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September 6 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · LISIEUX, Normandy, September 6, 1910 AD

Church inquiry opens Saint Thérèse of Lisieux's grave; only bones remain

Hundreds walked out to the town cemetery this morning to watch the coffin come up from more than eleven feet down, thirteen years after her burial.

A black-and-white photograph of a bishop and two priests in cassocks standing with bowed heads at the flower-banked grave of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in a cemetery, an iron gate and trees behind them. — Bishop Fernand Lemonnier of Bayeux and Lisieux and clergy of the diocesan tribunal at the grave of St. Thérèse of Lisieux during the exhumation of her remains at the Lisieux town cemetery, September 6, 1910 AD.

The Church inquiry into the holiness of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who died here at twenty-four in 1897 AD, had her grave opened this morning to make sure the remains had kept. The plan was to do it quietly; hundreds of people came out to the cemetery instead. When the coffin was opened, nothing was found of her but bones, as she had said would be the case.

5 min read

An oil painting of a plain low chapel: a woman in a black gown with a white lace collar stands at a small cloth-covered table holding a quill over a sheet of names, a group of townswomen in linen caps behind her, a row of townsmen in dark cloth holding their hats at the right, and a spare, upright priest in a plain black cassock and small white collar standing at the near end of the table. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of French oil painting of the middle of the seventeenth century, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Vincent de Paul prechant la charite aux dames de la cour de Louis XIII (Charles Meynier, 1824 AD, Centre national des arts plastiques, FNAC PFH-5608) View source artwork.

event · JOIGNY, France, September 6, 1618 AD

Joigny's leading women sign a rule to nurse the town's sick poor

In the chapel of Saint-Antoine at Joigny today, the leading women of the town put their names to a rule that binds them to feed, nurse and bury their sick neighbours. The priest who drew it up is Saint Vincent de Paul, chaplain to the lord of the town. It is the second such association he has founded in thirteen months.

4 min read

More in this edition

An oil painting of a colonial harbour under a heavy grey sky: a plank wharf with a hand-cart, coils of rope, water jars and two baskets of oranges and lemons in the foreground, a large wooden merchant ship made fast at the right with a boarding plank down, more ships anchored across the bay, and the ochre wall, tiled roofs and small white church of a walled Spanish port behind. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a seventeenth-century Spanish colonial oil painting on canvas, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Peter Claver. Engraving by J. Vitta after P. Gagliardi (Giuseppe Vitta, engraver, active 1888, after Pietro Gagliardi, painter, 1809-1890; printed by Joseph Spellani, after 1888 AD, Wellcome Collection, London, reference 6820i) View source artwork.

place · CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, New Granada, September, in the 1630s AD

Bought for four crowns in Africa, sold for two hundred at Cartagena

Cartagena de Indias is the principal slave port of Spanish America, and this month the war fleets are gathering in its bay to wait on the silver ships from Peru. People bought on the coasts of Guinea and Angola for about four crowns a head are sold here for two hundred and sometimes more. Saint Peter Claver, a Jesuit priest of the town, meets the ships at the wharf with interpreters he pays for out of alms he begs door to door.

5 min read

A medieval Italian wall painting of a barrel-vaulted stone prison room where nine men in red, rose and blue medieval dress sit slumped against the walls or lie on the straw floor, while a young man in a red belted gown stands at the centre speaking to them with his hands open and a chain at his wrist, and two small brown birds perch on the sill of a barred window high in the far wall. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of buon fresco on lime plaster of the Assisi cycle, from the paper's reference portrait based on Legend of St. Francis, scene 1: Homage of a Simple Man (Giotto di Bondone, 1296–1298 AD, Upper Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

feature · PERUGIA, Umbria, November 1203 AD

Saint Francis of Assisi goes home after a year in Perugia's prison

Assisi went to war with Perugia last year and was beaten in the plain between the two cities. Saint Francis of Assisi, then about twenty, was taken prisoner with the other townsmen and held at Perugia for more than a year. He stayed cheerful, told the men who mocked him that the whole world would honour him, and now that arbitrators have settled the quarrel he is walking home ill.

3 min read

A Byzantine-style mosaic of an empty wooded glen: a pine-covered mountain with a stream falling down its face, a grassy plain fenced by trees where two deer and a wild goat stand at the water, a fast river across the foreground, a folded brown cloak, a wooden-boarded book and a loaf set on a rock at the near bank, and small tile-roofed farm buildings beyond. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Byzantine wall mosaic, from the paper's reference portrait based on Parete palinsesto: Madonna in trono con angelo (500-550 ca.), Annunciazione (590 ca.), Basilio e Giovanni Crisostomo (post 649), Gregorio Nazianzeno e Basilio (705-707) (Anonymous, post 649 AD and 705-707 AD, Santa Maria Antiqua, Roman Forum, Rome). No likeness of St. Basil the Great appears; the picture is a landscape. View source artwork.

writings · ANNESI, Pontus, 358 AD

St. Basil finds his ground: a wooded glen with one way in

St. Basil the Great is twenty-eight and has just come back from visiting the monasteries of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. He went north into Pontus to look for somewhere to live a religious life, and has settled on a wooded glen above the river Iris. In a letter to his friend St. Gregory of Nazianzus he maps the place out — the mountain and its streams, the plain fenced by trees, the river across the front — and says only one pass leads in, and he controls it.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

On this day in the Church

1556 Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar preached in Mexico City in support of the devotion at Tepeyac, two days after the Franciscan provincial had preached against it, taking as his text "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see".Our report Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin Source
1618 Madame de Gondi and the leading women of Joigny founded the Association of Charity in the chapel of Saint-Antoine, the second of the confraternities St. Vincent de Paul drew up rules for.Our report Source
1910 The grave of St. Thérèse of Lisieux was opened in the Lisieux town cemetery for the diocesan inquiry into her cause, and the palm branch laid on her at her burial in 1897 AD was found green.Our report Source

Quote of the day

“To me it seems that humility is truth. I do not know whether I am humble, but I do know that I see the truth in all things.”

— St. Thérèse of Lisieux, to her novices at the Carmel of Lisieux, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul, ed. and trans. T. N. Taylor (1912), Counsels and Reminiscences