History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
When the capital of the Roman Empire was in the grip of a violent earthquake, it fell to one small child to save all the people.
According to tradition, the Trisagion or Thrice-Holy Hymn was revealed by angels one September 24th during the tenure of Patriarch Proclus of Constantinople (434-446). Some thirty years later Peter, the abrasive Patriarch of Antioch and a former fuller by trade, took it upon himself to add an extra line. Three centuries after that John Damascene was still upset about it.
On October 13th, 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was crowned King Henry IV of England in Westminster Abbey.
The reign of Richard II began with the Peasants’ Revolt, and by 1399 he had done little to win his unhappy people over. He had become both greedy and extravagant, and when the powerful Percy family in Northumberland encouraged Richard’s second cousin Henry Bolingbroke to claim the crown, he won it with only a few hundred men. On Monday October 13th, 1399, Henry was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
As late as the fifteenth century, criminals on the run could find refuge in the precincts of England’s great churches.
From at least the time of King Ine of Wessex in 693, criminal first offenders fleeing to the protection of the Church could expect at least safe conduct out of the kingdom, and even a pardon. The custom persisted at Durham long into the fifteenth century, but was increasingly abused and records ended abruptly in 1503, during Henry VII’s reign.
Scientist and clergyman Temple Chevallier believed that the fast pace of recent discoveries in astronomy risked substituting a new superstition for an old one.
In the Hulsean Lectures for 1827, astronomer and clergyman Temple Chevallier explored the opening words of Psalm 19: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work’. He spoke of the wonder of the heavens, of the spell it has exercised upon the mind of man, and of two superstitions into which it has drawn him: blind faith in the stars, and blind faith in scientists.
Thomas Wright offers his readers a way of thinking about the enormous distances involved in any description of the solar system.
As an astronomer, Thomas Wright was particularly struck by the sheer size of the universe, “the secret Depths of Infinity, and the wonderful hidden Truths of this vast Ocean of Beings”. He often found that others, though fascinated by the solar system, had no conception of the distances involved, so he came up with this homely illustration.
Though some other sciences may seem to destroy it, astronomy restores a sense of religious awe.
Astronomer Thomas Wright approached his subject not only with passion but also with reverence. In a preface to his collection of nine ‘Letters’, in which he discussed fifteen years of observations, he told his unnamed correspondent that in common with many heroes of science and literature, he had found his religious belief deepened by studying the stars.