September 21 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · GIEN, France, September 21, 1429 AD

Charles VII disbands his army at Gien and sends the captains home

St. Joan of Arc is seventeen and had led that army from Orleans to the crowning at Reims; a four-month truce with the Duke of Burgundy ended the campaign.

A manuscript illumination of St. Joan of Arc, short-haired and in a dark doublet and hose, standing on the grass at the left and holding a tall white banner lettered JHESUS MARIA, while behind her men lead horses away, furl a banner, load a cart and strike tents outside a walled town on a river. — St. Joan of Arc on the muster field at Gien as Charles VII's army is dismissed and the captains ride for their own estates, 1429 AD.
About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a 15th-century French manuscript illumination, from the paper's reference portrait based on Jeanne d'Arc a la porte Saint-Honore lors du siege de Paris (1429) — Les Vigiles de Charles VII, fol. 66v (Anonymous illuminator; manuscript of Martial d'Auvergne, c. 1484, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Departement des Manuscrits, Francais 5054, fol. 66v) View source artwork.

Charles VII dissolved the royal army at Gien today and sent its captains away to their own estates and garrisons, five months after it raised the siege of Orleans. The king's ambassadors had signed a four-month truce with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in late August, drawn up to stop the advance the army was making. St. Joan of Arc, who had ridden at the head of these men since April, was left with nothing to command.

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A faded black-and-white group photograph of Catholic sisters in dark habits with white headscarves and crosses, standing and seated with a group of children and a few laywomen, in a plain room with a wooden chair against the wall.

event · WEST PARK, New York, September 21, 1891 AD

Seven American women enter St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's order at West Park

Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan of New York gave seven American women the habit of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart today at Manresa, a former Jesuit villa on the Hudson. Each had spent a year testing whether she belonged in the order. They are the first Americans to enter the congregation St. Frances Xavier Cabrini brought over from Italy in 1889 AD to work among the Italian poor of New York.

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On a bare limestone crag above a wooded river gorge, three tonsured monks in coarse dun wool stand over two earthenware water jars and a wooden bucket set down on the rock, facing an elderly grey-bearded St. Benedict who listens with a plain wooden staff in his hand, a small stone monastery building with a tiled roof behind them. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference portrait based on Come Benedetto compie la edificazione di dodici monasteri (Life of St Benedict, Scene 11: Benedict Founds Twelve Monasteries) (Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi), 1505-1508 AD, Great cloister, Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, Asciano, Siena) View source artwork.

place · SUBIACO, Roman Italy, around 520 AD

Water rises on the rock above Subiaco after St. Benedict prays

Monks from three of Saint Benedict of Nursia's twelve monasteries above Subiaco told him the daily climb down to the lake for water was beyond their strength, and asked him to move the buildings down beside the water. He refused. That night he took a boy of about seven up the crag in the dark, prayed there, and left three stones on the rock; the next morning he sent the monks up to dig on the spot.

A predella panel showing a winged St. Michael the Archangel hovering over the sea beside a mother and child at a pink church, and, in a second scene, a bull on a rocky mountainside above a crowd of pilgrims climbing toward a hilltop church.

legacy · SIPONTO, Apulia, 493 AD

Pope Gelasius I allows worship in the cave on Mount Gargano

Saint Lawrence Maiorano, bishop of Siponto, sent messengers to Rome to ask what should be done about a cave near the summit of Mount Gargano where people were already praying and where an altar stood that no bishop had consecrated. Pope Gelasius I gave his assent to the dedication of the grotto as a place of worship. He then climbed the mountain to it and granted the indulgence known as the Angelic Pardon.

An oil painting of a dark room: a bearded man in a white tunic with a purple stripe sits at a cleared table with a rolled scroll, hands loosely joined, while four other men in plain tunics wait in the shadows near a barred door. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Spanish Baroque oil on canvas, from the paper's reference portrait based on San Bartolomé (Jusepe de Ribera, circa 1630, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) View source artwork.

feature · JERUSALEM, around 30 AD

At a last meal, Jesus orders the eleven not to leave Jerusalem

Jesus shared a last meal with his apostles in Jerusalem and told them not to leave the city, but to wait there for what the Father had promised. He gave them no date. St. Bartholomew was one of the eleven who walked back from the Mount of Olives to an upper room and waited, praying with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the other women.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

Saint of the day

Saint Matthew

Saint Matthew was a tax collector at Capernaum in Galilee whom Jesus called from the customs house to follow him. He was one of the Twelve Apostles, and the Church holds him the author of the first of the four Gospels.

On this day in the Church

1429 Charles VII dissolved the royal army at Gien, ending the campaign St. Joan of Arc had led from Orleans to the crowning at Reims.Our report Source
1891 Seven American postulants received the habit of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's Institute at Manresa, the house at West Park on the Hudson.Our report Source
1996 Pope John Paul II said Mass at the air base of Tours for the sixteenth centenary of the death of St. Martin of Tours, and prayed that afternoon with the sick at the saint's tomb.Our report Source

Quote of the day

“Go your way to the rock, and in the place where you find three stones laid one upon another, dig a little hole, for almighty God is able to bring forth water in the top of that mountain, and so to ease you of that great labour which you take in fetching it so far.”

— St. Benedict of Nursia, to the monks of the upper houses above Subiaco, Pope St. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Book II, Chapter 5 (trans. 'P.W.', 1608; ed. Gardner, 1911)