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AMDG
AMDG
Confraternity of Christ the King
Consociatio Christi Regis
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Christendom, as a concept, is unfortunately so foreign to us moderns that we can scarcely understand its meaning. Historically, however, it has a clear and definite meaning, and this project is designed to help convey that. It serves as a great reminder for those who are well-versed in the history of Christendom, as well as a great beginning for those who are not.
One can simply read through the calendar, and this may be a rewarding endeavor. However, each day the day's headline is posted on Mastodon, specifically the RCSocial instance; this will be a link that one can follow to the appropriate day. Thus, each day one gets a small dose of the great and glorious history of Christendom, an excellent way to absorb the ways in which men have attempted to instantiate the integral reign of Christ the King.
When the Magyars first swept into Europe, they were a pagan force that wreaked havoc on the valley that they eventually called their home, which we now call Hungary. Although the son of Christians, St. Stephen was the first of his family to truly follow the faith. The pagan Hungarians supported a relative of his, Koppány, for the Hungarian throne; after he was able to defeat them, with a combination of Christian Hungarians and foreign assistance, he was crowned on this date in 1001 with a crown sent to him by Pope Sylvester II. He had a tremendously successful reign, and died 15 August 1038. His life and reign are a splendid example of how the breath of the Faith animates the body of the state. St. Stephen's feast day is 30 May, the date of the translation of his relics to Budapest.
On this date, the most Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabel of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon, jointly conquered the last outpost of Muslim rule in Spain, the kingdom of Granada. After nearly eight hundred years, the long war to regain Spain for Christendom was complete.
On this date in 1602, Red Hugh O'Donnell, against the advice of Hugh O'Neill, leader of the rebellion against the Tudor invasion, attempted a surprise attack against the English armies at Kinsale. The English, however, were more than prepared for the attack, and in fact surprised and routed the Irish instead. An army of some 3,500 Spaniards, arrived to assist, was thus left defenseless and surrendered to the English. This put O'Neill in a very weak position, leading to the Treaty of Mellifont in 1603, and effectively to centuries of Protestant domination and persecution in Catholic Ireland. This battle was effectively the end of meaningful resistence to the Tudors in the Nine Years' War.
Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, traveled to his city of Ponthion to meet with Pope Stephen on this date in 754. The first time that any pope had travelled north of the Alps while in office, Pope Stephen asked Pepin to vindicate the rights of the Pope and of Rome against the Lombards, whose king, Aistulf, had recently conquered what the Empire knew as “the exarchate of Ravenna”. Pepin promised to assist the Pope, leading the Franks to be seen as the protectors of the Church, and marched south to defeat Aistulf in 755, after Aistulf had refused an offer to return the territories without war. Pepin thereupon donated the entire exarchate of Ravenna, along with areas such as Forlì, Romagna, and the Pentapolis, to the papacy to rule as a temporal trust. In this way, Pepin and Pope Stephen hoped to make the Church permanently independent of temporal powers, able to hold her own against anyone who may attempt to control the Church by controlling Christ's vicar. This donation, renewed by the Emperor Charlemagne (Pepin's son) in 774, made the Pope a temporal ruler as well as a spiritual sovereign, and helped ensure papal independence for over a thousand years.
On this day in 1431, St. Joan of Arc's flagrantly noncanonical and unfair trial began in Rouen. Her support of the rightful order of the kingdom of France would lead to her martyrdom later in the year.
Sicut Dudum, which forbids the enslavement of Canary natives, was promulgated by Pope Eugene IV on this date in 1435.
On this date, in 1208, Peter (Pierre) de Castelnau was martyred by Albigensian (Cathar) heretics for attempting to convert one of their noble patrons, Raymond of Toulouse, back to the true Faith. This martyrdom led Pope Innocent III, after some bad-faith pretended repentence from Raymond, to declare the Albigensian Crusade in 1209.
King of Northumbria from 729 to 737, Ceolwulf was a huge part of the conversion of the pagan Anglo-Saxons in Britain. Ceolwulf was close to the Venerable Bede and frequently consulted him for advice in ruling his kingdom, and endowed the monastery of Lindisfarne. Unfortunately, Ceolwulf was more suited to monastic life than to kingship; as a result, he abdicated the throne in 737 and entered Lindisfarne as a monk, living out his days (twenty-eight more years) there in peace and obscurity. He died on this date in 765.
On this date in 1537, Sir Francis Bigod of Yorkshire began an armed rebellion against King Henry VIII and his attempt to destroy the Faith in England. With a base of English Roman Catholics primarily in Cumberland and Westmorland, Bigod attempted to resist the destruction of the Faith by the king, but unfortunately met with little success, being defeated at Beverley, in Yorkshire, on 19 January. He was captured on 10 February, and was shortly thereafter hanged, along with 215 others, including 38 monks and 16 parish priests.
On this date in 379, the emperor Theodosius (Θεοδόσιος) became Emperor of the East, receiving the purple from a council at Sirmium. He proceeded to pacify the Goths; preside over a great renaissance of art; finally make a lasting peace with the Persians; and eventually become the sole Emperor of the entire Empire in 389. He became a follower of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and was famously disciplined by him for the massacre at Thessalonica in 390. St. Ambrose famously would not admit Theodosius to Communion in Milan until he had publicly done penance; Theodosius, in obedience to the Church, came to Mass without his imperial insignia for some time, before Ambrose accepted his penance.
The last of the truly legitimate French monarchs, Louis XVI, was unjustly put to death after a show trial by the French Revolutionary government on this date in 1793. Although a reformer who sincerely attempted to rule his country justly, his insistence on the rights of the Crown and the rule of the Catholic Faith made him unacceptable to the Revolution. The day of his execution, he met with an Irish priest (all French priests who remained faithful having been expelled from France or killed) to make his confession and receive Communion. When he went to the guillotine, he declared his innocence and prayed that his murder would not fall back on France, forgiving those who were killing him. It was necessary for the Revolutionaries to ensure that drummers would proceed the carriage pulling him to his death, so that the noise would drown out support for the King. Drum rolls were further used to drown out his final words; the noble statements cited above are all that could be heard. Louis, a flawed king but good man, rightful ruler of France, died a noble and dignified death on this day.
On this date in 1077, the Emperor Henry IV's excommunication was lifted. This great incident, known to history as “the Road to Canossa”, established firmly the supremacy of the spiritual power over the temporal in medieval Christendom. It was the culmination of the investitute controversy, in which Henry IV claimed the authority to invest bishops and archbishops with their insignia of authority. The Pope, correctly holding that only the spiritual power could invest spiritual authority, excommunicated Henry when Henry insisted on that authority himself. When his nobles refused him obedience due to the excommunication, Henry did penance: he went to Canossa, where the pope was staying, and knelt for three days and nights during a blizzard, beseeching the Pope for forgiveness and reconciliation. The Pope granted this, and the supremacy of the spiritual power was thus firmly established. This event, in which the grand emperor, the most powerful ruler in Europe, knelt and did humble penance before the Pope, is among the most dramatic and impactful incidents of the entire history of Christendom, and stands for the great principle of the supremacy of the spiritual power.
On this date, in 1928, the fourteen-year-old José Luis Sánchez del Río (known affectionately as “Joselito”, “Little Joe”), went to his eternal reward, brutally martyred by the anti-Catholic revolutionary government of Mexico. A Cristero, Joselito was capured during a battle; he was forced to watch the hanging of another prisoner, but Joselito told him, “You will be in Heaven before me. Prepare a place for me. Tell Christ the King I shall be with him soon.” On 10 February, Joselito was brutally tortured; the soles of his feet were skinned, and he was forced to walk on salt, then through the town to the cemetary, where a grave was already dug for him. He was told that if only he were to say, one single time, “Muerte Cristo Rey” (“Death to Christ the King”), they would release him; though the pain was excruciating, and he could not help but scream, he refused, even responding, “¡Viva Cristo Rey! ¡Viva Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe!” (“Long live Christ the King! Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe!”) Finally, at the graveside, he was given one more chance; still again he shouted, “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” He was then shot in the head, receiving his glorious reward. St. Joselito, pray for us!
Emperor Theodosius II, on this date in 429, published a compilation of imperial laws promulgated by the Christian Emperors since Constantine's conversion in 312. This was an important step towards the Justinian code, promulgated about a century later, and shows a good acknowledgement of the subordination of civil law to divine and ecclesiastical law. For example, no legal action could be brought during Holy Week.
On this date in 1098, Baldwin of Boulogne reached the city of Edessa, invited there by the Christian lord of the city in the hopes that he would help defend him from attacking Muslims. Baldwin was adopted as a son by Thoros, lord of Edessa; the city, Christian since the third century at the very latest, in fact rioted and killed Thoros and welcomed Baldwin as their new lord. While the actual County of Edessa was not formed until then, on 9 March, Baldwin's arrival is pivotal. The County of Edessa became an important power among the Crusader kingdoms, and its fall in 1144 provoked the Second Crusade.
St. Æthelberht of Kent was the first Anglo-Saxon king to convert to Christianity, and reigned 589–616. He was converted, like so many kings, by marrying a good Christian woman, in this case Bertha, the daughter of Charibert I, King of the Franks. Bertha's influence is part of the reason that Pope Gregory I sent St. Augustine as a new bishop to the English, and he landed in Kent in 597. Between Augustine and Bertha, Æthelberht converted, and donated the land that would become the cathedral of Canterbury for a mission to the English. Æthelberht also issued the first written code of law in any Germanic language, Æthelberht's law, and built a strong and wealthy Kent. His feast day is 24 Feb, the date of his death in 616.
On this date, in 380, the Emperor Theodosius established Catholicism as the state religion of the Roman Empire. Theodosius, a devout and orthodox Catholic, assisted in the final defeat of the Arian heresy, and thereafter officially established the true Faith as the state religion of the Empire. As the first ruler of Christendom who *as a ruler* publicly acknowledged his own and his Empire's dependence and reliance upon Christ the King, Theodosius and the Edict of Thessalonica is a pivotal point in the development of Christendom and the integral establishment of the reign of Christ the King.
On this date, in 1562, François, Duc de Guise (“de Guise”), attempted to enter a Protestant church which had been illegally set up in the walled town of Vassy, and indeed on property under his own control. He was resisted at the door, and in his own words met with arquebuses (early firearms) firing at his men from inside the building; his men had only swords, no ranged weapons. There is dispute about how many were killed; the Catholic Encyclopedia states twenty-three, other sources fifty. The fact that even Protestant-sympathizing sources indicate that only six were killed who were not adult males does give credit to de Guise's account that his men were resisting an armed assault. Regardless of the facts (and the fact that the Protestant meeting, occurring where and when it did, was clearly illegal is not in dispute), the Huguenots turned it into a cause célèbre, using it to justify a widespread uprising against the government. This incident sparked the French Wars of Religion, which laid waste to large swathes of France in the next decades. De Guise himself was betrayed and assassinated by a Huguenot in 1563, the Huguenot leaders were not ashamed to turn over entire French cities to foreign powers (Havre was delivered by them to the English, and in 1627 they essentially yielded control of La Rochelle to them). Often unconscionably bloody, great atrocities were committed by both sides in these wars, though Anglo-American histories generally ignore those committed by the Huguenots.
On this date in 1793, the Catholic peasantry of the Vendée region of France rose up against the anti-Catholic Revolutionary government. Loyal to the Church, and to a lesser extent to their lords, who lived among them, the Vendéens rose up when the Revolutionary government sent messengers to demand that they donate their young men to the Revolutionary army. This was too much; rather than joining the Revolutionary army, the Vendéens formed a “Catholic and Royal Army” and fought against the anti-Catholic state. They won a string of victories, producing great heroes and martyrs, until they were finally overwhelmed by superior numbers and weaponry. The Revolution brutally suppressed the Vendée, in August ordering the total destruction of the region. The “infernal columns” of the Revolution marched through the Vendée, murdering untold numbers of the people.
In 1560, Louis, Prince of Condé, a Protestant, directed La Renaudie, another Protestant, to attempt to kidnap François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (known to history simply as “de Guise”). De Guise was well-known as the most prominent defender of the Catholic Faith in France, as well as a legendary hero of the then-recent Italian wars. When the plot was foiled, on this date in 1560, French Protestants (called “Huguenots”) attempted to storm the Chateau d'Amboise, where de Guise had sequestered the king and queen for their safety. The uprising was defeated, but was cast by the Huguenots as a Catholic persecution, and open violence between Catholics and Protestants in France was not far off.
On this date in 1793, the Battle of Gravereau Bridge was the first major engagement between the revolutionary military and the Vendeans' Catholic and Royal Army. A battle lasting approximately six hours led to a rout of the revolutionary forces.
On this date, in 1636, France (governed primarily by Cardinal Richelieu) signed the Treaty of Wismar with Protestant Sweden, officially entering the Thirty Years' War on the Protestant side. Prior to 1624, France refused to enter the war at all, due to being a strongly Catholic power struggling with Protestantism internally; in 1624, however, when Cardinal Richelieu took over, France's foreign goals became much more limiting Hapsburg power than assisting the cause of Catholicism. From 1624 on, the French financed the Dutch and the Swedes on the Protestant side; on this date in 1636, they entered the war directly. This is considered the beginning of the “second phase” of the war, and while the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 left the borders of Catholicism and Protestantism broadly the same as they were in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire was never the same, Spain declined as a world power and lost the Low Countries, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was substantially weakened. France's role in this war can be considered nothing less than shameful.
On this date in 1344, a year-and-a-half long siege of the port city of Algeciras ended with a Christian victory. Allied troops of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Navarre, Genoa, and other various Crusaders successfully seized this vital port city to the east of Gibraltar, and gave Christians an excellent base of operations for further actions against the Muslims in Granada.
St. Guntram was the Merovingian king of the small Frankish kingdom of Orléans (Aureliana, in Latin) for over thirty years, from 561 to 592. Unusually for a Merovingian king, he had a long and stable reign, due to his personal piety and good sense. After a somewhat dissolute youth, he devoted himself to penance and good works, and he is referred to routinely by St. Gregory of Tours as “good king Gontrand”. On a personal level, he was engaged in constant prayers and fastings; in public, he was a great patron of the church, building and endowing countless churches and monasteries, and was devoted to the poor and sick especially, but also to all of his subjects. He died at Chalon-sur-Saône in 592 and was immediately venerated as a saint, miracles having been performed by him in life and after death, some of which St. Gregory of Tours witnessed. The Huguenots scattered his ashes in contempt, but his skull is still kept at the Church of Saint Marcellus in Chalon—a church which he founded.
On this date in 1603, Irish fighters against the Tudor English conquest of Ireland were forced to surrender, resulting in the end of a Catholic-ruled, Gaelic Ireland and centuries of English domination. While it was a negotiated peace, it was from a position of strength for the English, who had spent the spring destroying the food-producing livelihoods—fields and livestock—in the northern provinces that would later become part of what is now Northern Ireland. Queen Elizabeth had been dedicating three-quarters of her total funds to the Irish war, so important was it to put the Catholics down. Hugh O'Neill submitted to the recently reigning King James, renounced his traditional title, accepted English law over Gaelic law, accepted English as an official language (rather than Irish Gaelic), and agreed that no Catholic college could be built on his lands. Almost immediately, in 1605, large-scale persecution of Catholicism began, including the execution of two bishops, leading to the famous Flight of the Earls in an attempt to gain foreign help to renew their recently ceased rebellion, and leading to the Plantation of Ulster. This was a massive defeat for Catholic Ireland, and thus for Christendom. This war was known as the Nine Years' War.
Emperor Justinian the Great was crowned on this date in the year 527. Taking his obligation as ruler of the Christian Empire very seriously, Justinian made it his mission to reestablish the fullness of the Roman Empire, a task which he only partially completed. His famous general Belisarius was able to reclaim North Africa, Italy, and the Balkan provinces, along with southern Hispania; the remainder of the old Western Empire, however, remained outside of his rule, and indeed outside of the true Empire until the coronation of Charlemagne in 800. He was the last Roman emperor to speak Latin as his first language. Most famously, he established the Corpus Juris Civilis, the famed civil code which remains the distant basis for the codes of laws in many European states. This code united the good of the old pagan Roman codes with the excellent work done by the Christian emperors since Constantine, including the Theodosian code. The Code established Christianity—specifically orthodox, Nicene Christianity as passed down from the Apostles—as the official religion of the Empire; prohibited pagan sacrifices; and otherwise streamlined the traditional Roman law. Justinian died on 14 November 565.
Emperor Charles I of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Croatia, King of Bohemia, died on this date in 1922. He married his love, Zita, in 1911, and they had eight children together; famously he told her, when they were married, that they now had to lead one another to Heaven. Never supposed to become the emperor, he became the heir apparent upon the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, when Emperor Franz Joseph finally began to train him into the role. However, Franz was already quite old, and died in 1916. He led an offensive into Italy in 1916, which like so many offensives in the meat-grinder of the First World War saw some initial success before grinding to a halt. Horrified by the nightmare that the war had become, Charles attempted to make a separate peace with the Allies in what became known as “the Sixtus Affair” (because Charles's brother-in-law, Sixtus, was an officer in the Belgian army and was used as an intermediary), an attempt which unfortunately failed. Charles favored creating a third kingdom in the Empire (to join Austria and Hungary), Croatia, and was a model ruler of a multiethnic state. This was not to be, as the end of the war forced Charles into exile, he and his family being officially banished by act of the revolutionary allied-supported parliament of German Austria; and though, encouraged by Hungarian royalists, he did attempt to retake the Hungarian crown, he was unsuccessful in this, as well. Charles and Zita, now pregnant with their eighth child, and their children were exiled to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died on this date in 1922. Charles (or Karl, or Karolyi) always put the Faith first in his decisions, and acted always for the good of his people and not himself. His feast day is 21 October, the date of his marriage to his beloved Empress Zita.
On this date in 742, Charles (Karl) was born at Aachen, Francia, to his father, Pepin the Short, and his mother, Bertrada of Laon. Raised a loyal Catholic, Charlemagne took on his father's dedication to the physical protection of the Church, particularly the papacy. He united most of the former Western Roman Empire north of the Pyrenees under his rule, ejected the Lombards when they threatened the political autonomy of the papacy, fought the Moors in Spain and the pagan Saxons in Germany, and was eventually crowned the Emperor by Pope Leo on Christmas Day in 800. Himself likely illiterate (though he could speak his own Frankish tongue as well as Latin), he was a great admirer and pursuer of learning, often having great works, particularly St. Augustine, read to him during meals. He endowed countless monastary schools, scriptoria (places for book-copying), and other centers of learning. His dedication to learning was such that, under his leadership, countless works of antiquity were preserved which would otherwise have been lost, and it is nearly certain that any work which survived in Charlemagne's time was copied and distributed such that it still survives today. Charlemagne was a great model of a Christian king and ruler, and thus a great object of study for the devotees of Christ the King.
On this date in 801, the city of Barcelona was reconquered for Christendom from the Muslims who had stolen it in their initial invasion of Spain. Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, commanded an imperial army and took the city after a six-month siege, when its commander surrendered. The people of Barcelona welcomed Louis with joy, opening the gates to his army; he entered the city led by clergy singing psalms and went directly to the church to thank God for the victory.
On this date in 529, the Code of Justinian was first promulgated. This Code established Christianity—specifically orthodox, Nicene Christianity as passed down from the Apostles—as the official religion of the Empire; prohibited pagan sacrifices; and otherwise streamlined the traditional Roman law. This Code was the first new systematized code showing a good acknowledgement of the subordination of civil law to divine and ecclesiastical law.
On this date in 1250, St. Louis of France was defeated in the Battle of Fariskur, falling prisoner with his men to the Muslims. During his captivity, St. Louis showed the incredible saintly virtue for which his whole life was known; he encouraged his own men and presented an admirable example of virtue to the Muslims. Though he was offered to be ransomed separately from his men, he refused to be ransomed while any of them remained in captivity. When threatened with torture, he replied meekly and calmly, “I am a prisoner of the Sultan, and he can do with me as he wills.” Finally, when a reasonable ransom offer had been made by his captors, St. Louis stated that he would need to consult his queen; the Muslims found this risible, that a warrior king would consult a woman regarding such a thing. St. Louis responded only, “Know, she is my wife.” He was ransomed and returned to France in this same year; he returned the city of Damietta to the Muslims for himself, and paid 1,000,000 livres for the ransom of his men.
This event, long considered the foundation of the modern state of Poland, occurred on this date in 966. King Mieszko I, long married to Dobrawa of Bohemia, a loyal Christian, accepted baptism and became a loyally Christian king. Though some of his people resisted him, and even revolted against him, due to his baptism, Mieszko remained strong and built a new Christian nation. The Polish became a famously Catholic nation, and Mieszko's baptism (and, more fundamentally, Dobrawa's example) has shined strong and bright through the ages.
On this date in 1745, the last serious Catholic claimant to the throne of England, Scotland, and Wales, Charles III (“bonnie Prince Charlie”), was defeated by an English force led by the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. The defeat was devastating; the flower of Catholic Scotland was cut down, and the subsequent suppression of Catholic Scots by the Hanoverian kings of England was severe. Further suppression involved the destruction of traditional Highland culture, up to and including the outlawing of traditional Highland clothing. Famously, these “Jacobites” (because the supported the cause of the deposed James II, in Latin “Jacobus”) wore a white cockade on their hats as identification.
The paradigm of the Christian king, St. Louis, was born on this date in 1214, to Blanche of Castile, his saintly Spanish mother, and Louis VIII (“the Lion”), his father, who died in 1226, when Louis was only twelve. Famously, Blanche told Louis when he was young, “I love you, my dear son, as much as a mother can love her child; but I would rather see you dead at my feet than that you should ever commit a mortal sin.” Louis took this lesson close to his heart. Louis dearly loved his wife, Margaret of Province, whom he married in 1234, and fathered eleven children with her. He went on two crusades, both unfortunately without success; he greatly improved the legal system in France; and he dedicated himself and his family to the diligent service of the Lord. After his death, it became known that he wore a hair shirt, and he was known to be closely devoted to the breviary. His holiness and wisdom were of universal reknown, such that foreign powers would beg his advice and intercession in their affairs. For example, he was asked to solve a dispute between Henry III of England and his barons. He was also a well-known patron of the arts, with the grand Saint Chappelle, built for the housing of the sacred Crown of Thorns, being likely his most famous achievement. While on his second crusade, near Tunis, he finally died on 25 August in 1270. Louis remains a most exemplary figure of Christian rule, Christian manhood, and Christian life.
On this date in 711, Muslim troops under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar and began their invasion of what is now Spain, and was then the kingdom of the Visigoths.
On this date in 1429, St. Joan of Arc arrived to relieve the siege of Orléans.
On this date in 1808, the Catholic people of Madrid rose up against the Revolutionary government imposed upon them by Napoleon, giving additional impetus to the resistance to Napoleon throughout Spain in the Peninsular Wars. Hundreds of the uprisers were executed the next day; because it was a non-military uprising, even those with simple tools such as shears were deemed “armed” and therefore shot.
On this date in 1491, King Nzinga a Nkuwu of the great central African kingdom of Kongo was baptized, taking the name of João after the King of Portugal. Nzinga, having learned about Christianity from the Portuguese, sent several of his nobles to Europe to learn to read, write, and understand the new religion; when they returned, they instructed him and he was baptized. Kongo remained a Christian kingdom for centuries, until 1862, when it become purely a tributary kingdom of Portugal; in 1914, it was absorbed into the colony of Angola.
On this date in 1439, the Battle of Grotniki was fought. A Hussite (heretical proto-Protestant) army attempted to challenge King Władysław III of Poland; the King, however, decisively defeated them, ending the last vestige of the militant Hussite movement. This was also an important event in the centralization of royal power in Poland.
On this date in 1793, the Vendeans met the revolutionary army at the Pont de Vrine, leading into the town of Thouars. After hours of battle, Louis Marie de Lescure advanced onto the bridge alone, under fire, and called the men to follow him; the Catholic and Royal Army took the bridge, routed the revolutionaries, and eventually took the town. Though they captured many revolutionary soldiers, all were released on their oath not to fight in the Vendée.
Between 6 May and 12 May, King Alfred the Great defeated the Great Heathen Army led by Guthrum the Dane, saving Christian England from being completely overrun by the pagan Vikings. Though the Vikings had run roughshod over all England for some months, Alfred raised the fyrd (the fighting-ready men) of several shires and faced them at Edington, defeating them soundly. Guthrum interpreted the defeat as the defeat of his gods and converted, as part of the peace treaty, to Christianity, with Alfred himself standing as his godfather. While Viking raids continued, Christianity was never again in serious danger in England.
On this date in 589, King Reccared of the Visigoths used his royal power and influence to direct his people toward the path to God. On this date, he opened the Council of Toledo. While the Visigoths had been turned to Arianism while still dwelling in the East, the Council of Toledo firmly declared for true Christianity and brought the Visigoths back to the true Faith.
On this date, in 1429, St. Joan of Arc lead the battle which raised the siege of Orléans and saved the city.
St. Abgar of Edessa, the first Christian monarch in history, ruled the kingdom of Osroene (capital Edessa) as a client kingdom of the Roman empire until his death in A.D. 50. He was converted to the True Faith by Thaddeus of Edessa, one of the seventy-two disciples mentioned in Luke 10. Almost certainly himself an Arab, St. Abgar is venerated especially by the Armenians, also very early converts to Christianity. He is also said to have exchanged letters with Christ Himself, copies of which still exist. The Syriac and Armenian liturgies both commemorate these letters; the letters themselves were held in the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos in Constantinople, then eventually transferred, like many of the relics of the Passion, to St. Louis IX of France and kept in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. The letters, like so much, disappeared during the ravages of the French Revolution.
On this date, in 1532, St. Thomas More resigned his position as Lord Chancellor of England. To remain in the position, he would have had to swear an oath supporting King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church in England, and St. Thomas refused to do so.
Acre, the last Christian possession in the Holy Land, fell to Muslim armies on this date in 1291 after a siege that had begun on 4 April. Despite the great efforts and expenditures made by St. Louis after his Crusade was defeated in Egypt, Acre was unable to persist isolated, without the rest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Accompanied by looting and massacres, the Muslims stormed the city on that day and night, defeating a valiant but ultimately doomed opposition led by the Knights Templar. Only remaining was a single fortress, which held out until 28 May. On 20 May, the Crusaders asked for amnesty; the Sultan agreed to allow the women and children to leave, but when the Templars opened the gates, Muslim cavalry entered and began butchering the women and children. The Templars shut the gates and were able to defeat the soldiers who had entered. The Sultan sent a letter to the final defenders, asking him to come out of the fortress to discuss terms. When this invitation was accepted, the Sultan had the delegation massacred. Finally, on 28 May, the Crusaders in the fortress surrendered, unable to further resist and knowing that the Muslims had already mined the tower and were preparing to destroy it. Though the Kingdom of Jerusalem technically lived on for centuries, now based in Cyprus, this was the end of the great dream of a Christian Holy Land.
The Great Siege of Malta (L-Assedju I-Kbir) began on this date in 1565. During this siege, which did not end until 12 September, 500 Knights Hospitaller, with only themselves and approximately 6000 other soldiers (Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Sicilians, and of course about 3,000 Maltese), held off an assault by 35,000–40,000 Muslim Turks. Led by Jean Parisot de Valette (better known simply as “de Valette”), the Maltese heroically held off the vastly superior Turkish forces (who, in addition to their other attacks, flung some 130,000 cannonballs onto the defenders) for months, killing at least 25,000 and perhaps as many as 35,000. Finally, in September a relieving force of about 8,000 Sicilians under the Viceroy Don Garcia landed, forcing the Turks to withdraw. De Valette famously encouraged his men with religious devotion throughout the siege, offering thanksgiving Masses with every victory, no matter how minor. This was the last great battle involving a force of Crusader knights.
On this day in 1268, Mamluk ruler Baibars completed his capture of the city of Antioch (except the citadel, which resisted for two more days). Though the Christians resisted valiantly, they were unable to hold off the Muslim attack, and subsequently the city faced an unprecedented and horrific slaughter. Even historians not favorable to the Crusaders agree; Michaud, for example, stated that “[m]ost historians agree in saying that seventeen thousand Christians were slaughtered, and a hundred thousand dragged away into slavery,“ and Thomas Madden calls it “the single greatest massacre of the entire crusading era.” The countless martyrs, and countless confessors who lived the remainder of their lives in abject slavery, bear great witness to their God, Christ the King.
St. Ethelbert (Æþelberhte) was king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia from about 779 until his death in 794. Little is known definitely about his reign due to the unreliability of Anglo-Saxon record-keeping. However, it is known that he agreed to marry Eadburh, the daughter of King Offa of Mercia, and that he was a subordinate king to Offa (as, indeed, East Anglia had long been a sub-kingdom of Mercia and, later, of Wessex). It is also known that he was much beloved by the people of East Anglia, and that he was beheaded by Offa for unknown reasons in 794.
Flavius Constantinus, born on 27 February 272 in Naissus, Moesia (now Niŝ, Serbia), and died 22 May 337 in Achyron, Nicomedia, Bithynia, has traditionally had this day, the day of his baptism, as his feast. While never formally canonized, he has often been venerated as a saint. As augustus of the West, Constantine received a vision instructing him to place the symbol of Christ, the “Chi-Rho” (“☧”), a combination of the first two letters of Christ in Greek (“ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ”), with the emblem “In hoc signo vinces” (“In this sign, thou shalt conquer”) on his shields; upon doing so, he crushed his opponent in the West at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and eventually became the first single ruler of the entire empire since Diocletian. As emperor, Constantine freed the Church, endowed countless churches, declared his patronage of the persecuted Christians of Persia and prepared an expedition to protect them, defended the orthodox Faith against the Donatists, and established Sunday as a day of rest throughout the empire. Constantine permanently changed the world through his devotion to Christ the King.
On this date in 1430, St. Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundian troops at the Siege of Compiègne. This, of course, began her path to martyrdom.
This titanic conflict, arguably the central conflict of the second millenium, began on this date in 1618. The Thirty Years' War was the great struggle arising out of the Protestant Revolt beginning a century earlier, the definitive decision on whether Christendom would be united and serving the integral reign of Christ the King, or divided into warring Protestant and Catholic states and empires. Unfortunately, the latter prevailed. The war began on 23 May when Emperor Ferdinand, duly elected and clearly legitimate Holy Roman Emperor, decreed (in accordance with previous treaties) that Protestant rights in Bohemia would be respected. Protestant lords demanded an imperial conference, and four Catholic lords met with the Protestant representatives at Prague. The Protestants made demands upon the Emperor, and the Catholic lords asked for time to consult with the Emperor prior to answering. However, the Protestants insisted on an immediate answer, and when two of the lords declared agreement with the Catholic emperor's edicts, they welcomed whatever the Protestants would do to them. The Protestants then forcibly threw the two Catholic lords, and their obviously innocent secretary, out the window, committing the “Third Defenestration of Prague”. This was a 70-foot fall from the third floor; by what Catholics claimed was divine intervention, all three men survived the fall, and one, Philip Fabricius, was given the title “Barn von Hohenfall” (“Baron of Highfall”) by the Emperor. This was a clear declaration of war by the Protestant powers, and a cataclysmic conflict ensued.
On this date in 1798, the United Irishmen began their uprising against their Protestant oppressors. Despite French assistance, they were defeated by 12 October in the same year. While this rebellion was mixed with republican activists under the influence of the French revolution, it also represented a Catholic Irish uprising on behalf of a Catholic Ireland.
St. David, King of Scotland, the youngest son of St. Margaret of Scotland, ruled from 1124 until 1153, when he died on this date. His reign was so impactful for Scotland that it is sometimes referred to as the “Davidian revolution”. In addition to his wars with England, in which he was mostly successful, David established monasteries and furthered the Gregorian reform of the Church; he further established Scotland, formerly a semi-barbaric backwater, as a full participant in wider Christendom. He restored ancient bishoprics and established new ones where needed. While some have argued that he “Anglicized” or “Normanized” Scotland at the expense of its Gaelic roots, in reality he merely civilized Scotland; his father was a Gaelic speaker, and he defended the independence of the Scottish Church from Canterbury. David is a worthy example of national independence and pride, connected with true humility and acknowledgement of shortcomings.
On this date in 1521, Emperor Charles V, in execution of his duty as a protector and aid of the Church in his domains, issued the Edict of Worms, banning the written works of Martin Luther, clearly stating (following the ruling of Rome) that these teachings were heretical, and forbidding their spread in his realms. Charles's actions, though far from perfect, in reaction to Luther's heresies may well have saved the Faith in several of his many realms. His Edict shows a good understanding of his own role, both as Emperor and as a member of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Toledo, located nearly exactly in the geographical center of Iberia, is retaken by Christian soldiers fighting under King Alfonso VI of León and Castile, from the heirs of the Muslim warriors who had stolen it three and a half centuries earlier. The siege lasted about two months, at which point the Moors holding the city surrendered. On 6 May, a peaceful resolution to the siege was reached, protecting the city's Muslims (Jews were also protected, under a separate agreement made with them specifically). On this date, Alfonso and his men entered the city, and before the end of the year had reconquered the entire Tagus basin, including the later capital of Spain, Madrid.
On this date in 1234, St. Louis, king of France, married Margaret of Provence. She was a dedicated Catholic and an excellent partner for the sainty king, who spent much of his limited free time in her company. The two were so close that Louis's mother, Blanche, became jealous of her. She was also a trusted and wise advisor to the king, who famously refused to agree to a ransom deal with the Saracens when he was captured in Egypt without consulting her first; his insistence on consulting a woman was found risible by the Saracens. This marriage, which bore him eleven children, was an important source of St. Louis's sanctity, and serves as a model of Christian marriage in a Christian kingdom.
On this date in 1242, a group of Albigensians (Cathars), probably working for Count Raymond VII of Toulouse, murdered Dominican Fr. William Arnaud and eleven others with him.
This dark day in 1453, the great Christian city of Constantinople, which had stood strong against the Muslim armies which had attacked it repeatedly since the rise of Islam, finally fell after a brutal 53-day-long Turkish siege. At least 50,000–80,000 Ottoman soldiers attacked a mere 7,000 Christian defenders, who held out for nearly two months. Emperor Constantine threw aside his imperial purple and led the final charge against the oncoming Turks, falling in battle with his men and inflicting heavy casualties; some Venetians and Genoese managed to flee in their ships. The citizens were divided into groups for sale as slaves; many churches in the city were destroyed; some 30,000–50,000 were enslaved, and thousands were murdered or raped. In one particularly horrifying example, the sultan demanded the Christian grand duke Loukas Notaras turn over his young son for sexual abuse; Loukas refused, and was brought with his son and son-in-law before the sultan. When told that if he continued his refusal all three would be killed, Loukas merely asked to be executed last, so that seeing him die would not lead the younger men to lose their resolve. (Runciman, known to be sympathetic to the Muslim cause, recounted this event.) The sultan also ordered Christians to be massacred before his viziers and officers for entertainment. The great city of Constantinople remains in Muslim hands to this day.
On this day in 1431, St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, with the Name of Jesus on her lips. A very simple but very devoted Catholic, she followed the word of God wherever it led her, even ultimately to the stake. She supported the cause of the King of France because God directed her to support it, and believed with such a firm and simple faith that she was a marvel to all around her. Despite an unjust and uncanonical excommunication, she was canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. This is her feast day.
When the Magyars first swept into Europe, they were a pagan force that wreaked havoc on the valley that they eventually called their home, which we now call Hungary. Although the son of Christians, St. Stephen was the first of his family to truly follow the faith. The pagan Hungarians supported a relative of his, Koppány, for the Hungarian throne; after he was able to defeat them, with a combination of Christian Hungarians and foreign assistance, he was crowned on this date in 1001 with a crown sent to him by Pope Sylvester II. He had a tremendously successful reign, and died 15 August 1038. His life and reign are a splendid example of how the breath of the Faith animates the body of the state. St. Stephen's feast day is 30 May, the date of the translation of his relics to Budapest.
On this date in 1588, the last of 130 ships in the Spanish Armada left Lisbon for England, intending to remove the Protestant Elizabeth I, who had been oppressing Catholics, martyring priests, and assisting Protestant rebels in the Netherlands in their anti-Catholic wars against Spain. King Philip II of Spain dispatched the Armada, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to meet with a force in the Spanish Netherlands and then land in England. Unfortunately, the Spanish navy was utterly outclassed by the English, who harried the Spanish to the point they had to sail back across the Channel and take port at Calais. There, the English used fireships and scattered the Spanish fleet. In an attempt to regroup, Medina Sidonia sailed to the nearby port of Gravelines in the Spanish Netherlands, where the English met them again and won a great victory, utilizing revolutionary new naval tactics involving distance-bombardment rather than closing for boarding and hand-to-hand combat. The Armada was forced to sail around the northern end of Britain, seas that were unfamiliar to them, and many were wrecked and foundered there. A few found refuge in the Scottish Highlands or in Ireland; around half were killed on the journey. Elizabeth remained on the English throne, and the Faith continued being persecuted on Our Lady's Dowry.
Beginning on 30 July 1419, the Hussite Wars consisted of a group of heretics following the doctrines of Jan Hus rebelling against the Catholic Church and the monarchs of several European realms, particularly the Holy Roman Empire. In 1415, Hussites began attacking Catholic priests and driving them from their parishes. Sigismund, King of Hungary and Croatia, and Wenceslas, King of Bohemia, attempted to stem the Hussites; but in Prague on 30 July 1419, a group of Hussites threw the king's representative, along with several others, out the window into the street. After this “Defenestration of Prague”, Hussites raised a full-scale rebellion, expelling many Catholics from Bohemia. The war raged for many years, and marks some of the first uses of firearms in European combat. Finally Sigismund, King of Hungary and Croatia, brother of Wenceslas of Bohemia, and eventually Holy Roman Emperor, took up the cause and asked Pope Martin V to declare a crusade against the Hussites, which he did. At certain points in the Hussite Wars, the Hussites were launching raids against many surrounding countries. Eventually, however, the Hussites began to divide among themselves, with two factions, the Utraquists and the Taborites, nearly destroying one another in a battle on this date in 1434. This was mostly the end of the Hussite Wars, except a few holdouts in Poland, who were defeated in 1439.
On this date in 1252, King Ferdinand III of Castile and León passed to his eternal reward. He took the throne on 31 August in 1217, but initially ruled only Castile. His father died in 1230, leaving León to his two daughters from his first marriage; Ferdinand sought to rule both Castile and León. Rather than relying on brute force, however, as so many kings are wont to do, Ferdinand came to an agreement by which he supported, in money and land, his two sisters, and reunified Castile and León for the first time since 1157. King Ferdinand campaigned in the great Crusade, the Reconquista, as often as he was able, sometimes very shrewdly uniting with one of the disparate Muslim kingdoms against another, then taking advantage of both's weaknesses to regain further lands for Christendom. Nor was he interested solely in his own or even his own kingdom's advantage; he united with the kings of Aragon and Portugal, fighting for the advantage of Christendom as a whole. Under his leadership, between 1228 and 1248, huge swathes of formerly Muslim-ruled Spain came back under Christian control, including the great cities of Badajoz, Mérida, Murcia, Jaén, and most importantly the great and ancient cities of Córdoba and Seville. He built the great cathedral at Burgos; supported the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Mercedarians; assisted the University of Salamanca; was himself a Third-Order Franciscan; and cared scrupulously for the poor, stating that he feared the curse of one poor woman more than a whole army of Saracens. He is, like St. Louis, a paradigmatic example of the Christian ruler.
Between January and May of 1794, the revolutionary government sent General Louis Marie Turreau to the Vendée in order to exterminate the counter-revolutionary populace. Between wholesale murders and forced evacuations, these “colonnes infernales” (“infernal columns”) killed up to 40,000 people for their opposition to the revolutionary government. Many, perhaps most, of these should be considered martyrs for Christ, Our King.
This feast, established by Pope Pius XII in 1954, honors the queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which she has by virtue of her Son, Jesus Christ.
On this date in 1249, St. Louis and his army landed in Egypt to begin the Seventh Crusade. The notion was that Egypt was the power center from which attacks on the Kingdom of Jerusalem were coming, and thus Egypt had to be taken to make conquests in the Holy Land sustainable; it was further reasoned that Egypt, having been an ancient center of Christianity conquered by the Muslims, was a fair target for Crusade. The force did capure the port city of Damietta, but floods and oppressive heat made it impossible for the army to advance very far. The Crusade ended with a defeat at the Battle of Fariskur and the capture of St. Louis himself; he then spent four years in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, funding and building its defenses, before returning to France.
St. Edward the Confessor, the saintly last king of Anglo-Saxon England, was crowned on this date in 1042. Edward had been exiled to France by political opponents, but returned in 1042 to take up the throne. He led a celibate life, which unfortunately led to the succession battle after his death, but ruled largely successfully; he promoted the success of the Church and preserved his borders to the west and north. Famously, he is the founder of Westminster Abbey. His feast day is 13 October.
On this date in 1191, King Richard the Lionheart of England arrived in Acre in the Holy Land, the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This began the somewhat successful Third Crusade—but which fell short of its goal of Jerusalem.
St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, was born in 1045 in Hungary, of English stock, and spent a good bit of her youth in Northumbria. When leaving Northumbria by ship, she was wrecked in the Kingdom of Scotland in 1068, where the King of Scotland, Malcolm III, gave her his hospitality. She and Malcolm were married in 1070, and though Malcolm was a widower with two sons, Donald and Duncan, already, she bore him eight children, no fewer than three of whom reigned as king of Scotland, one of whom became an abbot in Dunkeld, and one of whom, Edith, became Matilda, queen of England. St. Margaret was well-renowned for her piety; she regularly read to King Malcolm from the Scriptures, and worked extensively with the clergy to reform and purify the Scottish Church. Every day, before eating, she served with her own hands orphans and the poor, and washed the feet of the poor, as well. She rose at midnight every night to pray Matins, established a monastery, used her influence to establish two ferries to assist pilgrims, and restored the monastery at Iona. Her husband Malcolm, who could not read, was very impressed with her learning, and would give her gifts of books intricately decorated with gold and silver. She died on 16 November, three days after her husband and eldest son were slain in battle, in 1093. In 1693, to commemorate the birth of the heir of James VII of Scotland (II of England), the Pope transferred her feast to 10 June.
On this date, in 1846, the papal conclave elected Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti as Pope Pius IX. He remained pope for thirty-two years, the longest papal reign in history, dying in 1878. He called the First Vatican Council, unfortunately cut short by the Franco-Prussian War, and despite strong resistence was the last pope to rule the intact Papal States, stolen by the revolutionary Italian state in 1870. His declarations, increasingly strong, condemned liberalism and other modern errors; he is legendary for his Syllabus of Errors, a collection of modern errors which he unequivocally condemned. He was beatified in 2000, and his legacy remains large among all supporters of the integral reign of Christ the King.
Duke Odo of Aquitaine defeated a Muslim raiding army from Spain on this date in 721. This was the first significant victory against the Muslims in the West. The Muslims had laid siege to the city of Toulouse for several months, when Odo managed to reach the city on this date in 721, with an army of Aquitanians, Gascons, and Franks. While this battle did not end Muslim attempts north of the Pyrenees by any means, it was a significant defeat for the Muslims and gave Charles Martel of the Franks vital time to strengthen his army and ready it for the Battle of Tours in 732. These two battles essentially stopped Muslim advances on land in the West; while they continued to hold Narbonne, and continued to raid and conquer cities along the Mediterranean coasts, and of course the wars in the East continued apace, these battles vitally preserved the Christian West from conquest.
On this date in 1793, the Catholic and Royal Army of the Vendée reached its high-water mark, taking the town of Saumur from the revolutionary government. Led by Jacques Cathelineau, the army seized large amounts of artillery and inflicted many casualties on the revolutionaries. Some of the revolutionary prisoners even turned sides to the Vendeans.
The Battle of Châlons (Catalaunian Plains) was fought on this date in 451. Flavius Ætius, the last of the great Roman generals, with ally Theodoric I of the Visigoths, fought the army of Attila the Hun to a standstill. Although the actual combat was inconclusive, the Huns retreated after the fighting that day. This was the last great military engagement of the Western Empire, a victory against a pagan barbarian army, ending (briefly) their invasion of the still-Roman province of Gaul.
The city of Baltimore (Cork, Ireland) was sacked by Muslim slave traders (assisted by some Protestant Dutchmen) on this date in 1631. Led to the city by an Irish fisherman who gave directions to the raiders when he was captured in exchange for his life—he was hanged as punishment for this monstrous betrayal of his people—the raiders sacked the city, seizing 107 of the locals to sell into slavery in Muslim North Africa. While Europe was no stranger to Muslim slave raiders (they had been raiding Christian shores frequently since the initial Muslim invasions in the seventh century), this was unique in that the city of Baltimore (really a small village) remained deserted for some time afterwards. Muslims slavers raided Europe as far north as the Faroe Islands (in 1629), Iceland (in 1627), and countless other times and places.
On this date in 1791, King Louis XVI, now fully understanding the Revolution had no intention of fairly representing his own interests or the interests of ancient and Catholic France, attempted to flee France in disguise. Unfortunately, he was recognized just short of the border and taken back to Paris, where he was condemned and unjustly executed by the Revolutionaries. This is known as “the Flight to Varennes”.
On this date in 1927, the Women's Brigade was formed for the furtherance of the Cristero War. Eventually containing some 17,000, these women assisted in the defense of the Faith by obtaining money, weapons, and ammunition for the fighting men, as well as caring for the wounded. Often at great personal risk, these women would smuggle vital supplies to the soldiers, and were a critical part of the Cristeros' success.
On this date, in 1929, the Cristero War officially ended. A popular, largely peasant uprising against the anti-Catholic government of President Plutarco Elías Calles, the Cristero War produced many heroes and many martyrs, most famously Miguel Pro and José Sánchez del Río (“Joselito”). They fought with the cry of “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”). Calles did not honor the terms of the truce, and executed thousands of Cristeros after the war. The Cristeros' glorious struggle to establish the integral reign of Christ the King fell short, but they will serve forever as a glory for their Captain and their King.
One of many battles by which the Austrian Empire fended off Ottoman conquests, the Battle of Sisak occurred on this date in 1593. Bosnian and Ottoman forces advanced on Sisak in 1592, taking the fortress of Bihać, and leaving Sisak as the last remaining defense before the Croatian city of Zagreb (Croatia at this time being subject to the Austrians). Unusually, the garrison at Sisak was commanded by two priests, Blaž Ðurak and Matija Fintić, and the garrison was relieved by an Austro-Croatian army from throughout Austrian lands. The relief attack, along with a sally from the fortress, defeated the attacking Turks and Bosnians. This is considered the beginning of the “Long War” between the Ottoman Empire and the many Hapsburg states, which continued until 1606 (and of course further Ottoman attacks on Christian Europe continued long after that). The garrison was less than 800 men, and the relieving army was less than five thousand; they defeated an attacking force of at east twelve thousand Muslims, at the cost of less than five hundred casualties.
After nearly seventy years of Christian emperors, Julian the Apostate, who had abandoned Christianity and become a dedicated pagan, took the throne. Truly obsessed with his paganism, he forbade Christians from teaching or learning about classical texts. Famously, he made an attempt to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem (the “Third Temple”); however, whenever workers attempted to begin, fire shot from the earth, and an earthquake knocked down what little progress they managed to make. (There was, in fact, an earthquake in Galilee in 363.) In the Temple of the Moon at Carra, Julian almost certainly sacrificed a woman to his pagan gods; his successor, Jovian, found her eviscerated in the temple, where Julian had offered her and attempted to read the future in her entrails. This attempt evidently failed, as he was killed in his invasion of Persia; reputedly, his last words were, “Vicisti, Galilæe”: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean.”
Antioch, where Christ's disciples had first been called Christians, had first fallen to the Muslim invaders in 632. The Byzantines had retaken it and lost it, but for the bulk of the intervening centuries it had been under Muslim control. But the Antiochenes were strong Christians, and by 1098, the majority of the city was still Christian. The Muslim ruler of the city, when he heard of the Crusaders approaching, turned the cathedral into a stable, imprisoned the bishop, and even expelled some prominent Christian residents. The siege began in October of 1097; by the end, the Crusaders were in worse shape than the besieged, with many starving to death. During the siege, the Crusaders defeated two Muslim armies coming to relieve the city; and after it fell, they nearly immediately became the besieged themselves, having to defeat still a third Muslim army. They were always victorious. On this day in 1098, the city finally fell when one of its residents opened the gates for Bohemond; Antioch remained in Christian hands until 1268.
On this date in 1793, the Catholic and Royal Army of the Vendée made a heroic assault of the great city of Nantes, still held by the revolutionary army. Jacques Cathelineau was shot leading a charge, and the Army was unable to take the city and was forced to retreat. From this point forward, the Army was on the retreat. Later, prisoners taken by the revolutionaries were ordered murdered by gunshot; however, to kill them more expeditiously, the revolutionary government instead tied them up, towed on rafts into the river Loire, and then drowned. Some report female prisoners being stripped and tied to the men for this massacre, termed a “Republican Marriage”.
During the conquest of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish, the Spaniards suffered a terrible defeat on the night of 30 June–1 July, later known as La Noche Triste. Having seized control in the capital of Tenochtitlan and taking the emperor captive, Hernan Cortés put an immediate stop to human sacrifice, forcing the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma to give the order. However, the people of the city became increasingly rebellious, until finally, when Moctezuma attempted (at Spanish requirement) to address them, they stoned the emperor to death. Knowing that without Moctezuma he could not maintain his presence in the city, Cortés decided to leave the city under cover of night. The retreat was discovered, however, and some 50,000 Aztec warriors attacked the retreating allies, consisting of less than 1,000 Spaniards and as many as 2,000 Tlaxcaltec allies. Over half the Spaniards and about half the Tlaxcaltec were killed in the retreat. Cortés was in tears at the scale of the deaths of his forces, both Spanish and native. Their fighting retreat continued for another week before they reached the Tlaxcaltec homeland, Tlaxcala, where they were able to regroup and plan the assault on Tenochtitlan, a final conquest which would once and for all end the Aztec empire, its oppression of surrounding people, and the stupefying scale of its human sacrifice—and pave the way for its wholesale conversion to the True Faith through Our Lady of Guadalupe and her chosen messenger, St. Juan Diego.
This great state, the union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was formed on this date in 1569. The Commonwealth had two official languages, and was called in Polish Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, and in Latin Res Publica Utriusque Nationis. A personal union had existed between the two nations since 1386, when Polish queen Jadwiga (Hedwig) married Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania; the personal union was made formal on this date. The Commonwealth's leader, who was simultaneously the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania, was chosen by election by the senate (sejm), which was made up of the nobilities of both countries. This state became incredibly important for Christendom, forming one of the two primary bulwarks against the incursions of the Muslim Ottomans (the other being Austria), and its King Jan III Sobieski definitively saved Christendom from falling to Ottoman domination when he relieved the siege of Vienna in 1683. This great state is an important and memorable part of the history of Christendom, and an excellent example of the proper acknowledgement of the integral reign of Christ the King in society.
On this date in 1097, the First Batle of Dorylaeum was fought between the Crusaders under Bohemund of Taranto, Robert Curthose, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Adhemar of Le Puy; they defeated a force of Seljuk Turks. The Turks had surrounded the Crusaders, but Godfrey and Raymond were separated from the main army, and when the Turks attacked the remaining Crusaders under Bohemund, Godfrey and Raymond returned and were able, with Bohemund, to form a line of battle. Superior battle tactics and equipment (particularly plate armor) led the day for the Crusaders, and Adhemar's men were able to attack the Turks from the rear, resulting in a decisive victory for the Crusade. The Turks fought bravely and well; one Frankish historian at the time stated that, if only they were Christian, the Turks would be a great people. This was the group that would take Jerusalem the next year.
The first scion of the Capetian dynasty, Hugh Capet, was crowned King of France on this day in 987. The Capets would reign in France continuously until the usurpation of authority from King Louis XVI Capet in 1793. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this dynasty in the history of Christendom, for good and for ill. Its crowning glory is, of course, St. Louis IX, King of France; no better example of Christian rule can be found.
On this date in 1187, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as a major controlling power in the Holy Land, came to an end. Though assisted by several of the military orders, along with Tripoli and Antioch, Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, was unable to defeat the army of Saladin (Sala-al-din), who had as many as double the troops that Guy could field. Guy was forced to surrender, and when Saladin offered him water, Guy refused it, passing the goblet to Reynaud of Chatillon, who was with him. Saladin, angry, ordered Reynaud killed, possibly doing it himself on the spot. The True Cross was put upside-down on a lance and sent to Damascus; all 200 Templars and Hospitallers who were taken prisoner were murdered, excepting only the Templar Grand Master. One was Saint Nicasius, a Hospitaller. Locally recruited soldiers, captured on the field of battle, were also murdered, since most of them were Christians who had embraced the Faith after being Muslims; they were primarily Turks and Arabs, but died gloriously for the Faith and, of course, achieved their reward. The remaining prisoners who were not of noble blood were sold into slavery. The defeat prompted the Third Crusade, but the Kingdom of Jerusalem never regained its role in the region; less than a century later Acre fell, and the last remnant of Christian political presence in the land where Christ walked disappeared.
On this date in 1793, the Vendean Catholic and Royal Army, under the general Henri de la Rochejaquelein, attacked a defeated a revolutionary army, inflicting heavy casualties, including one general.
On this day in 1535, St. Thomas More, former speaker of the House of Commons, former chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and once Chancellor of England, was executed by the axe. Often portrayed by moderns as a martyr of the individual conscience, St. Thomas More was in truth a fierce defender of the proper role of the Church in civil society, and his martyrdom was a result of his refusal to countenace civil authority over marriage. A scholar, devoted husband and father, and dedicated Catholic, he was found after his death to have worn a hair shirt in penance, frequently fasted, and lived a life of prayer as well as good works. Notably, St. Thomas brought his faith to the practice of the law throughout his life. Today, the day of his death, is his traditional feast day.
Named after St. Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary, the daughter of the royal house of Aragon married King Denis of Portugal in 1288, thereby becoming queen. She had always been a devout child, and as queen was especially devoted to using her wealth and power on behalf of the poor. Her husband, who lived a very dissolute early life, was converted by her example, and she exercised considerable influence over him, including the Treaty of Alcañices of 1297 which peacefully set the border between Portugal and Castile. She once prevented a potentially very bloody battle between her husband and her eldest son by mounting a mule and physically interposing herself between the two armies; this act of peacemaking leads to her being frequently depicted bearing an olive branch. After King Denis died, St. Elizabeth lived among the Poor Clare nuns at Coimbra for the remainder of her mortal days. Though she died on 4 July, her feast is on 8 July.
On this date in 1086, King St. Canute of Denmark was killed by a mob of rebels in the church of St. Alban's. Canute was not the first Christian king of Denmark by any means; however, he was a devout and saintly king, who from his own funds built churchs in many towns, including Lund cathedral, and also endowed the Lund Cathedral School. When peasants, angry at some of his policies, stormed the church of St. Alban's to kill him, Canute did not resist them and was slain; his remains show no signs of any resistence.
The last reigning Catholic King of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, James II, was unlawfully deposed from his throne in 1688 in what was called by Protestants the “Glorious Revolution”. Nevertheless, James attempted to defend his throne and the Faith, raising an army of British and Irish volunteers, along with some French support, and landing in Ireland. At one point, nearly all of Ireland was under his control, excepting only two counties. However, a Williamite army (loyal to the pretender William of Orange, the Protestant who had usurped the throne), made up of only about half British troops (the rest being Dutch, like William himself), 36,000 strong, landed in Ireland to contest him. This was far more than James could field, and though his men fought bravely for the Faith, they were defeated on this day in 1690. (While this was 11 July in the modern Gregorian calendar, in the old Julian calendar it was 1 July.)
On this date, José Calvo Sotelo, a duly elected member of the Spanish Parliament and a dedicated monarchist, was murdered, shot in the back of the head, by socialist Luis Cuenca Estevas. Despite the infamous nature of the murder and the lack of any doubt regarding its perpetrator, the anti-Catholic government refused to take any action against Cuenca because he had killed someone they wanted dead: that is, a Catholic and a monarchist who supported the reign of Christ the King. Though the outrages of the anti-Catholic government had been ongoing for years, and the military had already begun planning a coup, the assassination removed any doubt that the coup would soon occur. Notably, General Francisco Franco, later the leader of the rebellion against the government, within hours of learning about the assassination communicated to the rebellion's leader that his doubts were gone and he would participate.
On this date in 1099, an army of all the kingdoms of Europe succeeded in retaking the city of Jerusalem from its Islamic occupiers, for the first time since its fall to them in 637. In June, English and Genoese ships arrived to assist the army with timber for building siege equipment. This siege equipment enabled the Crusaders the recapture the city. While undoubtedly there were cruel murders during the taking of the city, reports of wholesale massacres of innocents should be taken with a grain of salt; for example, as Rodney Stark notes, “there is very credible evidence that most of the Jews were spared and that the story that all the Jews were burned alive may be false!” In sum, despite (and not because of) the crimes that certainly were committed, the reconquest of Jerusalem was a great day for Christendom.
The only medieval German monarch to become a saint, this pious and holy monarch, who married the also saintly Saint Cunigunde but lived celibately with her, died two days ago, on 13 July 1024. His feast day was placed here so as not to interfere with other feasts. Though the succession was disputed, he was crowned King of Germany in 1002; King of Italy in 1004; and finally Holy Roman Emperor in 1014, holding all roles until his death. In addition to his usual imperial duties, he reestablished ancient dioceses for missionary work, particularly that of Merseburg; resolved jurisdictional disputes; founded the abbey at Kaufungen in thanksgiving for his wife's recovery from a serious illness; supported clerical celibacy; and remained celibate himself to fully offer his life to God and to his people. At one point, he famously ordered the abbot of the monastery at Verdun to admit him as a monk; the abbot did so, but then commanded him, by virtue of holy obedience, to continue administering the empire. Henry, of course, obeyed. His reign was not without problems; indeed, his investitute of so many secular powers to clerics significantly reduced the effectiveness of the Church in his realms. However, his humility, his dedication to his people, and his personal piety make him a great example of Christian authority.
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, often looked on as the pivotal turning point in the “Reconquista” (the war of reconquest of Spain from Muslim invaders), conclued on this date in the year 1212. The Almohads, a group of Muslims from North Africa, had recently invaded Spain to assist their Muslim brethren in Spain, and came in such numbers and force that Pope Innocent III declared a crusade to assist the Christians against them. Gathering in Toledo, King Alfonso VIII united warriors from France, England, and other places, marching south to confront the Almohads. Sneaking through the Despeñaperros Pass, guided by a local shepherd named Martín Alhaja (who was later given the hereditary title “Head of Cattle” (“cabeza de vaca”) for his service, Alfonso and the Crusaders surprised the Almohads, and King Sancho VII of Navarre charged through a break in the lines, shattered the caliph's bodyguard of slaves, and set the Almohads to flight. The caliph's tent and standard were sent to Rome to the Pope. This great victory fundamentally changed the balance of power in Iberia, and from this point on the Reconquista was consistently on the advance.
St. Louis, King of France, led the Eighth Crusade to North Africa, landing on this day in 1270 near the city of Carthage. However, an epidemic ravaged the Crusaders, eventually taking the life of St. Louis himself on 25 August. The Crusade, unable to continue, returned across the Mediterranean.
The goal of the voices famously spoken by the angel to St. Joan of Arc, the crowning of Charles VII, occurred on this day at Reims cathedral, after a string of shocking military victories which she brought about, in 1429.
Born in what is now Budapest, Hungary in 1373 or 1374, Jadwiga was the first reigning female monarch of Poland. Her father, Louis, was king of Hungary and Poland, and he had three daughters, Catherine, Mary, and Jadwiga. Catherine died young, and Mary became queen of Hungary upon her father's death. However, the Polish nobility refused to accept a queen who did not live in Poland. Therefore, King Louis's wife, Elizabeth, chose Jadwiga to be queen in Poland. She was crowned in Kraków, Poland's ancient capital, in 1384. She was the beginning of the long alliance between Poland and Lithuana, marrying the Lithuanian ruler Jogaila in 1386. Still a pagan, Jogaila agreed to convert to Christianity, and took the baptismal name Władisław. Although she recognized that her marriage was an important public trust, she still ensured that her marriage would be religiously suitable, praying long about the matter. Władisław ruled alongside Jadwiga in Poland thereafter. Generally peaceful, even when her mother was murdered, she led armies when needed, and brought Galicia-Volhynia into Poland. She also helped keep peace between Lithuania and the Teutonic Order. And, of course, she was passionately Catholic, praying frequently and deeply, and was known to give even of her own substance to the poor. Jadwiga was a good queen; but even more importantly, she was a good Catholic, wife, and mother.
On this date in 1794, the sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne (eleven nuns, three lay sisters, and two tertiaries) went to their eternal reward at the guillotine of the French Revolution. Turned out of their convent, which was stolen and plundered by the revolutionary government, the Carmelites continued to live their vocation in civilian surroundings in Paris, in open defiance of the revolution's commands. After their condemnation, they were led through the streets of Paris in an open cart, singing to Christ their King; they were led one by one to the guillotine, none showing any fear, and verbally forgiving their murderers. Each sister, as they approached the blade, sang Psalm 116, stopping only when the blade removed their heads, one by one. Holy Martyrs of Compiègne, pray for us!
In the Reconquista of Spain from the Muslims, King Ramiro II of León defeated Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III, who had famously sacked the city of Pamplona and destroyed its cathedral, and whose harem included multiple males, including a 13-year-old boy, Pelayo (Pelagius), who refused his advances and was tortured and dismembered to death as a consequence (and is now venerated as the martyr St. Pelagius of Córdoba). Ramiro, leading an army of Leónese, Castilians, and Navarrese, defeated the Muslim invaders during a solar eclipse which occurred on the same day. While the various Christian kingdoms of Spain were often fractious and at odds during this period, this victory preserved them for better and more united times.
Though its exact date is uncertain, at around this time during the summer, the Battle of Covadonga (Cova Dominica) was fought. Here, a joint army of as few as 300 Asturians and Visigoths, led by Pelagius (Pelayo) the Visigoth, fought and defeated a far superior force of the occupying Umayyad caliphate. This was the first Christian victory since the invasion of Spain by the Muslims in 711, and though the Kingdom of Asturias was frequently raided, invaded, and sacked by the Muslims thereafter, they were never able to root out this outpost of Christendom, which gradually expanded and, nearly eight hundred years later, reclaimed all of Spain. Pelayo had entrusted his army and credited his victory to Our Lady, and built a shrine to her at Covadonga which later became a church, which still stands.
On this date, the Albigensian Crusade took the town of Béziers from its Albigensian occupiers. The papal legate, Arnaud Amalric, is often reported to have said, when asked how to distinguish the Christians from the heretics, “Kill them all; God will know his own.” It is certain that he did not actually say this; its sole attestation is a third-party source which itself reports it as hearsay, and the best sources (particularly Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay) do not mention it at all. Amalric later claimed the 20,000 people were killed; however, this is obviously a gross exaggeration, as the entire population of the town was not more than 10,000–15,000, and it is clear that a substantial population remained in the town, which continued to be an important place thereafter. This was the first major victory in the Albigensian Crusade, and an important step in suppressing the dangerous, not to say insane, heresy now known as Catharism, once preaching and example had been met with violence and martyrdom.
Having already suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of the Boyne the previous year, the Battle of Aughrim, fought on this date in 1691, permanently destroyed the Jacobite hopes in Ireland and the rest of Britain. Despite some French assistance, the Williamite army was able to defeat the Jacobites, fighting the bloodiest battle in the history of the British Isles. Between the two armies, over 7,000 men lay dead. The chances of a Catholic Britain, and even more so of Catholics in Britain with any genuine rights whatsoever, were crushed by the defeat.
On this date in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, the great warrior of the First Crusade, was elected to rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In an act of great humility, however, he stated that only Christ should be king of the Holy Land, and therefore named himself merely the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. While later rulers of the kingdom of Jerusalem would not have this same humility, Godfrey of Bouillon's understanding of his role in his domain is an admirable statement of the role of Christ in the state.
St. James the Greater, son of Zebedee, brother of John, cousin of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has his feast on this day. St. James and his brother John were the first to be called by Our Lord; as John has always been the apostle of charity, James is the apostle of hope (and Peter, of course, of faith). After Pentecost, St. James brought the Faith to Spain, the first to bring the Word of God to Hispania, where the Virgin Mary appeared to him atop a pillar along the Ebro at Caesaraugusta. This location, in Zaragoza in Aragon, is still preserved as Our Lady of the Pillar. He then returned to Jerusalem, where he was martyred by King Herod by beheading with a sword in the year 44, a mere eleven years after Our Lord gave His life for us. His head remains in Jerusalem, at the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, under the altar; his other remains were returned to Spain, where they rest at Santiago de Compostela, and are the destination of the greatest pilgrimage of Western Christendom. St. James became the patron of Spain, as well as specifically of Spain's long war to free itself from the Muslim yoke, famously appearing to the army at the battle of Clavijo in 844. His cry—¡Santiago, y cierra, España!—echoed through the mountains and plains of Hispania, and helped win the Reconquista for good. St. James, pray for us!
St. Olaf II Haraldsson, King of Norway from 1015 until 1028, was born around 995. Olaf was converted when visiting Duke Richard II of Normandy, also a Norseman, and was baptized in Rouen. He successfully limited the power of the Norse nobles and unified many of the small kingdoms that made up what is now Norway; unfortunately, their resentment of this led to his exile in 1029, when he was forced to go to the Kievan Rus. During his exile, he spread his faith, baptizing many, but was killed in an attempt to retake his kingdom in 1030. Olaf's conversion was sincere; he brought Christianity increasingly away from the coasts and into the interior, and brought the first bishop into Norway, Grimkell. Olaf was an unsuccessful king, for the most part; however, his work in bringing Christianity to all parts of his country still makes him a worthy examples for the followers of the King of kings.
On this date in 1926, the Catholic peasantry of Mexico rose up against the anti-Catholic government of President Plutarco Elías Calles (supported, shamefully, by the American government). The “Cristeros”, as they were called, united under the cry of “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”), resisting the secularizing, naturalistic government of President Calles and fighting for the establishment of the integral reign of Christ the King in Mexico. The Cristero War made many heroes and many glorious martyrs, not least Miguel Pro and the young José Sánchez del Río (“Joselito”). These soldiers of Christ are a glory for Christ the King for all time.
On this date in 1926, a few hundred Catholics blocked the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Guadalajara, which federal troops were seeking to seize and close. They fought until they ran out of ammunition. This was a signal early incident in the glorious Cristero War.
On this date in 1926, federal troops attacked the parish church of Sahuayo, Mexico, killing the parish priest. This was the parish of the later martyr, José Luis Sánchez del Río, and was another signal early incident in the Cristero War.
One of the sainted kings of Northumbria, St. Oswald took the united throne of Bernicia and Deira (Darrow) upon the deaths of his brothers, each king of one, in battle against Cadwalla, king of the Britons (now called the Welsh). Oswald and his brothers had been banished from Northumbria to live among the Celtic Scots; while the English were still largely pagans at this time, the Scots were largely Christian, and Oswald was converted while in exile. Taking his throne, he fought Cadwalla back, defeating him decisively at Denis-burn, after personally holding a great cross up while it was planted in the earth and telling his men to pray to “the only true God, that he would mercifully defend us from our proud enemy; for he knows that we fight in a just war in defence of our lives and country.” Upon the victory, the field was named Heaven's Field. He proceeded to rule Northumbria in justice and as much peace as seventh-century Britain permitted. He requested that a bishop and priests be sent to him, and received the great bishop Aidan, to whom he gave the island of Lindisfarne; Aidan there began the great monastery at Lindisfarne which secured so many graces and produced so many missionaries and martyrs for the Church. While Aidan learned the Northumbrian version of the English tongue, Oswald himself served as his interpreter, giving the bishop's lessons to the Northumbrian people in that way. He buit countless monastaries and churches throughout his realm; he personally took great care of the poor, often giving them food and aide from his own substance; and converted many of his people to the Faith by his good works and example. In 642, however, St. Oswald faced a Mercian army under the pagan King Penda, whom he had defeated earlier in his reign, and was unable to defeat him a second time, falling in the battle on this date in 642.
On this date in 1792, revolutionary mobs assaulted the Tuileries Palace in Paris, housing King Louis XVI and his loyal Swiss guard. The Swiss, full of honor and dignity, refused to surrender; they stated that if their services were no longer needed, they should be legally disbanded, but until that time they would not abandon their posts or permit their weapons to be taken. When, after the mob began the assault, the King himself ordered the Swiss to step down, they attempted to retreat under fire, but were massacred almost wholesale by the revolutionaries. Two-thirds of the 900 Swiss were killed on site; another 200 died later of their wounds or in the September massacres, leaving only one in nine who survived the revolutionary madness. Many civilian servants were also murdered in the storm. This massacre led the illegal assembly to abolish the monarchy and put the king to death on 21 September 1792.
On this date in 1521, Hernán Cortes, leading an army composed of around 1,000 Spaniards and approximately 200,000 natives, primarily Tlaxcaltec, took the capital city of the mightiest empire in the Americas, the Aztec. Gaining the alliance of natives who had been abused by the Aztec power, he promised to put an end to human sacrifice and teach them the true Faith; after much intrigue, and nearly losing his entire army along with his own life as he fled the city, he seized and destroyed it, rebuilding it into the modern Mexico City, putting a stop to all human sacrifice in Mexico, and beginning the process of bringing the true Faith to the people.
A great Irish victory in the Nine Years' War against Protestant occupation of Ireland, the Battle of the Yellow Ford took place on this date in 1598. Hugh O'Neill commanded an Irish army which ambushed the English, killed some 1,500 English soldiers, an enormous loss. The victory brought many of the otherwise neutral Irish lords into the war on the Irish side, and resulted in a huge and very expensive escalation by the English. The victory put the rebellion well on the way to victory, and encouraged Spanish intervention on the Irish side. The next year O'Neill noted for the Queen his demands; he would accept English overlordship, but demanded that the viceroy be a nobleman of a certain rank, that Ireland be self-governing, that all stolen churches be returned, and most vitally that the Catholic Church retain its position in Ireland. The Queen flatly refused, and the war continued.
On this date in 718, the second Muslim attempt to take Constantinople failed. The offensive, combining attacks on land and sea, lasted for over a year, beginning on 15 July the year before. The Byzantine navy was able to defeat the Muslim fleet relatively quickly using its famous “Greek fire”, but the land siege continued. In the spring of 718, Muslim fleets intending to resupply the invading armies were crippled by their mostly Christian crews defecting to the Christian side; after ambushing a Muslim army near Nicomedia, the siege was broken and the Muslims fled. This victory prevented Muslim incursions into Eastern Europe for centuries, and marked an important victory for the preservation of Christendom.
On this date in 1237, King James I of Aragon won the Battle of the Puig, defeating the Moors and taking possession of Valencia and surrounding regions.
John III Sobieski, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the Lion of Lechistan and the savior of Christendom, was born in Olesko, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and now part of Ukraine, on this date in 1629. Distinguishing himself primarily for his selfless defense of Christendom from the attacking Ottomans, in which he not only successfully defended the Holy Roman Empire but also retook great swathes of Eastern Europe from the Muslim Turks, John was a mighty and humble servant of Christ the King. He was an accomplished intellectual, speaking multiple languages (including that of his Turkish enemy), and was famously devoted to his family, especially his beloved wife, Mary.
Charles, or Karl, I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Croatia, and last truly Catholic monarch, was born on this date in 1887. Not the heir to the throne, he was thrust into prominence when the actual heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was murdered in 1914. Before this, he moved frequently due to his father's military career, but eventually settled in Vienna. In 1906, he joined the army, serving chiefly in Prague and Bohemia. His marriage with Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma is the stuff of legend; they were very much in love, and their relationship was a model for that of Catholic spouses. Famously, he told her on their wedding day, “Now we must help one another get to heaven”. Eight children were born to their union. In everything, Charles was guided by the Faith; his accession to the throne was in 1916. He died surrounded by his family, but in exile, in 1922.
On this date in 636, the Battle of Yarmuk ended. After the death of Mohammad, Muslims made their first great assault out of Arabia at the Byzantine Empire, targeting the Levant, that region of the eastern Mediterranean that includes the Holy Land, along with Syria, one of the richer areas of the empire. It was a devastating Byzantine defeat, when a victory would likely have permanently halted Islamic invasions outside of Arabia. With the exceptions of the Crusader states, Christians would never again rule Syria and the Holy Land.
On this date in in 651, St. Oswin, King of Deira (Darrow), was unjustly put to death by his rival Oswi. St. Oswin was an admirable example of Christian humility. He gave to a holy bishop, Aidan, a fine horse; and one day, Aidan met a poor man, and having nothing else to give him, gave him the horse. St. Oswin rebuked Aidan, saying that he would have given anything else to the pauper and had intended that horse for Aidan's own use. Aidan responded, “Is then a colt of more value in your majesty's eye than a son of God?” The king took off his sword, knelt before the bishop, and asked his pardon. He ruled Deira (one of the two constituent kingdoms of Northumbria) with honor, dignity, and fairness for seven years. Oswi, king of Bernicia (the other part of Northumbria), rose up against him, and St. Oswin's humility again shines forth. Realizing that he had no reasonable chance of success against the forces that Oswi had raised, St. Oswin dimissed his armies and retird to a small town, now called Gilling, in Yorkshire, yielding his kingdom to his rival in the hopes of avoiding the deaths of so many of his people. He succeeded in this; however, he was betrayed by his host in Gilling, and Oswi's men murdered him in 651. He is a shining example of kingly virtue, and a note that humility is not only compatible with that virtue, but in fact a necessary part of it.
On this date in 1270, St. Louis, the great king of France, died on Crusade and went on to his final reward.
A massive Byzantine defeat, the Battle of Manzikert occurred on this day in 1071. Faced by an invasion by the Seljuk Turks, the Byzantine Emperor Romanos sent his general Manual Komnenos to face them. Despite some victories, they were defeated by a Turkish army at Manzikert, which opened the entirety of Anatolia (roughly, modern-day Turkey) to Muslim invasion and occupation. Asia Minor, once a stronghold of Christianity, saw its Christian population gradually dispersed, persecuted, and expelled in favor of Muslim replacements. The once ethnically diverse, Christian population was replaced with an ethnically homogenous Muslim population. This “Turkification” (really an Islamicization) of Anatolia is and always has been a great loss for Christendom.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany and Italy from 28 June 1519, and king of Spain from 14 March 1516, died on this date in 1556. This reign, in both cases beginning just before the Protestant Revolution began, is largely responsible for the survival of a Catholic Christendom, and in many ways revived the concept of a universal Christian monarchy. The grandson of the great Queen Isabella of Spain, he was only sixteen when he took the throne of Spain (which ruled huge swathes of territory in Europe and the Americas), and nineteen when he took the thrones of the Empire, Germany, and Italy. He issued the Edict of Worms in 1521, reaffirming Catholicism as the true religion of Christendom, and resisted the attacks of Protestantism (and, shamefully, the otherwise Catholic kingdom of France) in their attempts to destroy everything the Church had spent a millenium and a half building. Unfortunately, he was unable to definitively end the Protestant threat, and was forced into the “Peace of Augsburg” in 1556. He then began the project of ensuring an orderly and peacefully succession for his many domains, yielding to his son Philip II in his Spanish dominions in 1556 and his brother, Ferdinand, in his imperial domains in the same year. He then retired to the monastery of Yuste in Spain to pray for the remainder of his life. Fluent in his native language, Flemish, as well as in Dutch, Castilian Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Latin, and even some Basque, he was well-known and respected as a scholar as well as a ruler. Christendom in general owes much to this great man.
Hungary, initially populated by the pagan and famously marauding Magyars, had become a strongly Catholic nation centuries earlier. The Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, advanced into Hungary and took the fortress of Nándorfehérvár, located in what is now Belgrade in Serbia, from the Hungarians, in 1526. Although a great coalition of Hungarians, Spaniards, various Slavs, and Germans came together, it was woefully inadequate against the huge Ottoman army and was decisively defeated. While the Turks did take some time to fully invest it, this battle was the end of a Catholic-governed Hungary; it suffered under a Muslim yoke for about a century.
On this date in 1535, Pope Paul III formalized Henry VIII's departure from the Church of Christ with a bull of excommunication, _Ejus qui immobilis_. Henry VIII is a prime example of what a Christian ruler should *not* be, almost a perfect foil for the great saint Louis IX. Rather than properly submitting his state to the Church, he chose to submit the Church to his state—and by so doing separated himself and his state from the truth. No more direct example of refusing to honor the integral reign of Christ the King can be found.
On this date in 1792, and continuing until 6 September, French Revolutionary forces and mobs massacred 1200 prisoners, mostly after show trials. More than 220 of these martyrs were priests who had refused the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which seriously compromised the true Faith.
Though the Revolution had proceeded by terror from its very beginning, the formalized “Reign of Terror” as a specific stage of the French Revolution began on this date in 1793. During “the Terror” (la Terreur), 16,594 death sentences were issued; between 10,000 and 12,000 people were executed without the formality of a trial, and 10,000 or so died in prison. This date is given as its beginning because on this date Bertrand Barère stated, in the National Convention, that the Revolution should “make terror the order of the day”. The many executions during this period, both judicial and extrajudicial, were indeed terroristic, and involved the murder of countless royalists and untold numbers of martyrs. The guillotine, which became known as the “national razor”, was dropped so many times that horses refused to enter the Place de la Révolution due to the reek of blood and gore that had so thoroughly saturated the ground. Of course, while guillotine was the preferred method, many were martyred in other ways: whole groups of peasants were taken into the Loire on rafts, tied together, and the rafts then sunk, what were known as “les noyades de Nantes” (the drownings at Nantes); many were simply shot, beheaded in the streets in the traditional way, or killed in other horrible ways. “Terror” is truly the only appropriate word for this nightmare, which made so many martyrs.
On this date in 1634, a great Catholic victory in the Thirty Years' War occurred at Nördlingen. Still only a bit more than halfway through the war, a Spanish-Imperial army destroyed a Protestant German-Swedish force. The Swedes had entered the war only four years earlier, when King Gustavus Adolphus had landed in mainland Europe in the hopes of assisting Protestants against the Emperor. He had a string of victories, and was (shamefully) funded in this by Catholic France. The victory at Nördlingen, however, effectively destroyed Swedish ability to wage war in Europe, at least for a significant time, as well as permitted imperial reconquests of Württemburg and the Rhineland. Unfortunately, this led France to intervene directly in the war, on the side of the Protestants, which removed any possibility of a permanent and lasting Catholic victory.
On this date in 394, Emperor Theodosius defeated the pagan western Emperor Eugenius, and his chief general (magister militum) Arbogast. Theodosius had enthroned Valentinian as the Emperor of the Western Empire, and Valentinian's death was suspicious at best. Eugenius, a native Roman, did go through the formality of asking Theodosius to consent to his enthronement as Western Emperor, but Theodosius was unwilling to consent to a pagan co-emperor. The victory ensured the continued supremacy and state support of the True Faith throughout the whole of the Empire, East and West, and thus is well remembered in the history of Christendom.
The Battle of Arsuf was won by Richard the Lionhart on this date in 1191. Richard, leading a large force of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Hospitallers, Templars, and local troops, defeated an army more than twice its own size led by Saladin. The defeat made Saladin very wary of a full-scale attack, and induced him to sign the Treaty of Jaffa, which recognized Christian control of much of the coast as well as the right of Christian pilgrims to visit Jerusalem.
During the English Civil War, Ireland had revolted and successfully taken control of most of the island under the Irish Catholic Confederation. They allied themselves with English royalists (the “Cavaliers”) against the Puritan Parliamentarians (the “Roundheads”), who invaded Ireland in August of 1649. Oliver Cromwell, with the Roundheads, besieged the town of Drogheda from 3 September, and finally took it on the 11th. As he rode into the town, Cromwell not only permitted his men to give no quarter; he actively ordered them to give none. All the defenders were murdered. One group under their commander surrendered when promised their lives; they were murdered less than hour later, with their commander beaten to death with his own wooden leg. St. Peter's Church was put to flames, killing thirty who were inside; those who fled the church were shot down by Cromwell's men. All-Glory.pdf.png Catholic priests found in Drogheda were beaten to death, except two, who were executed the next day. Hundred of civilians were slaughtered, as well; even according to Cromwell's own chaplain, 700 to 800 civilians were murdered in the sack of the city. Furthermore, one report has Cromwell's men breaking into a house with guns blazing, stopping only when the inhabitants were identified as Protestant; it seems clear that Catholics would not have received such mercy. The massacre at Drogheda was unprecedented even by the relatively brutal standards of the religious wars and quarter rules of the time, an eternal shame to Protestants and an eternal glory to the many who died martyrs that day.
The siege of Vienna is broken by the heroic charge of John Sobieski, King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania, after a three-month siege by 150,000 Turks, resisted by Ernst Rüdiger, Count of Starhemberg, and only 16,000 men, 11,000 actual soldiers and 5,000 volunteers. Even with the relief force, the Muslims outnumbered the Christians by nearly 2–1. Nevertheless, the siege was broken, and the troops gave credit to the Holy Name of Mary for her intercession for the victory. King John famously stated, “Venimus, vidimus, Deus vincit”, in a great reversal of Caesar's famous boast. Hence, this day is now the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.
On this date in 1607, “the Earls” (Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tryone; Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell; and their followers) fled from Ulster, formerly the most Gaelic of all Irish provinces, to Spain, symbolically ending the old Gaelic order. Though the Earls had signed the Treaty of Mellifont only four years earlier, the English Lord Deputy of Ireland had already began to abuse the traditional rights of the Earls, who won a legal battle to that effect. Expecting further oppression, the Earls had only a few options, and fearing arrest, they determined to flee to Europe to seek support for renewing their rebellion against the Crown. However, they were unable to find that support and never returned to Ireland. Further, the British government used the incident to seize nearly the entirety of the province of Ulster, giving it to Protestant colonists to occupy. This effects of this massive colonization effort permanently split Ireland into two.
Damascus, the first major Christian city conquered by Muslim invaders, fell on this date in 634, due largely to the treason of one of its inhabitants.
On this date, in 1870, the newly-founded Kingdom of Italy completed its forcible conquest of the Papal States, summarily ending them. The Papal States had been maintained by the Church for over a thousand years, as a way of guaranteeing the Church's independence from any political entity. While the French had guaranteed the independence of the papal states, the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 gave the Italian state the opportunity it needed to invade. The legendary Papal Zouaves, made up of Dutch, French, Austrian, Spanish, and other volunteers, mounted a perfunctory defense; however, the Pope, Pius IX, did not wish to send his people to the slaughter, and surrendered the city under this overwhelming force.
On this date in 1792, the National Convention of Revolutionary France abolished the monarchy and declared the French First Republic. The French government, formerly dedicated at least in principle to the integral reign of Christ the King, a stalwart of the Church for a thousand years, had fallen to an anti-Christian Revolutionary order.
On this date in 1122, Pope Callixtus II and Emperor Henry V entered into the Concordat of Worms, finally ending the sometimes bitter “investitute controversy” between the Church and the state. Civil investiture involved the temporal sovereign investing ecclesiastical figures, especially bishops and abbots, with the marks of their office, especially the ring and the crozier. This had unfortunately become very common, and a right that the Emperors in particular insisted on. The Church, however, insisted on her rights to invest her own clergy with their signs of office, and the Concordat of Worms settled the matter—firmly in favor of the Church. The Emperor renounced the right to veto the election of the Pope, or to command his election, and to invest bishops with their rings and croziers (though in Germany he continued to preside over the elections of abbots and bishops, even if he did not choose them). Bishops were required to swear an oath to the secular authorities like any other subject. This long battle in which the Church insisted on her rights, and the state eventually acknowledged them, firmly demonstrates the proper relationship between the two societies.
Wenceslas, duke of Bohemia, was posthumously made king of Bohemia by a loving and grateful nation. Taking the throne in 921, Wenceslas was a devoted Christian; his father's family had been Christian for some time, but his mother was only baptized upon her marriage. When his father died, initially his grandmother was regent for him, as he was only thirteen; however, his mother, Drahomíra, still evidently harboring pagan sympathies, had his grandmother murdered and took the regency herself, using her authority to persecute Christians. When Wenceslas was 18, Christian nobles overthrew Drahomíra, and Wenceslas took his throne. He resisted the attacking, still-pagan Magyars, invited Latin-rite priests into Bohemia, and founded the cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague. On this date, in 935, he was murdered by his younger brother Boleslav, to take his throne. Subsequently, it became known that he would rise up in secret at night and go about giving alms to the widows, orphans, and prisoners. In all respects, he was more a father than a despot to his people, and is a great example of Christian leadership.
Though the exact date is uncertain, in September of 641, the great city of Alexandria, first evangelized by the Apostle St. Mark himself, the see of the great St. Athanasius, fell to the Muslim invaders. Though heavily outnumbered, the Byzantine garrison resisted a six-month siege before the city was finally taken by storm. Formerly a vibrant city, with a very diverse and multilingual community of Greeks and Copts (native Egyptians), Alexandria's importance never again reached its former levels. Upon seizing the city, the Muslims destroyed the city walls and burned many churches, including that built by Saint Mark himself, and which contained his mortal remains.
This first sainted king of Axum, Ezana (in his own language, still the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church, Geez, ዔዛና), ruled the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum from sometime in the 320s until about 360. He was the first Ethiopian ruler to become a Christian, being converted by one of his slaves, and his tutor, Frumentius. When the Roman emperor Constantius II, an Arian heretic, demanded that Frumentius come to Alexandria to be examined for Arian credentials, Ezana refused. He was the conquerer of the nearby kingdom of Kush, and his royal coins not only replaced the pagan disc with a cross, but also printed, in Greek, his royal motto: τουτο αρεση τη χωρα, touto arese te chora: “May this please the country”. He loyalty to the true Faith taught to him, his humility to accept instruction in this from a slave, his conversion of his kingdom to officially acknowledge the Cross, and his dedication to his people's good make him a great example of Christian kingship and piety.
On this date in 1187, the Holy City, in Christian hands since 1098, fell back into Muslim possession. After the Battle of Hattin in July, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was significantly weakened. Refugees flocked to Jerusalem, fleeing from Saladin's armies, but there were less than fourteen knights available in the whole city. Balian, the commander, raised some squires and burgesses into knighthood, but the city was still woefully underdefended. Saladin arrived on 20 September, and multiple separate assaults on the city were pushed back, but they were not able to fight Saladin away. Balian offered surrender; Saladin insisted on unconditional surrender, but would ransom anyone in the city: ten dinars for a man, five for a woman, and two for a child. Any others would be sold into slavery. When Balian noted that there were 20,000 Christians in the city who couldn't possibly pay that amount, Saladin suggested 100,000 dinars for all of them. Balian, however, said that he couldn't possibly raise that amount. The best he could raise was 30,000, and Saladin would permit only 7,000 of the poor who could not pay to be ransomed for that amount. As it turned out, about 15,000 Christians were unable to pay the ransom and were thus sold into Muslim slavery.
The battle of Lepanto, the last major naval engagement fought entirely between rowed vessels (galleys). The Holy League gathered by Pope St. Pius V, consisting of a great alliance between Spain, the Papal States, Venice, Genoa, Savoy, Tuscany, and the Order of St. John, united under the command of Don John of Austria to face a far superior Muslim Turkish fleet. The Ottoman fleet had long treated the Mediterranean as its own personal lake, terrorizing Christian shipping and shores and kidnapping untold number of Christians into slavery. Entrusting the fleet to Our Lady, and specifically beseeching all Christians to pray the rosary for their success, the fleet unexpected crushed the Turks, destroying or capturing over 150 galleys at the cost of only 13. Pope St. Pius was miraculously told of the victory at the very time it occurred, and immediately sang a Te Deum in thanksgiving. The day is, therefore, now the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and further granted Our Lady the title of Our Lady of Victory.
Charles Martel, leading a Frankish army of about 15,000 men, defeated an invading force of Umayyads approximately 20,000 strong near the confluence of the rivers Clain and Vienne, between the towns of Poitiers and Tours. This battle, the first hard setback that conquering Muslim armies had experienced, effectively ended Islamic invasions north of the Pyrenees, though raids and occupations continued for centuries. Without any real doubt, this battle saved Christendom. Charles “the Hammer” Martel was the grandfather of Charlemagne.
On this date, Rodrigo de Triana spied land from the Pinta in Columbus's fleet in 1492. Not only did the discovery solidify Spain's position as the preeminent Christian power in the world, but it also opened untold millions who had never heard of Christ to the Gospel.
St. Edward the Confessor, the saintly last king of Anglo-Saxon England, is celebrated on this, his feast day. Crowned in 1042, Edward had been exiled to France by political opponents, but returned in 1042 to take up the throne. He led a celibate life, which unfortunately led to the succession battle after his death, but ruled largely successfully; he promoted the success of the Church and successfully protected his borders to the west and north. Famously, he is also the founder of Westminster Abbey. He is one of the patrons of England and of the United Kingdom, and also of difficult marriages.
On this date in 1529, the first Ottoman attempt to take the Christian city of Vienna was defeated. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent attacked the city with an army of 100,000 men; the city was defended by only 21,000. For two weeks, the city was besieged. This was the beginning of over a century and a half of war between Christendom, as led by the Austrian Habsburgs, and the Ottoman empire, which culminated in the Second Siege of Vienna, which was so decisively defeated by Duke Charles of Lorraine and King Jan Sobieski of Poland in 1683.
On this date in 1793, Queen Marie Antoinette, an innocent if ever there was one, was executed by the Revolutionary government of France. The Queen was the subject of constand libels from liberals and other Revolutionaries, from the legitimacy of her children to her alleged loyalty to her native Austria. Generous with her personal wealth to the poor, she was nevertheless constantly accused of selfishness. When the King was murdered, she mourned deeply and sincerely, and when her eldest son, the heir to the throne, was torn from her so that he could be reeducated in Revolutionary ideals, she spent hours trying to see her son, even as the impressionable youth was slowly turned against her. The Revolution murdered many innocents; the Queen was certainly one of them.
Emperor Charles I of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Croatia, King of Bohemia, died on this date in 1922. He married his love, Zita, in 1911, and they had eight children together; famously he told her, when they were married, that they now had to lead one another to Heaven. Never supposed to become the emperor, he became the heir apparent upon the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, when Emperor Franz Joseph finally began to train him into the role. However, Franz was already quite old, and died in 1916. Charles led an offensive into Italy in 1916, which like so many offensives in the meat-grinder of the First World War saw some initial success before grinding to a halt. Horrified by the nightmare that the war had become, Charles attempted to make a separate peace with the Allies in what became known as “the Sixtus Affair” (because Charles's brother-in-law, Sixtus, was an officer in the Belgian army and was used as an intermediary), an attempt which unfortunately failed. Charles favored creating a third kingdom in the Empire (to join Austria and Hungary), Croatia, and was a model ruler of a multiethnic state. This was not to be, as the end of the war forced Charles into exile, he and his family being officially banished by act of the revolutionary allied-supported parliament of German Austria; and though, encouraged by Hungarian royalists, he did attempt to retake the Hungarian crown, he was unsuccessful in this, as well. Charles and Zita, now pregnant with their eighth child, and their children were exiled to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died on this date in 1922. Charles (or Karl, or Karolyi) always put the Faith first in his decisions, and acted always for the good of his people and not himself. This day, the date of his marriage to his beloved Empress Zita, is his feast day.
One of the few successful rebellions undertaken by Irish Catholics after the Tudor conquest, the Irish Rebellion of 1641 began on this date. Taking advantage of rising tensions between the Protestant King Charles I and his royalist supporters (“Cavaliers”) and Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan Parliamentarian rebels (“Roundheads”), the Irish rose up to guarantee Catholic rights, Irish self-government, and return of property confiscated from the Catholic Church. The English Civil War went into full swing in 1642, and by May of 1642, the rebels controlled most of the island, excepting only parts of Ulster (where Protestant colonists from England and Scotland held sway) and the northwest, along with “the Pale” (the area surrounding Dublin, long an English stronghold). The rebellion produced the Irish Catholic Confederation, leading to the government known as Confederate Ireland, which ruled most of the island until 1649, when Cromwell's butchery put an end to it. It was an admirable example of the integral reign of Christ the King; one of its flags actually featured Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, being crowned by the Holy Trinity. Each province had a council made up of clergy and nobility, and the island as a whole had a similar council. It punished misdeeds by Confederate-allied soldiers, minted money, and sent ambassadors to foreign countries. Interestingly, the national council, in addition to lords spiritual, temporal, and commons, included a representative of the English Crown.
The Peace of Westphalia was signed on this date in 1648, in Westphalia (specifically Osnabrück and Münster). It resulted in the independence of the Dutch Republic from Spain (not strictly speaking a part of the Peace of Westphalia, but a direct result of the Thirty Years' War), the decline of Spain as the preeminent Christian power, the rise of France, the weakening of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the further entrenchment of Protestantism in Northern Europe. It further officially recognized Calvinism as a religious choice that could be made by a ruler for his realm. While the war might have ended worse, the connivance of France with the Protestants made it a disaster for Christendom. 24 October is thus a dark day for the followers of Christ the King.
On this date in 1147, the only significant victory of the Second Crusade, and a great victory in the centuries-long Crusade to liberate Iberia, occurred at Lisbon, in Portugal. The Muslim occupiers had agreed to surrender the day before, and the Crusaders entered the city on this date. A group of Crusaders from Dartmouth, Devonshire, in England, were forced by storms to stop at Porto on their way to the Holy Land, where King St. Afonso persuaded them to assist in his campaign. After a four-month siege, the city was successfully taken. This was not only a great moment for the new kingdom of Portugal, but an important event in the Reconquista as a whole.
The Second Battle of Dorylæum, a devastating defeat during the Second Crusade, occurred on this date in 1147. Emperor Conrad III, one of the two greatest kings in Christendom (the other being Louis VII, not far behind him on the Crusade), had taken the cross and was proceeding to help defend Jerusalem. The Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus, having promised supplies for the Crusaders, did not deliver them, leaving his army in poor shape. He did, however, provide the Crusaders guides who well knew the rugged lands of Anatolia; it is likely that he was secretly allied with the Turks to lead the Crusaders into a trap. While some deny this, it is certain that the Byzantine guides mysteriously disappeared immediately prior to the Turkish attack. When the knights of the Crusade dismounted to water their horses, they were swarmed by Turks, who decimated the army. Conrad himself was wounded. More than 60% of the army was killed; the German contingent of this Crusade later joined with the forces of Louis VII.
The first king of a united England (he called himself King of the Anglo-Saxons), Alfred was born in Wessex in 848 or 849, in a time of frequent and violent invasions from the pagan Vikings. He was the fourth son of his father, and never supposed to be king; however, his older brothers, Æthelbald and Æthelberht, died young; his third, Æthelred, fought hard against the pagans, including in the battle attempting to keep the Great Heathen Army of the Vikings, led by Ivar the Boneless, out of Mercia. Alfred himself fought beside his brother in this battle. Æthelred died in April of 871, after leading Wessex (and Alfred) in several battles, mostly defeats and two significant defeats, and Alfred subsequently became the King of Wessex. He fought the pagans without fear and without relent, at one point fleeing with no army and no hope of maintaining his kingdom into the swamps after a catastrophic defeat. Still, he was able to raise the fyrd of Wessex and won a great battle at Edington in 878. He chased the Vikings to a stronghold and besieged them until they surrendered. Guthrum, the king of the pagan Viking Danes, took his defeat as a sign of the failure of his gods, and when Alfred insisted on his conversion to Christianity, he agreed, with Alfred standing godfather at his baptism. Guthrum was made king of East Anglia, a subkingdom of Wessex, and remained a loyal ally of Alfred's, even marrying one of his daughters. Alfred was well-known to aid the poor, and he spent a good deal of time seeing to the translation, and personally translating, countless writings into Anglo-Saxon, the language of his people. He also spent the time after Edington firming up England's defenses, revolutionizing its military organization; so when the Vikings returned in the 890s, they were soundly defeated. He also undertook great legal reforms, repaired monasteries and churches which the Vikings had wrecked and founded new ones, founded a court school, and was beloved by the people whom he saved and supported. Alfred is worthily called “the Great”, the only English king to have this title.
Kaleb, also known by Greek name of Elesbaas (Ἐλεσβαᾶς), died on this date in 542. Kaleb was the son of Tazena (his name, in his native language and still the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church, Geez, was ካሌብ እለ አጽብሐ), the king of the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Axum, one of the earliest kingdoms to embrace Christianity as a whole (in the 4th century). The Axumites ruled a large kingdom under Kaleb, who expanded it through an invasion of what is now Yemen across the Red Sea. In ages past, before Islam had taxed and martyred their communities to oblivion, many Christians and Jews, as well as pagans, lived in Arabia, including in the southern parts which are now Yemen and Oman; while Kaleb ruled Axum, a Jew named Dhu Nuwas was persecuting a Christian community in Najran, and Kaleb attacked to put a stop to the persecution. Kaleb was victorious and installed a Christian viceroy there. (This community was banished from Arabia by Muhammad's first successor, Umar ibn al-Khattab, though some managed to stay in the area for some centuries.) Kaleb maintained relations with Constantinople and the Persians, and eventually abdicated his throne and retired to a monastery, sending his crown to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
On this date, in 312, Western Emperor Constantine met Eastern Emperor Maxentius in battle at the Milvian Bridge. Constantine and his men had a vision the evening prior to the battle: a great sign in the heavens, the “Chi-Rho” (“☧”), a combination of the first two letters of Christ in Greek (“ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ”), with the emblem “In hoc signo vices”: “In this sign, thou shalt conquer”. The Emperor placed the ☧ on the shields of his army, and did indeed conquer in the battle the next day, making him the sole ruler of the entire Empire. In 313, he issued the Edict of Milan, permitting Christians to publicly follow the true faith throughout the Empire. This battle thus began the transition of the pagan Empire into a nascent Christendom, and the battle, along with Constantine and his men, therefore stand tall in the annals of the followers of Christ the King.
This ancient city in Syria, where the followers of Christ were first called Christians, fell to the Muslim invaders on this date in 637.
On this date in 1340, the last invasion of Spain by a new Muslim force was decisively defeated by the combined forces of King Alfonso XI of Castile and King Afonso IV of Portugal. The sultan of Granada, concerned about Christian advances, sent to the Marinids in Africa for assistance; the Marinids landed somewhere around 65,000 men, while the Christians could muster only about 22,000. The battle was met at the Río Salado, near Tarifa, and despite being massively outnumbered was a decisive Christian victory. No Muslim force would ever again invade the Iberian peninsula.
On this great feast of All Saints, we remember that we honor the saints as our fellow-subjects and fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ the King.
In the right order of things, the state is below the Church, each acting within its proper domain. By the Act of Supremacy, passed this day in 1534 by the Parliament of England, King Henry VIII was declared the supreme head of the Church in England, thereby upending the proper order of things in the realm. It was shortly followed by the Treasons Act, which held that anyone who denied the validity of the Act of Supremacy (that is, the king's title as supreme head of the Church in England) was by that fact a traitor, and thus subject to the punishment therefor (death). St. Thomas More was one of the many victims of this act.
On this date in 1867, the revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi attempted to seize the temporal possession of the Church, the Papal States, by force. The legendary Papal Zouaves, made up of Dutch, French, Spanish, and other volunteers, mounted a heroic defense alongside French troops, beating Garibaldi's men back and ensuring the political independence of the papacy for another few years.
On this date in 1605, the Gunpowder Plot, hatched by Catholics in an attempt to force their better treatment, definitively failed. After the accession of James I of England in 1603, promises were initially made to cease the persecution of Catholics; James very quickly reneged on those promises, banning all Catholic priests from the kingdom as Elizabeth had, and the Popish Recusants Act was introduced in April, prohibiting Catholics from being lawyers, doctors, guardians, or trustees; permitting magistrates to search their houses at will; imposing a new oath of allegiance; and introducing newly huge fines for refusing to participate in Protestant services. A group of Catholics led by Robert Catesby plotted to destroy Parliament with the use of large quantities of gunpowder stored under the building (hence the name); Guy Fawkes was in charge of the powder. The plot was revealed to arch-Protestant and long persecutor of Catholics, Robert Cecil, by a letter that one of the plotters had written in an attempt to warn an innocent person to avoid the Parliament building that day. Fawkes was found with the gunpowder and arrested; he was tortured, never denied his intent to destroy the king and Parliament and free the Catholic religion, but even under torture never revealed his fellow plotters. He was executed. Though the other conspirators attempted to raise an uprising, they were unsuccessful, and several wholly innocent Jesuits were also executed. Catholics labored under such legal restrictions until Catholic Emancipation was finally passed in 1829.
The first major battle of the Thirty Years' War occurred on this date in 1620; it was an imperial and Catholic victory. Following the Defenestration of Prague, Protestant forces attempted to overthrow Emperor Ferdinand, the duly elected king of Bohemia, and install Frederick of the Palatinate as King. While some Protestants did support the rebels, even many of them were unenthused about the overthrow of a clearly legally chosen king, and thus they suffered from a lack of support, through a mercenary army was funded to assist them. Imperial forces, however, were able to defeat the rebels at White Mountain (Bílá Hora) on this day; they collapsed, and the Emperor was able to retake possession of Bohemia on 9 November. As a penalty, Emperor Ferdinand deprived the Palatinate of its elector status (meaning that it had a vote in who would become the emperor), transferring it to the Catholic state of Bavaria. Protestant states objected strongly to this, and thus the war continued.
The Ottoman Empire, which had been pushing through and conquering Christian lands and subjecting them to humiliation and persecution, not least through the practice of devşirme), was the object of the Varna Crusade beginning in 1443. Called by Pope Eugene IV, it was led by King Władysław III of Poland, Voivode John Hunyadi of Transylvania, and Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, and was intended to prevent further Ottoman conquests, as well as to regain the lands they had already conquered. Unfortunately, they suffered a crushing defeat at Varna, on what is now the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, in which King Władysław himself was killed. The Ottomans suffered huge casualties, to the point that the sultan didn't even realize that he'd won for several days; however, about half the Crusading army were casualties, and the defeat was so significant that most Christian powers deemed crusading against the Ottomans to be impossible for some time. Arguably, this defeat was one of the reasons that so few Westerners came to assist Constantinople in that final siege less than a decade later. The defeat thus resonated strongly in subsequent history.
On this date in 1673, Jan Sobieski (later elected King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania, but at the time fighting under King Michael) commanded an army that defeated a slightly larger Ottoman army under Husein Pasha, at Khotyn in what is now Ukraine. As always, Jan Sobieski led from the front, personally leading his soldiers to storm the camp, followed by a great charge from the famous Polish “Winged Hussars”. At the cost of about 2,000 casualties, the Polish-Lithuanian army inflicted approximately 20,000 casualties on the Ottomans. This earned Sobieski the name “Lion of Khotyn”, and made him a much-feared and respected general among the Turks. It further pushed the Turks out of most of what is now Western Ukraine, and played a large part in Sobieski's own election as king, which in turn, only ten years later, permitted the world-changing defeat at Vienna.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary went to her eternal reward on 17 November 1231; her feast is on 19 November. St. Elizabeth was engaged to the Landgrave of Thuringia, Louis (Ludwig) IV; she was 14, and the marriage appears to have been a happy one. She heard of the Franciscans early, and became very devoted to St. Francis and his way of life in 1223. Even against her husband's wishes, she was dedicated to the poor. Once, when bringing goods to the poor, some of the Landgrave's nobles were concerned that she was stealing from the coffers, so he asked her to reveal what was in her robes; when she did so, all the goods had turned to beautiful roses, white and red. On another occasion, she brought a leper into the noble house and even laid him on the bed that she shared with the Landgrave. The Landgrave, who for the most part was very supportive of St. Elizabeth's piety, was indignant and threw back the blankets; instead of the leper, however, he saw Christ, crucified, stretched out on the bed. The Landgrave was killed tragically in 1227 while attempting to join the Crusade; St. Elizabeth took religious vows and lived out her life in strict penance and obedience. She also built a hospital with her own money, where she and others personally cared for the sick. She bore her husband three children, and is an eternal example of royal piety and good conduct.
In the Swiss Confederation during the Protestant Revolt, some of the cantons became Protestant, led mostly by Huldruch Zwingli of Zürich, and some remained with the True Faith, especially the “Five Catholic Cantons” (Lucerne, Schwyz, Uri, Zug, and Unterwalden). Zwingli persuaded Bern to enact a food embargo on the Catholic cantons; however, this failed, and eventually relations between Bern and Zürich became strained as a result. However, the embargo was still harmful, and the Catholic cantons declared war on Zürich. On 11 October, they won a decisive victory in which Zwingli himself was killed. A very large Protestant force then counterattacked, but a much smaller Catholic force defeated it again. The Protestants then agreed to a peace brokered by the French and the neutral cantons, which was not ideal but certainly better than the alternative. Catholic cantons could remain Catholic, Protestant cantons could remain Protestant, and joint lands allowed either but favored Catholicism. The war quite possibly saved Catholicism in Switzerland.
On this date in 1248, the nearly year-and-a-half long siege of the great city of Seville (Sevilla) ended with the surrender of the Moorish garrison.
On this date in 1927, Fr. Miguel Pro was martyred by firing squad by the revolutionary government of Mexico. The government claimed that he was involved in an assassination attempt; however, in truth he was executed for continuing to perform his priestly duties in defiance of government prohibition. The government refused to grant him a trial. When the time came for his martyrdom, Fr. Pro held his arms out in the form of a cross and shouted, “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”). The initial volley did not kill him; one of the soldiers therefore came forward and delivered a point-blank shot to his head. Fr. Miguel Pro, pray for us!
On this date in 1177, Baldwin IV, the “Leper King” of Jerusalem, defeated a vastly superior army led by Saladin. Saladin, in his first attack against the Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land, advanced with a huge force out of Egypt, being so dismissive of Baldwin's much-smaller force that he didn't bother with basic march discipline, his army spread out to pillage Jerusalem's farmlands. Baldwin, with a severe case of leprosy and only sixteen years old, ordered a relic of the True Cross held up before his army; he was then helped off his horse and kneeled before the Cross, praying for victory, and then stood on his own. His men were greatly inspired by this and cheered, and Baldwin fought with his own hands in the battle. Saladin fled the battle on a camel, losing all but a small part of his army. While only ten years later Saladin would crush the field army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin, this was a great victory for the Crusader kingdoms that preserved Christian liberty in the Holy Land when it might have been wholly lost much earlier. Baldwin's piety, bravery, and trust in God are greatly to be admired.
On this date in 1927, the Catholic people of western Mexico declared formally that they would no longer be able to follow the anti-Catholic government and were taking up arms to defend the integral reign of Christ the King. In a work titled “A la Nación”, the rebel René Capistrán Garza stated, “La hora de la batalla ha sonado; la hora de la victoria pertenece a Dios” (“the hour of battle has sounded; the hour of victory belongs to God”). The state of Jalisco, especially, arose nearly immediately and took arms to defend their homeland and their Faith from the anti-Catholic Calles government.
On this date, in 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed the Crusade to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims, who had stolen it centuries earlier. After beseeching the gathered crowds at Clermont to go rescue the Holy Land, thousands pledged themselves to the task, crying, “Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”) Though moderns often assert that the Crusades were a way for second and third sons to make their fortune, in reality crusaders often mortgaged their own lands and other property in order to make the journey; it was an expensive and dangerous proposition, from which many did not expect to return. As in any such group, there were scoundrels and fortune-seekers; but the main body of the Crusades were sincere warriors of Christ, seeking to liberate the holy places from the Muslims who had stolen them from the Christians who had occupied them for centuries. This was the first great political (though it was also religious) uprising of Christendom, and reverberated throughout the centuries.
The first king of Portugal, St. Afonso was born in the county of Portucale, south of Galicia, in the early twelfth century. In 1129, he declared himself the Prince of Portugal, an act which his technical liegelord, King Alfonso VII of Castile and León, did not dispute. He then attacked the Moors to complete his role in the Reconquista, winning the Battle of Ourique in 1139, and submitted himself directly to the Pope (not through the king of Castile) in 1143, swearing to continue the great Crusade to liberate Hispania from the Muslim invaders. He had great success against the Moors, taking Santarém and, crucially, Lisbon, Portugal's modern capital. While the king of Castile was generally against the independent Portuguese kingdom, in 1178, when the Moors attempted to retake Santarém, Fernando of León rode to help defend the city. Afonso was a strong, Christian leader who dedicated himself not to his own aggrandizement, but to the good of his people and of Christendom. He died on this date in 1185.
On this date in 1864, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Pius IX promulgated his encyclical Quanta cura and the _Syllabus of Errors_ with it, condemning many liberal ideas and thus giving us the outline of some of the principles of the integral reign of Christ the King.
On this date in 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary performed a miracle for St. Juan Diego, a Native American peasant in Mexico, and gifted him a sacred image of herself, clothed as an Aztec princess, which endures to this day in Tepeyac. This apparition converted vast numbers of Natives in Mexico to the True Faith. She has been declared, by the Church, both Queen of Mexico and Empress of Latin America, and her role in establishing a Catholic society which has produced so much of value for Christ the King should be honored.
St. Judicael was a Breton, a resident of the kingdom of Domnonée in Brittany, the far northwestern peninsula of what is now France. The eldest of the twenty children of Judhael, King of Domnonée, and his wife Prizel, Judicael retired to a monastery while his younger brother, Haeloc, took the throne. However, in 615, Haeloc died, and Judicael was forced to leave monastic life, against his inclination, and ruled the kingdom until 642. At that point, he retired against to the monastery, turning the throne over to his brother Judoc. He died on this date in either 647 or 652. Judicael's determination that his kingdom needed him, and his acceptance of that burden even against his own wishes, is a valuable example for the followers of Christ the King.
Edessa, which had been a Christian city even before the arrival of the Crusaders, was ruled by Baldwin I of Boulogne beginning in 1098, when it became the County of Edessa. (The city is now known as Şanlıurfa, in Turkey.) While Baldwin became King of Jerusalem when Godfrey died in 1100, Franks continued ruling the city, and they interacted mostly well with their largely Armenian (and, again, Christian) subjects; intermarriages were very common. On this date in 1144, a Turkish army successfully took the city after a nearly month-long siege; though the entire Edessan army was engaged elsewhere, the city put up as strong a fight as they could. The attacking Turkish troops began a massacre, and killed all their Western prisoners, but their general Zengi successfully stopped the massacre of Armenian civilians. However, when the city was briefly retaken by Christians in 1146 and then retaken yet again by the Muslims the same year, Joscelin, the last count of Edessa, attempted to break a hole in the Turkish lines for the Armenian Christians to use to escape; he failed, and the Muslims massacred many of the Armenians and sold the rest into slavery. The fall of Edessa was a great blow to the Crusader kingdoms, and news of it was the catalyst for the Second Crusade; sadly, the Second Crusade was decisively defeated, and Edessa has not been Christian since.
Clovis (Chlodovechus), the great king of the Franks, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, and ancestor of Charlemagne, was baptized on this day in 508. Clovis, as a pagan, successfully conquered much of what is now France (with the exception of Burgundy, Brittany, and the Mediterranean coast), and married a Christian woman, Clotilde, who persuaded Clovis to shun the Arians and eventually embrace true Christianity. He was bapized by St. Remigius (St.-Remi). Clovis had become a Christian long before, after the Battle of Tolbiac in 496; his wife had consistently drawn him to Christianity, and when the battle began to go badly, Clovis called upon his wife's God to aid him, and remained a Christian ever after. His conversion brought about France as “the eldest daughter of the Church”, and his kingdom later stood as a vital bulwark against Islamic incursions from the south, along with a pivotal role in the reestablishment of the Empire with Charlemagne in 800.
On this date, Christmas of 800, Pope Leo III drew King Charles of the Franks into Rome. Without telling him his intentions, Pope Leo asked Charlemagne to wear sandals and other Roman garb, rather than his usual Frankish clothing; and at Christmas Mass, when the king knelt to pray, Leo crowned him Imperator Romanorum, Emperor of the Romans. Charlemagne was thus, at least in this respect, a model of a united Christendom, and a great example for subsequent rulers in the Christian world.
St. Thomas Becket's martyrdom occurred on this day in 1170. St. Thomas, formerly Lord Chancellor of England, was nominated by Henry II of England to be the archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of all England, in the hopes that the Church would be more at his own beck and call. St. Thomas, however, resigned his chancellorship and dedicated himself thoroughly to his role as bishop. St. Thomas refused to concede the proper rights of the Church, no matter what may come. Finally, Henry famously stated words to the effect of, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” St. Thomas was murdered in the cathedral by Henry's men. His death for the principle of the properly ordered relationship between the Church and the state has rung throughout the ages and all over Christendom.