Mind-Benders of Christian History
All true, and all a little hard to believe — collisions of time, faith, and empire across the Christian centuries.
Surprising lifeBefore he was pope, he wrote a bestselling erotic novel
In 1444, years before he was elected Pope Pius II, the humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini wrote The Tale of Two Lovers (Historia de duobus amantibus) — an erotic tale of the affair between a married woman and a courtier, told largely through their exchanged love letters. It became one of the runaway bestsellers of the 15th century and is often cited as one of the earliest novels-in-letters in European literature. Later, as pope, he tried to disown the racy writings of his youth.
How we know
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Historia de duobus amantibus (1444); Pius II, bull In minoribus agentes (1463); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Pius II'.
His own family kidnapped him to stop him becoming a friar
When the young nobleman Thomas Aquinas joined the new Dominican order in 1244, his aristocratic family was so appalled that his brothers seized him on the road and held him under house arrest in the family castles for about a year. According to his early biographers they even sent a woman into his room to break his resolve, and he drove her out with a burning stick from the fire. Released in 1245, he went straight back to the Dominicans — and became the most influential theologian of the Middle Ages.
How we know
William of Tocco, Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino; J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino (1974).
A third-century scholar built a six-column Bible by hand
Around 235–245 CE, the Alexandrian scholar Origen laid out the Old Testament in six parallel columns — the Hebrew text, that same text spelled in Greek letters, and four different Greek translations side by side — so readers could compare them line for line. The result, called the Hexapla, was so enormous, by some estimates several thousand pages across dozens of volumes, that it was likely never fully copied; the original was eventually lost.
How we know
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.16; Jerome, Commentary on Titus 3.9; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Hexapla'.
The Italian priest an emperor let bury in Beijing
Matteo Ricci sailed from Lisbon in 1578, reached China in 1582, and spent nearly twenty years working his way inland until he entered Beijing in 1601, where he presented the Wanli emperor with chiming clocks and a Chinese-language world map. Ming law required foreigners who died in China to be buried far away in Macau — but when Ricci died in Beijing in 1610, the emperor granted him a burial plot in the capital, an honor never before given to a European.
How we know
Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault, De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas (1615); Britannica, 'Matteo Ricci'.
Two of the great Church Fathers were brothers from a family of saints
Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa — two of the three Cappadocian Fathers whose writing shaped the doctrine of the Trinity — were biological brothers in a single 4th-century household. Their older sister Macrina the Younger and another brother, Peter of Sebaste, are also venerated as saints, and their parents and grandmother are honored too. One family produced a remarkable cluster of the early Church's saints.
How we know
Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Basil, St' and 'Macrina, St'.
The philosopher who wrote his masterpiece on death row
Boethius was one of the highest officials of Ostrogothic Italy — a former Roman consul serving as master of offices under King Theodoric — when he was arrested on charges of treason around 523 CE. Imprisoned and awaiting execution, he composed The Consolation of Philosophy, which became one of the most widely read and copied books of the entire Middle Ages.
How we know
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book 1; Anonymus Valesianus 85–87; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Boethius'.
A cannonball to the leg launched the Jesuits
Ignatius of Loyola was a professional Basque soldier when a cannonball shattered his leg at the defense of Pamplona in 1521. Bedridden for months, he read the devotional books at hand and resolved to leave soldiering for religious life. Nineteen years later, in 1540, the pope formally approved the order he founded — the Society of Jesus.
How we know
Ignatius of Loyola, Autobiography 1–12; Paul III, bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae (27 September 1540).
A churchman argued the Earth moves — a century before Copernicus
In his 1440 work On Learned Ignorance, Nicholas of Cusa — later made a cardinal — argued that the universe has no fixed center, that the Earth is not at rest, and that the stars might be distant suns like our own. He wrote it more than a century before Copernicus published his heliocentric model in 1543.
How we know
Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia (1440), Book II, chs. 11–12; Copernicus, De revolutionibus (1543).
From unbaptized governor to bishop in about eight days
When the see of Milan fell vacant in 374 CE, the Roman provincial governor Ambrose stepped in to calm a disputed election — and the crowd instead acclaimed him bishop, though he was still an unbaptized catechumen. He was baptized and, by tradition about a week later, consecrated bishop of Milan.
How we know
Paulinus of Milan, Life of Ambrose 6–9; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Ambrose, St'.
He wrote celebrated poetry while imprisoned by his own order
In 1577 the Spanish friar John of the Cross was seized by fellow Carmelites who opposed the reform he supported, taken to Toledo, and held for months in a cramped cell. During and after that confinement he composed some of the most admired verse in the Spanish language — including much of the Spiritual Canticle — before escaping in 1578.
How we know
Crisógono de Jesús, The Life of St John of the Cross (Eng. trans. 1958); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'John of the Cross, St'.
The pope who rode out to meet Attila the Hun
In 452 CE, as Attila and his Huns pushed into northern Italy, Pope Leo the Great travelled north and met Attila near the river Mincio, by Mantua. Attila soon withdrew from Italy — ancient and later writers gave differing explanations for why. Three years later Leo led a similar embassy to the Vandal king during the sack of Rome.
How we know
Prosper of Aquitaine, Chronicle, years 452 and 455; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Leo I, St'.
He learned Rome had fallen from his monastery in Bethlehem
When Alaric and the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE, Jerome was some 1,400 miles away in his monastery at Bethlehem, at work translating and writing. Recording his shock, he wrote that “the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken.”
How we know
Jerome, Letter 127.12, to Principia (c. 412).
Augustine died with an enemy army at the gates
Augustine of Hippo spent his final months in his North African city of Hippo Regius as the Vandals besieged it; he died there in August 430, about three months into the siege. His great work The City of God had been begun years earlier, in response to the sack of Rome in 410.
How we know
Possidius, Life of Augustine 28–31; Augustine, Retractations 2.43.
A peace treatise written in the shadow of a fallen city
Nicholas of Cusa had travelled to Constantinople on a Church embassy in the 1430s. When the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, he responded not with a call to arms but by writing On the Peace of Faith within months — a work imagining a peaceful conference among representatives of many nations and religions.
How we know
Nicholas of Cusa, De pace fidei (1453), ch. 1; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Nicholas of Cusa'.
The mathematician who was pope at the year 1000
Gerbert of Aurillac — who studied mathematics and astronomy in Catalonia — became Pope Sylvester II and held the office from 999 to 1003, sitting as bishop of Rome across the turn of the year 1000. He is credited with reintroducing the abacus and the armillary sphere to Latin Europe and with promoting Hindu-Arabic numerals in the Christian West.
How we know
Richer of Reims, Histories, Book 3; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Sylvester II'.
The pope who placed the crown on Charlemagne
Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne “Emperor of the Romans” in St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Day, 25 December 800 — an act Western tradition marks as the rebirth of a Roman imperial title in the West.
How we know
Royal Frankish Annals, year 801; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 28.
The cardinal, the astronomer, and the playwright — all alive in 1616
In February 1616, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine delivered the Church's formal admonition to Galileo not to hold or defend the idea that the Earth moves. That same year, William Shakespeare died in the spring (23 April on England's old calendar, 3 May on the Gregorian calendar Rome used) — so in the opening weeks of 1616 the cardinal, the astronomer, and the playwright were all living men at once.
How we know
Holy Office minutes of 25–26 February 1616, trans. in M. A. Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (1989); Britannica, 'William Shakespeare'.
Old enough to watch Columbus come home
Bartolomé de las Casas, who would later become a prominent defender of Indigenous peoples, was a boy of about eight in Seville in the spring of 1493 when Christopher Columbus paraded through the city on his return from the first Atlantic crossing. His own father sailed on Columbus's second voyage later that year.
How we know
Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies, Book 1; Britannica, 'Bartolomé de Las Casas'.
The monk who taught Europe to count the years
The AD system of numbering years was devised by Dionysius Exiguus around 525 CE, but it was Bede the Venerable who spread it. In works completed in 725 and 731 CE he popularized counting years from a date traditionally assigned to the birth of Jesus — and he was among the first writers to reckon years backward before that point as well.
How we know
Bede, The Reckoning of Time (725) and Ecclesiastical History 1.2 (731); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Dionysius Exiguus'.
For 600 years, he was the only Aristotle the West had
Boethius, the Roman official executed around 524 CE, translated and explained Aristotle's works on logic into Latin. Because the rest of Aristotle was lost to the West or not yet translated, his renderings were essentially the only Aristotle available in Western Europe for roughly six centuries — until a wave of new translations arrived in the late 1100s.
How we know
B. G. Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (1982); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Boethius'.
The pope who deleted ten days from the calendar
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar to correct the drift the old Julian system had let build up in the seasons. Under the new Gregorian calendar, Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed directly by Friday 15 October 1582 — so ten dates, the 5th through the 14th, simply never existed. That calendar is the civil standard used worldwide today.
How we know
Gregory XIII, bull Inter gravissimas (24 February 1582).
The book often called the West's first autobiography
Around 397–400 CE, Augustine of Hippo wrote the Confessions, an intimate first-person account of his own life, doubts, and change of heart. It is frequently described as the first autobiography in the Western literary tradition, and has been read continuously for over 1,600 years.
How we know
Augustine, Confessions; Augustine, Retractations 2.6; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Augustine of Hippo, St'.
The executed translator whose words still fill the English Bible
William Tyndale printed the first English New Testament translated directly from the Greek in 1526, and was executed for heresy in 1536. His phrasing endured: much of the wording of the 1611 King James Bible follows Tyndale — one common estimate puts its New Testament at roughly 83% his — and everyday English expressions such as “let there be light,” “the powers that be,” and “a law unto themselves” trace to his translation.
How we know
Tyndale's New Testament (1526) and Pentateuch (1530); J. Nielson and R. Skousen, 'How Much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale's?', Reformation 3 (1998).
The court scholar behind our lowercase letters
Alcuin of York led the palace school of Charlemagne and helped drive a reform of handwriting. The clear, rounded script promoted in that revival — Carolingian minuscule — later became the model for Renaissance scribes and, through them, for the roman lowercase letters used in print and on screens today.
How we know
Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 25; B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography (1990); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Alcuin'.
From a Navarrese castle to an island off China
Born in the Kingdom of Navarre, Francis Xavier sailed east from Lisbon in 1541 and spent his next eleven years as a missionary along the coasts of Portuguese India, in the Spice Islands, and in Japan, which he reached in 1549. He died in 1552 on an island off the south China coast while trying to enter the mainland, having crossed tens of thousands of sea miles.
How we know
Francis Xavier, Letters (1535–1552); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Francis Xavier, St'.
He produced the Latin Bible from a cave over three decades
Jerome, who produced the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, spent roughly the last 34 years of his life in Bethlehem, where tradition places his study in a cave beside the site venerated as the birthplace of Jesus. He learned Hebrew from Jewish teachers so he could work from the original texts.
How we know
Jerome, Letter 84.3 (on his Hebrew teacher) and Letter 108 (on Paula at Bethlehem); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Jerome, St'.
He carried Egypt's desert monasticism to the south of France
Born around 360 near the Black Sea, John Cassian journeyed to Bethlehem and then to the monastic settlements of the Egyptian desert, studying under the Desert Fathers for years. After stops in Constantinople and Rome, he settled in Marseille around 415, where his writings transmitted Egyptian monastic practice to Western Europe.
How we know
John Cassian, Institutes and Conferences; Gennadius, Lives of Illustrious Men 62; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'Cassian, John'.
A Christian theologian whose family served the caliph's treasury
John of Damascus lived his entire life within the Umayyad Caliphate; his family held senior posts in the caliphate's financial administration at Damascus before he withdrew to the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem, where he composed his theological and hymn writings. He died around 749 — roughly a year before the Umayyad dynasty fell.
How we know
S. H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (2008); Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 'John of Damascus, St'.
The monk who traveled from Beijing to Bordeaux
Rabban Bar Sauma, a Church of the East monk born near present-day Beijing, made the reverse of Marco Polo's trip: he crossed all of Asia to Europe, spending a month at the Paris court of Philip IV, meeting England's Edward I at Bordeaux, and receiving communion from the pope in Rome in 1288.
How we know
History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma (Syriac), trans. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan (1928).
A 12th-century abbess invented her own language
Hildegard of Bingen — abbess, composer and natural-science writer — also devised the Lingua Ignota: a vocabulary of roughly 1,000 invented words, accompanied by a companion 23-letter custom alphabet called the litterae ignotae. It is often cited as one of the earliest known constructed languages.
How we know
Hildegard of Bingen, Lingua Ignota (Riesencodex, Wiesbaden); S. L. Higley, Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language (2007).
One scholar's alphabet is still used by millions
Around 405 CE the monk and scholar Mesrop Mashtots designed a 36-letter alphabet for Armenian so that scripture and liturgy could be written in the language. That script, with a few later additions, is still the everyday writing system of Armenia today.
How we know
Koriun, The Life of Mashtots; Britannica, 'Mesrop Mashtots'.
Francis of Assisi and Genghis Khan were alive at the same time
While Francis of Assisi was founding his order in Italy, Genghis Khan was building the largest contiguous land empire in history far to the east. Their lifetimes overlapped for decades, and they died within a year of each other.
How we know
Thomas of Celano, First Life of St Francis; Britannica, 'Saint Francis of Assisi' and 'Genghis Khan'.
Charlemagne kept an elephant sent from Baghdad
In 802 an elephant named Abul-Abbas arrived at Charlemagne's court at Aachen — a diplomatic gift from the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, delivered after a years-long overland and sea journey. The animal lived with the Frankish court until it died in 810.
How we know
Royal Frankish Annals, years 801, 802 and 810; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 16.
A 7th-century encyclopedist was proposed as patron saint of the internet
Isidore of Seville spent years compiling the Etymologiae, a sprawling encyclopedia that tried to gather all of classical knowledge into one cross-referenced work. Because he aimed to organize and share the world's information, he was later put forward as the patron saint of the internet.
How we know
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae; Britannica, 'Saint Isidore of Seville'.
Charlemagne was closer in time to the first Roman emperor than we are to Charlemagne
When Charlemagne was crowned 'Emperor of the Romans' in 800, the first Roman emperor, Augustus, lay about 827 years in the past. We today sit roughly 1,226 years after that coronation — so Charlemagne stood nearer to the Rome he was reviving than we stand to Charlemagne.
How we know
Cassius Dio, Roman History 53.16 (Augustus, 27 BCE); Royal Frankish Annals, year 801 (coronation, 25 December 800).
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