Posts by Simonetta Carr

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On July 28, 1480, citizens of Otranto, Italy, spied a large Turkish fleet approaching their coasts. Otranto, an amiable town around the tip of the heel of the Italian “boot,” had long been an important port. Ita strategic position, however, also made it susceptible to attacks from across the...
Aelred of Rievaulx – A Theologian of Love In 1134, a reputable young man with a promising career at the court of David I, king of Scots, saddled his horse and started his journey to a remote abbey in a North Yorkshire valley. His name is Aelred. He never returned from his journey, and his decision...
Berengarius of Tours and the Dispute on the Lord’s Supper When Berengarius of Tours expressed his disagreement with the teachings of Lanfranc of Bec regarding the Lord’s Supper, he might have meant to continue the peaceful discussion that had begun in the ninth century between Paschasius Radbertus...
Elisabeth Cruciger – The First Lutheran Female Hymnwriter Elisabeth Cruciger is considered the first Lutheran female hymnwriter. Born around 1500 as Elisabeth von Mezerite to a noble family in Pomerania (a region in today’s Poland), she entered as a child the cloister at Marienbush Abbey, near...
Tsehay Tolessa – Through a Fiery Furnace When, on July 28, 1979, the Lutheran pastor Gudina Tumsa was abducted at the end of a church service, the troubles for his wife were far from over. [1] Kidnapped at the same time, Tsehay Tolessa was left outside the city walls without any explanations. She...
“My Dear Children” – Words from the Hearts of Fathers Being a father can change a man’s life, as many Christians in the past have attested. One of the most touching poems by a father about a newborn son was penned by Samuel Davies (1723-1761), a Presbyterian minister who became a popular preacher...
Adriaan Reland – A Scholar for God’s Glory In academic circles, Adriaan Reland is hailed as a remarkable Orientalist and linguist whose studies and writings have contributed to dispel many prejudiced views of his time. What most sources ignore, however, is his motivation. Born in 1676 in the small...
The Dispute of Tirano and the Trial of Calvin’s Orthodoxy In the eventful sixteenth century, few people took notice of a court trial in a small town on the Italian side of the Alps. And yet, the stakes were high. It all started on May 1, 1595, when Simone Cabasso, parish priest of Tirano, preached...
“Well-Beloved Child” – Letters from Mothers to their Children From the earliest times, mothers have felt the responsibility of training and instructing their children. We find plenty of examples both in the Bible and in church history. This desire has often been expressed in their letters. When...
Ian Shaw, Professor Emeritus at the School for Business and Society of the University of York, UK, has just done the church a great service by writing a well-researched book on the life of Leslie Land, a rather forgotten pastor in mid-20 th -century England who influenced his generation and the...
Caesarius of Arles and His Sermons on Christ’s Atonement “Why did our Lord Jesus Christ, the power and wisdom of the Father, effect the salvation of man, not by His divine power and sole might, but by physical humiliation and human struggle? ... What need was there for Christ our Lord to accept his...
Minucius Felix and His Answers to Unbelievers The leisurely walk on the beach Marcus Minucius Felix took with his friends Octavius and Cecilius sometimes between the second and third century is reminiscent of the walk J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Hugo Dyson took on the grounds of Oxford...
Hilda – The Abbess of Whitby The name of Hilda of Whitby is almost legendary in English history. She ran two abbeys, educated some of the finest minds in England (including five bishops), discovered and sponsored the first English poet, and convened the crucial Synod of Whitby. Her authority and...
Ellen Ranyard and Her Team of Bible Women In 1826, 16-year-old Ellen Henrietta White and her family attended a Bible meeting about 14 miles east of her London home. There, she met a girl her age, Elizabeth Saunders, who seemed disconsolate at the departure of her best friend. Deeply concerned,...
Prosper of Aquitaine and His Defense of God’s Grace The fourth-century debate between Augustine of Hippo and Pelagius left a profound mark in church history, with Pelagius’s views condemned as heresy at the ecumenical council of Ephesus in 431. In a nutshell, Augustine explained that, because of...
Augustine of Canterbury – A Reluctant Missionary Augustine of Canterbury, often known as “the apostle of the English,” would have never made it across the Channel if it hadn’t been for the insistent prompting of Pope Gregory I. The eighth century historian Bede tells us in fact that Augustine and...
Catherine Marsh – Loving the Unloved In 1853, thousands of men arrived on the quiet Sydenham hills to build an ambitious structure: the Crystal Palace, where Charles Spurgeon later preached to a crowd of 23,654 people. Building such a capable compound, surrounded by gardens and fountains, took an...
Ambrose of Milan – The Reluctant Bishop Who Called Emperors to Task If you visit downtown Milan, Italy, besides viewing the most popular monuments, such as the Duomo and the Sforza Castle, you may want to walk a mile out of the way to explore an older church named after a fourth-century bishop,...
Francis Turretin and His Love for Biblical Truth Francis, the third of the seven children of Benedetto and Louise Turretin [1] , was born on October 17, 1623 and named after his paternal grandfather. Recognizing the boy’s exceptional intelligence, Benedetto encouraged his studies. But Benedetto...
Francis Turretin’s Italian Family The seventeenth-century Christian scholar Francis Turretin is well-known in Reformed circles. Little has been written about his life, probably under the assumption that the lives of scholars are generally uneventful. Since 2023 marks the 400 th anniversary of his...
Lactantius – An Original Writer Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius was born around the year 255 in North Africa. Quickly earning a reputation for his intellectual prowess, in 290 he was invited by Emperor Diocletian to serve as professor of Latin and rhetoric in Nicomedia of Bithynia (today’s...
The Abitinian Martyrs – The Christians Who Couldn’t Do Without a Lord’s Day Service. " Sine dominico non possumus " ("We can't do without the Lord’s Day"). This was the answer of a group of 49 Christians (31 men and 18 women) who were arrested for participating in a Lord’s Day service. They lived...
The Women Who Helped Chrysostom Some time ago, I wrote about Olympias, a widow of noble birth who became one of John Chrysostom’s greatest supporters. But she was not alone. She lived in a community of women near the Great Church in Constantinople – in fact, only a wall separated their home from...
Pomponio Algerio and His Resolute Faith Most tourists to Rome stop by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, in Piazza Navona. Some drop a coin in the water and make a wish. Hardly anyone is aware that in the same square a young Italian man was boiled in a cauldron of oil, pitch, and...
Sybil Mosely Bingham and the Challenges of Missionary Life in Hawaii Sybil’s admission to the mission field reminds me of a scene of a movie. She was asking for directions to her accommodations when a young man offered to take her there. The man, Hiram Bingham, was preparing to leave as a...
Sarah Lanman Huntington Smith – Missionary to Mohegans and Syrians The idea that many of the Mohegans who lived in her region had never heard the gospel bothered Sarah Huntington (1802-1836) so much that it turned into a source of anxiety. Few people shared her sentiments. She could just imagine...
John Ross and the Gospel in Korea In the autumn of 1874, the Scottish missionary John Ross arrived at a village known as “Korean Gate,” near the eastern border between Manchuria (in north-east China) and Korea. Sent to Manchuria by the Scottish United Presbyterian Mission, he had been working for...
Hope Masterton Waddell and His Missionary Team In 1841, a group of missionaries in Jamaica read a copy of Sir T. Fowell Buxton’s seminal book, The Slave Trade and Its Remedy. One portion stood out more than others. According to Buxton, among the black Christians in the West Indies, “there may arise...
Martin Luther – A Ground-Breaking Translator While living in incognito in the Wartburg Castle (after the Diet of Worms), Martin Luther spent his time translating the New Testament from Greek and Latin into German. It was not the first German translation, but Luther found the others inadequate. Both...
Johann Von Staupitz – Luther’s “First Father” in the Doctrine of Predestination When Johann Von Staupitz first met Martin Luther, probably in 1506, he saw a young man who was both inquisitive and talented, with a strong potential to teach at the newly founded University of Wittenberg where the...
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke – Learning to Number His Days “One thing Christianity and we National Socialists have in common, and only one: we demand the whole man.” These words, pronounced by Roland Freisler, State Secretary of the Reich, at the time of the trial of Helmuth von Moltke, were...
Jennie Faulding Taylor and Her Team of Brave Women In 1875, a serious drought in the north of China gave way to a dreadful four-year famine, with millions of deaths and a huge migration of people. Most casualties were in the province of Shanxi (an estimated 5.5 million deaths in four years)...
Perpetua and Felicitas – Two Martyred Mothers In A.D. 202, Emperor Septimius Severus tightened his measures against Christians who refused to pay homage to the imperial genius, the spirit of the emperor. Compliance required a minimal effort: a simple sprinkling of a few grains of incense on a...
Jennie Faulding Taylor and Her Team of Brave Women In 1875, a serious drought in the north of China gave way to a dreadful four-year famine, with millions of deaths and a huge migration of people. Most casualties were in the province of Shanxi (an estimated 5.5 million deaths in four years)...
Sally Jones Charles – Pillar of the Welsh Revival at Bala Most accounts of Welsh church history recognize the impressive contributions of Thomas Charles [1] , the pastor of a Calvinistic Methodist church in Bala, Wales, in the Welsh Revival of his century, in the establishment of a great number of...
Thomas Charles, Mary Jones, and the Birth of the Bible Society Many of us have heard the story of the sixteen-year-old girl who walked 25 miles to buy a Bible with the money she had saved while doing chores. That girl was Mary Jones, and her destination was a church at Bala, Wales, where a shipment...
Hannah More and Her Lasting Influence on Education and Christian Service She has been described as the most influential woman in the British abolitionist movement – in fact, one of the most important women in 18 th -century Britain. After her death in 1833, the Christian Observer dared to say: “...
Hadrian of Nisida and Theodore of Tarsus – Seventh-Century Star Teachers Sharing a passion for learning and teaching, Hadrian of Nisida and Theodore of Tarsus partnered together to create a school that brought new resources, methods, and inspiration to England. For those who think a scholar’s life...
Melito of Sardis – Pastor, Theologian, and Poet Melito is not a familiar name today. Until the last century, we could only find a mention of him in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History , mostly in connection with the controversy over the day in which the feast of Pascha (Easter) was to be celebrated...
Liu Jingwen and Her Quiet Strength The saying is well-known: “Behind a great man there is a great woman.” In the case of Chinese pastor and theologian Wang Mingdao, someone suggested that eighty percent of Wang’s achievement was due to his wife. Was it an exaggeration? A Mature Young Lady Liu...
Blandina – God’s Strength in Weakness When the Roman authorities hung Blandina to a pole and exposed her to a crowd of blood-thirsty spectators, they thought they could frighten anyone who rebelled to their rules. What they didn’t know is that they were holding her up as an example that gave new...
Susanna and Cornelia Teelinck – Inspiring Courage and Faith During the Dutch Reformation Largely unknown today, Susanna and Cornelia Teelinck inspired two generations of Dutch Christians to trust God to deliver them from Spanish domination. They were born in 1551 and 1553 respectively into a...
Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg – The First Protestant Missionary to India While William Carey’s role in the evangelization of India is undisputed, few remember a two-men team who preceded him by 88 years. In reality, the German Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau, who landed in the Indian...
Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp – An Unconventional Missionary The renowned historian Andrew Walls describes Johannes van der Kemp as an unconventional candidate for the London Missionary Society (LMS). At the time of his application, van der Kemp was in fact fifty years old and had both a higher...
Margherita Datini – The Wisdom and Faith of an Ordinary Medieval Woman Church history books are beginning to devote more space to women. Treatments of Medieval Christian women, however, is usually limited to a few queens and nuns – those who could express themselves at a time when most women’s...
Estifanos of Gwendagwende – Reformer and Martyr Around the time when John Wyclif and Ian Hus shook the western church by challenging its authority and traditions, a lesser-known monk did something similar in Ethiopia. He was known as Abba Estifanos (in English, Father Stephen). Estifanos’s Early...
Boniface and Leoba Some have the impression that, after Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313, everyone in the Roman Empire became Christian (and lived happily ever after). At least, this is what we might get from a cursor reading of church history. In reality, as late as the ninth or tenth century,...
Marguerite d’Angoulême, an Influential Reformer Marguerite d’Angoulême, also known as Marguerite de Navarre, was one of the most influential figures in sixteenth-century Europe. Today, her memory in Reformed circles seems obscured by that of her more committed daughter, Jeane d’Albret. In reality,...
Gregory I’s Female Correspondents Some of our best sources of information about specific women in the early centuries of Christianity come from the correspondence of church fathers, particularly Jerome at the turn of the fifth century and Gregory I about two centuries later. Jerome’s letters were...
Krishna Pal – The First Baptist Convert in India On November 25, 1800, a 36-year-old Indian carpenter named Krishna Pal slipped into the tank where he was going to bathe, dislocating his shoulder. Having heard about a doctor at the Baptist mission at Serampore, not far from his house, he sent two...