Roman patron Sergius Paulus, a Proconsul of Cyprus, whom Saul brought to Christianity. Saul’s own conversion, in about AD 33 to 36, had been altogether more dramatic.
With Christianity faltering in the British Isles, Pope Gregory took the first definite steps towards restoring its vigour.
Romans brought the gospel to Britannia in the late first century, but the influx of pagan Angles and Saxons after the Romans abandoned the province in 410 all but snuffed the Church out. One man was determined to rekindle it, and the Kingdom of Kent was to be the touch-paper.
In 1274, the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople signed a historic reunion, but there were some formidable dissenters.
In 1261, the Roman Emperor Michael Palaeologos won his battered empire back from the Crusaders, but Charles, Count of Anjou, was eager to reconquer the East and bring its ‘schismatic’ Christians under the Pope. Michael instructed the Greek Church to give in and save his crown, but twenty-six monks of Mount Athos were more concerned with their consciences.