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September 9 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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event · CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, New Granada, September 1654 AD

The enslaved of Cartagena hold their own funeral for St. Peter Claver

The men and women St. Peter Claver served at the slave wharves arranged a funeral of their own, and invited the governor, the nobility and the fleet.

A dark oil painting of a low, damp, whitewashed church packed with African men, women and children holding lighted torches, standing in groups behind men with staffs; a priest preaches from a timber pulpit at the left beside a choir at a lectern, an empty bier under a black cloth stands on the floor, and Spanish officials in black sit on benches at the right.
The enslaved people of Cartagena de Indias at the funeral service they arranged for St. Peter Claver in the church of the Jesuit college, September 1654 AD. They stood by nation, each group under its own chief. The governor, the magistrates and the officers of the fleet sat among them as their guests.
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 Portrait of St. Peter Claver, Museum of the Palace of the Inquisition, Cartagena de Indias (unknown, New Granadan colonial school, date not recorded; photographed 23 December 2019, Museo Palacio de la Inquisicion, Cartagena, Colombia) View source artwork.

The enslaved people of Cartagena held a funeral service of their own for St. Peter Claver this week, days after his death, and invited the governor of the city, the Spanish nobility and the officers of the fleet to sit in it. They stood by nation, each group under its own chief, with a lighted torch in every hand, while a choir sang the Mass and the treasurer of the church of Popayán preached. St. Peter Claver had spent forty-four years at the slave wharves of this port, working through interpreters he paid for with alms begged door to door.

4 min read

A Byzantine-style wall mosaic of a short, balding priest in a plain tunic and dark cloak speaking from beside a stone reading desk with an open codex on it, two notaries writing at his feet and a packed congregation of men and women pressed in around him under high windows.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a Byzantine wall mosaic of glass and stone tesserae, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Saint John Chrysostom of Antioch (Hagios Ioannis Chrysostomos), Hagia Sophia (Anonymous Byzantine mosaicist, 9th century, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul) View source artwork.

On February 26 a crowd in Antioch tore down the statues of the Emperor Theodosius and of his dead wife, an offence Roman law counted close to treason. While the city's bishop travelled eight hundred miles to plead for it, and the magistrates put citizens to death at home, St. John Chrysostom preached almost every day through Lent to people who did not expect to live to Easter. The emperor's pardon reached Antioch on Easter Day.

4 min read

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A painted landscape of Tuscan farmland: an empty rutted dirt road curving away past a small tiled farmhouse, olive trees, cypresses and staked vine rows, with wooded hills beyond and a bare-crowned ridge on the far skyline. No people are in the picture.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a Tuscan tempera panel painting; a landscape of the place only, with no figures, no likeness of any person and no reference image used.

place · FLORENCE, Tuscany, September 8, 1233 AD

Seven Florentine merchants leave the city for a hill eleven miles north

Seven merchants of Florence left the city this week, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, after giving away everything they had. They stopped first at La Camarzia, a suburb just beyond the walls, then climbed Monte Senario, eleven miles north. There they built a small house on the summit and now live in common, in an order founded in honour of the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

3 min read

An oil painting of an empty room with whitewashed walls and a beamed ceiling: a dark Spanish table with a red cloth holds an open manuscript, signed folios, quills, an inkwell, sand and sealing wax, with an empty high-backed chair behind it, and an open window looking out to a bare hill with a small adobe chapel at its foot beside a lake.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of New Spanish colonial baroque oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on The Virgin of Guadalupe with the Four Apparitions (Nicolas Enriquez, 1773, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession 2014.173) View source artwork.

The quarrel over Tepeyac · Part 2 · MEXICO CITY, New Spain, September 1556 AD

Nine witnesses swear to what a friar preached against the Tepeyac chapel

The Archbishop of Mexico has ordered a formal inquiry into what the head of the Franciscans in New Spain preached against the chapel at Tepeyac, where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin twenty-five years ago. Fourteen written questions were put to nine men on oath, and each of them signed his answers. One swore that great ladies of the city walk out to the chapel barefoot, with staves in their hands.

3 min read

In a plain whitewashed church with a green-and-white tiled floor, a priest in surplice and cassock lifts a lock of a kneeling fair-haired boy's hair with shears in his hand, an open manuscript book on a lectern beside them and the boy's family standing behind in plain wool gowns and veils.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a fifteenth-century panel painting in egg tempera and early oil on gessoed poplar, from the paper's reference portrait based on Szene aus dem Leben des Hl. Vinzenz Ferrer: Die Mutter des Heiligen fragt den Bischof von Valencia nach den Wunderzeichen vor der Geburt ihres Kindes (GG 6700) (Agnolo degli Erri, c. 1470-1490 AD, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) View source artwork.

profile · VALENCIA, Crown of Aragon, 1357 AD

St. Vincent Ferrer, aged seven, is enrolled among the clergy of Valencia

A boy of seven in Valencia had his hair cut short and a white linen surplice put on him, and by those two acts St. Vincent Ferrer was received into the clerical order. His father, William Ferrer, a notary of the city, made the decision, because he wanted a churchman in the family. A small church income, the revenues of a chapel in one of the city parishes, is to follow.

Today in the Church

Saint Peter Claver, priest (Optional Memorial)

  • Saint Peter Claver, priestOptional Memorial

Saint of the day

Saint Peter Claver

A Jesuit priest from Catalonia who landed at Cartagena de Indias in 1610 AD and spent forty-four years among the Africans brought ashore at the port's slave wharves, working through interpreters he paid for with alms. He died there in 1654 AD.

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On this day in the Church

  • 1654 St. Peter Claver was buried at Cartagena de Indias in a niche cut in the wall of the chapel of the Christ, the governor and the chief magistrates of the city carrying the body to the grave.Source
  • 1556 Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar of Mexico opened a formal inquiry into a Franciscan sermon against the chapel at Tepeyac, and nine witnesses answered fourteen written questions on oath.Our reportSaint Juan Diego CuauhtlatoatzinSource
  • 2025 The general chapter of the Order of Saint Augustine, meeting in Rome, elected Father Joseph Lawrence Farrell the Order's ninety-eighth Prior General.Saint MonicaSource

Quote of the day

“We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips.”
— St. Peter Claver, on his method with the newly landed at Cartagena, Bertrand Gabriel Fleuriau, S.J., The Life of the Venerable Father Claver, S.J., Apostle of the West Indies (London, 1849), p. 49