A Church Timeline for 2012
A CHURCH TIMELINE for 2012AD
12AD – Jesus is probably aged between 16 and 18. If the former, then by modern reckoning he would have cost Mary and Joseph £178921; if the latter, and assuming he was embarking on tertiary education, £200117.
112AD – The Roman governor of Bithynia (now N.W.Turkey), Pliny the Younger, writes to the Emperor Trajan asking what he is to do about the growing “contagion of the Christian superstition”. He is told not to search them out, but to treat them harshly if they are brought before him.
212AD – In N.Africa, Tertullian (†220) the ‘father of Western theology’, examining the four Gospels, says that Matthew and John are the work of those apostles, that Mark is a Gospel written by Peter, and Luke a Gospel written by Paul [modern commentators would agree with those last two influences].
312AD – At the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in Rome, Constantine defeats his rival Maxentius, having had a vision of the Cross in the sky: “In this sign conquer”. To this is attributed Constantine’s conversion to Christianity.
412AD – The British monk Pelagius, appalled by the immorality in Rome, finalises his belief that grace is not necessary for salvation, and that we can achieve this through our own good works. The Pelagian heresy remains universally popular today ….
512AD – The Irish monk Saint Brendan is believed to have undertaken the first of the famous sea voyages which earned him the title of “Brendan the Navigator”.
612AD – Another Irish monk, Saint Gall, a follower of St. Columbanus, begins the life of a hermit in Switzerland, the origin of the highly celebrated monastery which bears his name [Sankt Gallen, N.E. Switzerland]
712AD – Moslems from N. Africa (the ‘Moors’) cross the Straits of Gibraltar and enter Spain. They would advance as far as Poitiers in France before being repulsed (732AD) but remained a presence in southern Spain until 1492.
812AD – The first recorded pilgrim undertakes the walk to the shrine of St. James at Compostela in N.W. Spain.
912AD – Death in Constantinople of the Eastern Emperor Leo the Philosopher, often invoked in cases of divorce and remarriage. Leo was in his fourth marriage; the Orthodox Church prohibited a second marriage for clergy, tolerated a third as ‘legal concubinage’, and regarded a fourth as a “sin and a scandal”.
1012AD – St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury and previously Bishop of Winchester, is martyred by the Danish invaders at Greenwich.
1112AD – Formal establishment of the Cistercian Order, a reform of the Benedictines, named after their mother house of Cîteaux, near Dijon.
1212AD – The so-called ‘Children’s Crusade’, in which bands of children were to set off – allegedly – for the Holy Land to convert Moslems. Historians have strong reservations about the truth of this story.
1312AD – The Pope suppresses the famous, rich and powerful Christian military Order, the Knights Templar, closely associated with the Holy Land.
1412AD – Birth of (Saint) Joan of Arc, ‘The Maid’, the village girl from Lorraine who defeated the English at Orléans, had the Dauphin crowned King at Reims, was betrayed by the Burgundians and burnt as a heretic by the English in Rouen (1431).
1512AD – Michelangelo finishes painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, leaving only the “Last Judgment” to follow in 1535-41.
1612AD – The radical Edward Wightman, who claimed to be the Saviour of the World, is the last person in England to be burnt at the stake for heresy (in Lichfield).
1712AD – Birth of Frederick the Great, Frederick II King of Prussia, famous as an “enlightened absolute monarch” with a policy of universal religious toleration (in fact not consistently applied to the Jews).
1812AD – What is seen as the first modern Constitution, that of the Spanish parliament in Cadiz following the defeat of Napoleon, regulates the position of the Church vis-à-vis the State. In fact it was stillborn in the face of a revived repressive monarchy.
1912AD – The Methodist Church adopts an official Social Creed (proposed in 1908), the first Church to do so.
2012AD – The pages remain to be written. Your contribution may be crucial.