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MAY

 6, 1521 --Germany. News of Martin Luther’s excommunication reaches Germany.

6, 1527 --Italy. Pope Clement VII has entered into an alliance with Emperor Charles V, but the Pope fears the Emperor’s power poses a threat to the security of Italy. Therefore, on May 22nd last year, he entered into a league with France, Venice, Florence, and Milan. Today the league comes to an end as Rome is captured and plundered by the German “Landsknechts” under the Constable of Bourbon. The Papacy is threatened with annihilation but Charles will restore the Pope his liberty and his states upon his promise of neutrality.

6, 1572 --France. At Nimes, the eighth National Synod of the Reformed Church in France is held. Peter Ramus and others have seconded Pastor Morelli’s doctrine regarding the general right of voting at ecclesiastical elections. It is again condemned.

6, 1585 --England. In May 1610, John Rolfe is baptized today. In June 1609, he will sail for Virginia with his wife aboard the “Sea Adventure,” and will settle in Jamestown
      His wife will soon expire, but in 1613 he will meet and fall in love with Pocahontas, daughter of the Algonquin chief Powhatan. Her Indian name was Matoaka, but “Pocahontas”, meaning “Playful” was applied to several of the chief’s daughters.
      During the colony’s first months, she appeared in Jamestown playing in the streets, and soon became well-known. She thus became an important emissary between the colonists and Powhatan.
      In December 1607, followers of Powhatan captured John Smith, who claims in his General History of Virginia, which he published in 1624, that on this occasion, the Indian maiden saved him from a ritual sacrifice by holding his head in her arms and pleading with her father to spare him from being clubbed to death on the sacrificial stone.
      After repeated hostile incidences on the part of the Indians, Captain Samuel Argall persuaded an Indian chief to betray Pocahontas into his hands to be kept at Jamestown as a ransom for the return of captured Englishmen held by her father. Her capture was by ruse, but led to better relations on the part of the Indian tribes and the Virginians, and for the sake of her liberation, the chief will set free his English captives.
      It was during the time of her captivity that John Rolfe, “an honest and discreet” young man, “daily, hourly, and as it were, in his very sleep, heard a voice crying in his ears that he should strive to make her a Christian.” After praying for many days, he resolved to labor for the conversion of the “unregenerated maiden.”
     He won her favor and desired her in marriage. She received instruction with meekness, and soon in the Church of Jamestown, which “rested on rough pine columns, fresh from the forest,” she stood before the font that out of a tree trunk “had been hewn hollow like a canoe,” and “openly renounced her country’s idolatry, professed the faith of Jesus Christ, and was baptized” taking the name, “Rebecca.” “The gaining of this one soul,” “the first-fruits of Virginian conversion,” was followed in April by her marriage vows which she stammered before the altar.
     She will give birth to a son, Thomas, in 1615, and in 1616, the Rolfe family with am escort of ten or twelve Indians, set sail for England. She will be warmly received by Londoners and will be presented at court.
     In March, after a stay of seven months, the family will make plans to return to Virginia when Pocahontas contracts Smallpox. She will die, and be buried at Gravesend in the chancel of St. George’s Church.
     In 1622, Bermuda Hundred, near Richmond, and where Mr. Rolfe will reside, will be destroyed in an Indian attack. It is unsure where Mr. Rolfe died-- whether at this time or in the following year.

 

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