October 6 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · CONSTANTINOPLE, October 6, 404 AD

Empress Eudoxia dies, and exiled St. John Chrysostom is not called back

People in Constantinople saw God's anger in her death, but the men who had worked against him still held the court, and he wintered in a mountain village.

A mosaic of a bare stone room with a timber ceiling: on the left an elderly bald man with a grey beard, in a dark tunic and brown cloak, sits at a wooden table writing on a sheet beside a window onto a brown autumn hillside, while on the right a younger man in a belted brown tunic kneels to tend a clay brazier of glowing charcoal beside a stack of firewood. — St. John Chrysostom writes from his lodging at Cucusus, a mountain village on the borders of Cilicia and Armenia, in the autumn of 404 AD, as Dioscorus readies the room for the winter.
About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a Byzantine mosaic of glass and stone tesserae, from the paper's reference portrait based on St. John Chrysostom, micromosaic icon (Anonymous Greek workshop, 14th century, Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos) View source artwork.

The Empress Eudoxia, who had chosen the mountain village of Cucusus as Saint John Chrysostom's place of exile, died at Constantinople in October 404 AD, days after a hailstorm. Many in the city took both as God's judgment on his removal, but the persecution of his followers went on and no order came to bring him back. He spent the autumn at Cucusus, writing to his friend Saint Olympias.

6 min read

An ink-and-wash drawing of a low cave in a tall grey rock face above a river, where four workmen pull down a wooden paling fence across the cave mouth while a small group of women in long white hooded capes and men in dark jackets look on. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a mid-19th-century reportage drawing in ink and wash. No person in it is a portrait.

event · LOURDES, October 5, 1858 AD

Emperor's telegram brings down the fence at the Lourdes grotto

The wooden fence that had closed the grotto of Massabielle at Lourdes since June came down on October 5, 1858 AD, pulled up by the men who had put it there. Napoleon III, petitioned at Biarritz by the townspeople and the Archbishop of Auch, had a telegram sent to the prefect ordering it removed. The prefect and the police commissioner who enforced the closure were moved to other posts.

4 min read

More in this edition

A painted fresco of a Roman street with classical columns: St. Frances of Rome, with a halo and a veil, lays her hand on the head of a kneeling young man, while a companion nun and other women look on, and at left a man lies fallen with another standing over him with a staff.

profile · ROME, 1431 AD

At her sister-in-law's coffin, St. Frances of Rome cries 'When? When?'

Vannozza Ponziani, sister-in-law of Saint Frances of Rome and her companion since both were young wives in the Ponziani house in Trastevere, has died in Rome after a short illness. St. Frances nursed her to the end. At the funeral in Santa Maria in Aracoeli she knelt by the coffin in ecstasy through the whole service, until her confessor ordered her home to the sick she was nursing.

4 min read

In a dim plastered farmhouse bedroom with a beamed ceiling and a small dark window, a pale young woman in a white linen shift sits up in a wooden bed with her hands joined, while an older woman in a brown gown, white collar and white coif stands in the open plank door holding a lit candle; a plain crucifix hangs on the wall. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of French seventeenth-century oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Apparition du Christ à Marguerite-Marie Alacoque (unknown artist, 18th century, Musée du Hiéron, Paray-le-Monial; photograph by Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0) View source artwork.

place · LHAUTECOUR, Burgundy, winter 1663 AD

St. Margaret Mary's ulcers close without a trace before her novena ends

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, sixteen, fell ill this winter at her family's farm at Lhautecour in Burgundy, with ulcers on her legs that a surgeon's remedies did not touch. She told her mother that God would cure her within the month, and before the nine-day novena the two of them made was over, the ulcers had closed and the pain in her side had stopped. Her health held until she entered the convent eight years later.

4 min read

A gilded manuscript page divided into two panels: above, a crowned queen raises her hand beside a crowned young king holding a sceptre; below, a robed author reads from a book while a scribe in blue writes at a sloped desk, all under Gothic arches.

column · PARIS, 1230 AD

Fearing God's rejection, young St. Louis calls the Paris scholars home

A quarrel over the price of wine ended with the city's archers killing and drowning students, and the masters and students of Paris left for the provinces and abroad. St. Louis IX, the boy king whose mother ruled for him, grieved to see learning leave France, called them back and made the townsmen make amends.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Tuesday of the 27th week in Ordinary Time

Saint Bruno, priestOptional Memorial

Saint of the day

Saint Bruno

Saint Bruno, born at Cologne, taught theology at Reims and then withdrew with a few companions to the wilderness of the Chartreuse, near Grenoble, where the Carthusian order began. Called to Rome by Pope Urban II, he died in a hermitage in Calabria in 1101 AD.

On this day in the Church

404 The Empress Eudoxia died at Constantinople, four months after St. John Chrysostom was sent into exile at Cucusus.Our report Source
1574 St. Teresa of Ávila finished her three years as prioress of the Incarnation at Ávila and returned to St. Joseph's, where the community elected her prioress.Source
1991 Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in Piazza Farnese in Rome for the sixth centenary of the canonization of St. Bridget of Sweden.Source

Quote of the day

“And why do you dread the cold? For a suitable dwelling has been prepared for me, and my lord Dioscorus does and arranges everything so as to prevent my having the least sensation of cold.”

— St. John Chrysostom, writing to St. Olympias from exile at Cucusus, autumn 404 AD, John Chrysostom, Letters to Olympias