The Hanscom Family Weblog

0417 Zosimus becomes bishop of Rome
0537 Goths lay siege to Rome
0843 Icon worship officially re-instated in Aya Sofia Constantinople
1513 Giovanni de’ Medici chosen Pope Leo X
1665 New York approves new code guaranteeing Protestants religious rights. New York’s English Deputies approved a new legal code, which guaranteed all Protestants the right to practice their religious observances unhindered. (There were currently a host of Protestant groups thriving within this now_English colony, acquired only seven months earlier from the Dutch.)
1738 English revivalist George Whitefield wrote in his journal: ‘Suffering times are a Christian’s best improving times; for they break the will, wean us from the creature, prove the heart.’
1812 Citizenship granted to Prussian Jews
1845 Wittenberg College was chartered in Springfield, Ohio, under Lutheran auspices.
1860 Birth of H. Frances Davidson, pioneer missionary. In 1892 she became the first woman from the Brethren in Christ Church to earn an M.A. degree, and in 1897 became one of her denomination’s first missionaries to travel to the African continent.
1923 Death of Mary Ann Thomson, 89, American hymnwriter. Among her most enduring contributions to the Church were the lyrics to “O Zion, Haste, Thy Mission High Fulfilling,” which she wrote at age 34.
1977 Moslems hold 130 hostages in Washington DC

March 11

On this day in 1979, Constancio B. Manguramas, Bishop of Southern Philippines, was installed as Prime Bishop of the Philippine Episcopal Church at the Cathedral of St. Mary.

Feast Day:

St. Constantine, of Scotland, martyr, 6th century.
St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 639.
St. Angus, the Culdee, bishop in Ireland, 824.
St. Eulogius, of Cordova, 859.

March 11

Aengus (the Culdee), bishop, confessor [BLS]
Agapitus [WTS (Bruges)]
Blanchart [PCP (Paris)]
Constantine (II), king, martyr [BLS; GTZ: Scotland]
Eulogius (of Cordova), priest, martyr [BLS]
Forty martyrs [GTZ: Gnesen]
Gorgonius (and Dorothy), martyrs (Advent) [GTZ: Minden; HCC, without Dorothy]
Gumpert, confessor (Death) [GTZ: Würzburg]
John the Baptist (Invention of his head) [GTZ: Arles]
Oswin, king, martyr (Translation) [GTZ: York]
Sophronius, bishop (of Jerusalem) [BLS]
Vigilius, bishop (of Auxerre) [GTZ: Auxerre]

On This Day

Aengus the Culdee,
Alberta of Agen,
Aurea of San,
Millán,
Blessed John Righi,
Sophronius,
Vindician

In History

1930 - Gandhi’s Salt March begins, from Ahmadabad to Delhi, in protest against salt tax

March 11, 2010

St. John Ogilvie
(c. 1579-1615)

John Ogilvie’s noble Scottish family was partly Catholic and partly Presbyterian. His father raised him as a Calvinist, sending him to the continent to be educated. There John became interested in the popular debates going on between Catholic and Calvinist scholars. Confused by the arguments of Catholic scholars whom he sought out, he turned to Scripture. Two texts particularly struck him: “God wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth,” and “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you.”

Slowly, John came to see that the Catholic Church could embrace all kinds of people. Among these, he noted, were many martyrs. He decided to become Catholic and was received into the Church at Louvain, Belgium, in 1596 at the age of 17.

John continued his studies, first with the Benedictines, then as a student at the Jesuit College at Olmutz. He joined the Jesuits and for the next 10 years underwent their rigorous intellectual and spiritual training. Ordained a priest in France in 1610, he met two Jesuits who had just returned from Scotland after suffering arrest and imprisonment. They saw little hope for any successful work there in view of the tightening of the penal laws. But a fire had been lit within John. For the next two and a half years he pleaded to be missioned there.

Sent by his superiors, he secretly entered Scotland posing as a horse trader or a soldier returning from the wars in Europe. Unable to do significant work among the relatively few Catholics in Scotland, John made his way back to Paris to consult his superiors. Rebuked for having left his assignment in Scotland, he was sent back. He warmed to the task before him and had some success in making converts and in secretly serving Scottish Catholics. But he was soon betrayed, arrested and brought before the court. His trial dragged on until he had been without food for 26 hours. He was imprisoned and deprived of sleep. For eight days and nights he was dragged around, prodded with sharp sticks, his hair pulled out. Still, he refused to reveal the names of Catholics or to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the king in spiritual affairs. He underwent a second and third trial but held firm. At his final trial he assured his judges: “In all that concerns the king, I will be slavishly obedient; if any attack his temporal power, I will shed my last drop of blood for him. But in the things of spiritual jurisdiction which a king unjustly seizes I cannot and must not obey.”

Condemned to death as a traitor, he was faithful to the end, even when on the scaffold he was offered his freedom and a fine living if he would deny his faith. His courage in prison and in his martyrdom was reported throughout Scotland.

John Ogilvie was canonized in 1976, becoming the first Scottish saint since 1250.

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/saintoftheday/mar_11_-_st._sophronios_patriarch_of_jerusalem#6940

ST. AUREA
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010

St. Aurea was born around the year 1042 in the village of Villavelayo, Spain, in a region controlled by Moors. As a youth, Aurea studied the Scriptures and the lives of the early martyrs of the Church. Her favorite saints to meditate upon and try to copy were Agatha, Eulalia and Cecilia.

As a young woman, Aurea decided to leave home and join a religious convent. She was welcomed into the convent of San Millan de la Cogolla and completely applied herself to monastic life. Soon after joining the convent, Aurea received a vision of her three favorite saints and was encouraged to follow her chosen lifestyle with more zeal. God used St. Aurea to work many miracles and many people began to seek her advice and prayers.

Aurea spent only a few years of her life in the monastery. Around the year 1069 she contracted a painful disease and died. At the time of her death, Aurea was twenty-seven years old.

THE WITCHES OF BELVOIR

On the 11th of March 1618-19, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower, were burnt at Lincoln for the alleged crime of witch-craft. With their mother, Joan Flower, they had been confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle.

Dissatisfaction with their employers seems to have gradually seduced these three women into the practice of hidden arts in order to obtain revenge. According to their own confession, they had entered into communion with familiar spirits, by which they were assisted in their wicked designs. Joan Flower, the mother, had hers in the bodily form of a cat, which she called Rutterkin. They used to get the hair of a member of the family and burn it: they would steal one of his gloves and plunge it in boiling water, or rub it on the back of Rutterkin, in order to effect bodily harm to its owner. They would also use frightful imprecations of wrath and malice towards the objects of their hatred. In these ways they were believed to have accomplished the death of Lord Ross, the Earl of Rutland’s son, besides inflicting frightful sicknesses upon other members of the family.

It was long before the earl and countess, who were an amiable couple, suspected any harm in these servants, although we are told that for some years there was a manifest change in the countenance of the mother, a diabolic expression being assumed. At length, at Christmas, 1618, the noble pair became convinced that they were the victims of a hellish plot, and the three women were apprehended, taken to Lincoln jail, and examined. The mother loudly protested innocence, and, calling for bread and butter, wished it might choke her if she were guilty of the offences laid to her charge. Immediately, taking a piece into her mouth, she fell down dead, probably, as we may allowably conjecture, overpowered by consciousness of the contrariety between these protestations and the guilty design which she had entertained in her mind.

Margaret Flower, on being examined, acknowledged that she had stolen the glove of the young heir of the family, and given it to her mother, who stroked Rutterkin with it, dipped it in hot water, and pricked it: whereupon Lord Ross fell ill and suffered extremely. In order to prevent Lord and Lady Rutland from having any more children, they had taken some feathers from their bed, and a pair of gloves, which they boiled in water, mingled with a little blood. In all these particulars, Philippa corroborated her sister. Both women admitted that they had familiar spirits, which came and sucked them at various parts of their bodies: and they also described visions of devils in various forms which they had had from time to time.

Associated with the Flowers in their horrible practices were three other women, of the like grade in life,—Anne Baker, of Bottesford: Joan Willimot, of Goodby: and Ellen Greene, of Stathorne, all in the county of Leicester, whose confessions were to much the same purpose. Each had her own familiar spirits to assist in working out her malignant designs against her neighbours.

That of Joan Willimot was called Pretty. It had been blown into her mouth by her master, William Berry, in the form of a fairy, and immediately after came forth again and stood on the floor in the shape of a woman, to whom she forthwith promised that her soul should be enlisted in the infernal service. On one occasion, at Joan Flower’s house, she saw two spirits, one like an owl, the other like a rat, one of which sucked her under the ear. This woman, however, protested that, for her part, she only employed her spirit in inquiring after the health of persons whom she had undertaken to cure.

Greene confessed to having had a meeting with Willimot in the woods, when the latter called two spirits into their company, one like a kitten, the other like a mole, which, on her being left alone, mounted on her shoulders and sucked her under the ears. She had then sent them to bewitch a man and woman who had reviled her, and who, accordingly, died within a fortnight. Anne Baker seems to have been more of a visionary than any of the rest. She once saw a hand, and heard a voice from the air: she had been visited with a flash of fire: all of them ordinary occurrences in the annals of hallucination. She also had a spirit, but, as she alleged, a beneficent one, in the form of a white dog.

From the frontispiece of a contemporary pamphlet giving an account of this group of witches, we transfer a homely picture of Baker, Willimot, and Greene, attended each by her familiar spirit. The entire publication is reprinted inNichols’s Leicestershire.

The examinations of these wretched women were taken by magistrates of rank and credit, and when the judges came to Lincoln the two surviving Flowers were duly tried, and on their own confessions condemned to death by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Henry Hobbert

Johnny Appleseed Day

When : March 11th and/or September 26th. Why two dates?……read on

Johnny Appleseed Day honors one of America’s great legends. Johnny Appleseed was a real person. John Chapman was among the American settlers who were captivated by the movement west across the continent. As Johnny Appleseed travelled west, he planted apple trees along the way, and sold trees to settlers. With every apple tree that was planted, the legend grew.

A Little About the Legend:

John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) was born on September 26, 1774.
He was a nurseryman who started out planting trees in western New York and Pennsylvania.
During the life of John Chapman, the “West” was places like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.
John Chapman was a deeply religious person He was known to preach during his travels.
According to legend, Johny Appleseed led a simple life and wanted little. He rarely accepted money and often donated any money he received.
It is believed that he died on March 11, 1845, from what was referred to as the “winter plague”. The actual date of his death has been disputed.
There is a lot of “legend” in stories written about Johny Appleseed. By it’s definition, over the years, legends grow bigger than life. It also appears that there is some link between Johny Appleseed and very early Arbor Day celebrations.

Celebrate today with an apple rich menu. Include fresh apples for snacks, and some applesauce or apple pie for dessert. And, make plans to plant an apple tree.

Origin of “Johnny Appleseed Day”:

There is plenty of documentation to support claims for Johnny Appleseed Day on March 11th and on September 26th. We found no one who claims to have created this special day.

So, here’s the skinny on the two dates: