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September 11 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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writings · CARTHAGE, Roman Africa, 203 AD

In her death cell, St. Perpetua writes down a vision of victory

St. Perpetua, twenty-two and under sentence of death at Carthage, wrote out on the eve of the games a vision in which she fought a man and won.

A mosaic of an empty arena floor of raked red sand below tiers of empty stone seats and an arched gateway, with a gold ground above and a single green branch bearing golden apples lying on the sand.
The floor of the amphitheatre at Carthage, 203 AD, with the green branch of golden apples St. Perpetua recorded in the vision she wrote down on the eve of the games.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a Ravennate wall mosaic of about 500 AD, from the paper's reference portrait based on The martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicitas, Revocatus, Saturninus, Saturus and Secundulus, from the Menologion of Basil II (Constantinopolitan illuminators of the Menologion (Pantoleon and his fellow-painters), c. 985 AD, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1613) View source artwork.

Saint Perpetua, a young mother arrested at Carthage this year under the emperor's edict against new Christians, has been sentenced to die in the amphitheatre with five companions. On the eve of the games she wrote down a vision of the fight: a deacon leading her out of the prison, a man thrown and beaten, a green branch of golden apples put into her hand. The account is in her own hand, written in the cell, and it is the last entry she made.

6 min read

A plain, balding priest in a worn black cassock and skullcap stands beside a cloth-covered table in a bare lime-washed hall, speaking without gesture to some twenty young men in black cassocks seated in rows before him.
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 Vicent 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 · BEAUVAIS, France, September 1628 AD

Bishop gives the men he will ordain to St. Vincent de Paul

Augustin Potier des Gesvres, Bishop of Beauvais, has asked Saint Vincent de Paul to prepare the men he is about to make priests. St. Vincent de Paul arrived fifteen days before the ordination with two doctors of theology and a written timetable. By the end of the fortnight nearly all the candidates had asked him to hear the confession of their whole lives.

4 min read

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A flat gold-ground panel painting of a great pale limestone palace with crenellated towers and steep grey roofs standing on a rock above a green river, a courier riding out through an open gate in a new unfinished stone wall, past two spearmen in mail.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Sienese egg tempera and gold leaf on gessoed poplar panel, from the paper's reference portrait based on St. Catherine before the Pope at Avignon (Giovanni di Paolo (Siena, c. 1399–1482), c. 1460–1463, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (inv. 162 (1966.6))) View source artwork.

column · AVIGNON, France, September 11, 1362 AD

Pope Innocent VI dies at Avignon, leaving the papacy's home in question

Pope Innocent VI died at Avignon today, in the tenth year of a reign he spent entirely in France. The cardinals must now elect a successor, and with him settle whether the papal court stays on the Rhône or goes back to Rome, where it has not sat for fifty-seven years. At Siena, Saint Catherine of Siena is fifteen and unknown outside her father's dyeing house.

4 min read

A sepia-toned photograph of an elderly nun in the wide winged cornette and black habit of the Daughters of Charity, seated and facing slightly to one side.

St. Catherine Labouré is a Daughter of Charity who has nursed old men at a hospice in the eastern faubourgs of Paris since 1831 AD. A vision came to her suddenly this year: a monumental cross was to be raised in the city, and people would come to it from all over France and from the most distant countries. She told her confessor, Fr Jean-Marie Aladel, the priest who had a medal struck on her word sixteen years before, and he did not act on it.

4 min read

In a round-arched stone chamber, a nun in a black habit and white veil sits with a wax tablet on her knee and a stylus in her hand, one hand raised as she speaks, while in the next bay a tonsured monk bends over a writing slope and writes down her words.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of twelfth-century Rhineland manuscript illumination, from the paper's reference portrait based on Hildegard receiving the light from Heaven — Scivias, Rupertsberg codex, folio 1 recto (Unknown illuminator of the Rupertsberg workshop, working under St. Hildegard's direction, c. 1165–1179 AD; photographic plate published 1917, Wellcome Collection, London) View source artwork.

feature · DISIBODENBERG, Rhineland, 1141 AD

At forty-two, St. Hildegard begins a book she cannot write

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, who leads the small women's community inside the Benedictine monastery on the mount of St. Disibod, has begun to set down the visions she has had since childhood. She is forty-two and was never taught to write, so she dictates to Volmar, a monk of the house, with the abbot's permission. The book took ten years of work to finish.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Friday of the twenty-third week in Ordinary Time

Saint of the day

Saints Protus and Hyacinth

The Roman Martyrology names Saints Protus and Hyacinth as martyrs at Rome, remembered together on this day.

On this day in the Church

  • 1362 Pope Innocent VI died at Avignon, leaving the cardinals a vacancy and with it the question of whether the papal court would return to Rome; they elected Pope Urban V, who made the first attempt to take it back to Italy.Our reportSaint Catherine of SienaSource
  • 1811 St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote from Emmitsburg to her friend Eliza Sadler in New York that all was suspense, on the very day Archbishop John Carroll was writing his answer on whether she could lead the sisters she had founded.Our reportSource

Quote of the day

“On that scaffold whatever God wills shall happen. For know that we are not placed in our own power, but in that of God.”
— St. Perpetua, to her father at Carthage, 203 AD, The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, Ante-Nicene Fathers translation, ¶16