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FEBRUARY
 

 17, 1496 --Italy. In the Carnival season of 1494, boys brought under the awakening influence of the preaching of Savonarola grouped in brigades going from house to house asking its inhabitants to surrender their cards, dice, erotic books, and articles of adornment. Up and down the streets they sang hymns composed by the preacher.
            The following year, similar scenes occurred culminating on the last day of the carnival week with a great bonfire on the public square consisting of a pyramid of such material. The pile measured 240 feet square at the base and sixty feet high. The burning of it will be called, the "burning of vanities." He has declared, "Your sins make me a prophet."
             Insulting placards have been posted on the walls of the convent and distributed through the city's avenues. Assassins moved by political intrigue congregate in the cathedral looking for an opportunity to take the preacher's life. But Savonarola has continued to thunder against the "fornications in Italy, France, Spain, and other regions." "Lust," wrote Philip Schaff, "had made the church a shameless courtezan, priests openly acknowledging their illegitimate sons." Stones thrown through the windows often interrupt Savonarola’s preaching. Even the pulpit was once filled with manure and the skin of a donkey tacked over it.
          For five months now, Savonarola has restrained himself from preaching following the publication of two papal bulls forbidding him to ascend the pulpit. Today, however, he receives a call from the seigniory and again rises to the occasion. He preaches the Pope may err when he speaks as a man, and that when he speaks as a man and errs, no man is bound to obey him?
          The Pope will attempt to bribe the preacher by offering him the red hat of a cardinal providing he will keep silent, but the man of God declares from the pulpit he will have no such hat except the red hat of martyrdom, which God gives to His saints.

17, 1546 --Germany. Martin Luther complains of a heavy pressure on his chest. Tomorrow he will die.

17, 1739 --England. This Saturday, George Whitefield stands upon a mount in a place called "Rose Green," and preaches to about two hundred coal miners. This is his first sermon in the open air. His second audience will consist of two thousand persons. The third, will number between four and five thousand, and will continue to increase to ten, fourteen and then twenty thousand.
            He will become known as the "Father" of modern day open air preaching.

17, 1848 --Italy. Waldensians have been excluded from practicing any liberal profession such as law or medicine. Their children under ten years of age have frequently been abducted. The universities have been closed to students from the valleys. They have been forbidden to open new places of worship; and most of their cemeteries have been unenclosed. Their books have been closely censored. They have been forbidden to settle outside their own valleys. But today, King Charles Albert brings this intolerable condition to a close by passing the Act of Emancipation, which permanently secures all civil and religious rights. Religious liberty is thus firmly established here.

17, 1912 --(United States). John Hyde, otherwise known as "Praying Hyde", dies. As a Presbyterian missionary to India, the natives referred to him as "the man who never sleeps." He has often been on his knees in earnest prayer for thirty-six hours at a time.

 

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