Historical Writings

Pope Honorius III officially approved the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), founded in 1216 by St. Dominic. During the Middle Ages, many leaders of European thought were Dominicans; and a good number followed Portuguese and Spanish explorers to the Americas as missionaries.

After three years imprisonment with torture, Julian "The Little" Hernandez is burned to death in Seville, Spain, for distributing Spanish language Bibles and Protestant literature and rejecting fasts and mortifications as a means of salvation.

Death of Peter Mogila, Metropolitan of Kiev, who had established an educational program that defended Orthodox teachings and had written many books that would remain influential into the twenty-first century, including a Russian catechism.

Birth of Father Demetrius Gallitzin, a Dutch Catholic priest. Arriving in America in 1792, he spent his remaining years as a frontier missionary, building up the Catholic church in parts of PA, MD, VA and WV. Gallitzin became known as the "Apostle to the Alleghenies."

Anglican missionary to Persia Henry Martyn wrote in his journal: 'I look forward to a day of prayer; for my soul hath great need of quickening and restoration, that it may act more in the view of eternity.'

Mercer University was chartered in Penfield, Georgia under Baptist support. In 1871 the college moved its campus to Macon, Georgia.

John Hunt and his wife Hanna Summers arrive in the Fiji Islands as missionaries. Hunt will bring about the conversion of the Fijians and help end the practice of cannibalism.

Henry Budd becomes the first person of First Nations ancestry ordained to the Anglican priesthood. He will work a large area of Western Canada and translate the Bible and Prayer Book into the Cree language.

Death in Oxford of Martin Joseph Routh, who until three years earlier had been president of Magdalen College. A notable scholar who compiled and published the works of early church fathers, he was in his hundredth year when he died, but clear-minded - and the owner of a personal library of 16,000 volumes, some very rare.

Death in Richmond, Virginia, of James Barnett Taylor, a Baptist clergyman, especially noted for his role in creating and preserving Richmond College. He had also written a biography of Lott Cary.

Death in New York City of Isaac Hecker, an influential American convert to Roman Catholicism, who had founded the order of Paulists in the United States and edited Catholic World.

Italian-born Francesca Xavier Cabrini, founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, dies in Chicago's Columbus Hospital. In 1946 she will be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, becoming the first American citizen declared a saint.

The first U.S. commercial radio license assigned to a religious broadcaster was awarded to the National Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C. Within five years, there were over 60 other licensed religious broadcasters, including KJS-Biola (L.A.), KFUO-Concordia Seminary (St. Louis), and WMBI-Moody Bible Institute (Chicago).

Gilberto Orellana, an El Salvadorean Christian composer teaching in Morocco, is arrested along with five Muslims he has led to Christ. An international outcry obtains his release after he is sentenced to eight months in prison. His converts also face prison, but three recant.

Authorities close a Baptist church in Neftechala, Azerbaijan, saying "without registration you cannot pray."