February 14: Today in Christian History

February 14, 270

Valentine, a priest in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, is beheaded along the Flaminian Way.

February 14, 1009

Martyrdom of Bruno of Querfert (also known as Boniface) and his associates by Lithuanians.

February 14, 1532

Calvin acquires the degree of Licentiate (Bachelor) of Laws at Orleans.

February 14, 1556

Protestant reformer Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury is degraded from his office with humiliating ceremonies following the rise of the Roman Catholic Mary I to power. Cranmer had incurred the enmity of Mary years earlier when he granted King Henry VIII his divorce from Mary’s mother Catherine.

February 14, 1568

Turks in Larissa, Greece, martyr the Orthodox monk Damian after days of torture, complaining that his teaching causes sales to drop on Sunday.

February 14, 1596

Archbishop John Whitgift begins building a “hospital” (a home for the elderly and infirm) at Croydon from his own resources. He will also build and endow a free-school and a chapel. Over the entrance of the hospital will be the inscription: QUI DAT PAUPERI NON INDIGEBIT [Who gives to the poor will not lack]. Although charitable, he was a high churchman who favored ritual and consequently persecuted Puritans who opposed it.

February 14, 1805

Harvard confirms Henry Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity. Because he is a Unitarian, denying the full divinity of Christ, Congregationalist teachers, loyal to the doctrine of the Trinity, will begin withdrawing from the school.

February 14, 1942

Chen Sulan is shipwrecked and captured by Japan’s secret police while fleeing Japanese invaders of China. A Methodist, he had fought against the Chinese government’s monopolistic sale of opium and had established an anti-opium clinic that rehabilitated close to seven thousand addicts. He had also been a founder of the Chinese YMCA. After World War II, he will set up a trust that funds the Scripture Union and Methodist groups.

February 14, 1953

Andrew Kagura of Kenya is martyred for his outspokeness against the Mau Maus.