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August 29 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · ALENÇON, Normandy, 29 August 1877 AD

St. Zélie Martin is buried at Alençon without her five daughters

The funeral was at nine this morning in the parish church of Notre-Dame, and by the custom here the daughters of the dead do not attend, so the five sisters were not there.

A black-and-white studio portrait of two Victorian-era girls in matching dark dresses with lace collars, the older girl standing with a hand resting on a stack of books, the younger girl holding a cord or rosary in her clasped hands. — St. Thérèse of Lisieux (right) and her sister Céline (left), photographed at Lisieux in 1881 AD, four years after their mother, St. Zélie Martin, died at Alençon.

Saint Zélie Martin, the lace-maker of Rue Saint-Blaise, was buried this morning from the church where she was married and where her youngest daughter was baptized, the day after her death at forty-five. By the custom here none of her five daughters was in the church, the youngest of them, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, being four and a half. In these days, with the sisters together in one room, the two smallest have chosen their elder sisters for mothers.

5 min read

A young woman in a black Tudor gown and white gable hood sits at an oak table by a leaded window, her quill lifted from a half-written letter, with an inkhorn, a burning candle, a sealed letter and a closed book beside her. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of an oil and tempera panel by Hans Holbein the Younger, from the paper's reference portrait based on Sir Thomas More, his father, his household and his descendants (Rowland Lockey, after the lost group by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1593, National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 2765) View source artwork.

interview · CHELSEA, Middlesex, August 1534 AD

Margaret Roper on her father, St. Thomas More, in the Tower

St. Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor of England, has been a prisoner in the Tower of London since April, and almost everything preserved of what he says there comes through his eldest daughter, Margaret Roper. At Chelsea this month she is writing a letter to her stepsister Alice Alington that records their long argument about the oath, largely in his own words. She speaks about what she carries in to him, her mother's failed attempt to change his mind, and his answer that the Tower is as near heaven as his own house.

4 min read

More in this edition

A painted still life of a wooden desk holding a large open handwritten codex, a reed pen in a small inkpot, hinged wax tablets and a lit clay oil lamp, with a bare hand resting on the open page and a wicker basket of books beneath. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference portrait based on Sant'Agostino nello studio (Saint Augustine in his Study) (Sandro Botticelli, c. 1480; photograph by Sailko, CC BY 3.0, Church of Ognissanti, Florence) View source artwork.

Monica and Augustine at Ostia · Part 3 · HIPPO REGIUS, Numidia, about 397 AD

Book IX: what St. Augustine wrote down about the window at Ostia

Book IX of the Confessions is St. Augustine's own account of the months from his resignation at Milan in 386 AD to St. Monica's death and burial at Ostia in 387 AD. He wrote it at Hippo Regius about 397 AD, some ten years after the death it records. The paper reads four passages: the chest complaint that let him leave his chair, the conversation at the window, his mother's last request, and the grief he faults himself for.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist

On this day in the Church

1219 The crusading army was beaten before Damietta in Egypt, with St. Francis of Assisi in the camp; Thomas of Celano writes that he had warned the soldiers not to fight that day and was laughed at.Our report Source
1864 The apostolic letters beatifying St. Margaret Mary Alacoque were given at Castel Gandolfo under the Seal of the Fisherman, in the nineteenth year of the pontificate of Pope Pius IX.Source
1867 François Soubirous, the father of St. Bernadette Soubirous, became owner of the Lacadé mill at Lourdes by a deed executed before a notary at Tarbes, the purchase paid for by the Bishop of Tarbes after nine years in which the family had accepted nothing.Source

Quote of the day

“And Pauline will be my Mother.”

— St. Thérèse of Lisieux, aged four, at Alençon on the day of her mother's funeral, Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, trans. T. N. Taylor, ch. II