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October 8 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · FIRTH OF FORTH, Scotland, 1067–1069 AD

Scottish king refuses to surrender St. Margaret to William the Conqueror

A storm drove England's exiled royal family into the Firth of Forth, and King Malcolm III of Scots sent to welcome them and set out to meet them.

A detail of a mural showing a crowned, bearded king bowing over the hand of a young woman in a white veil and blue cloak, with another woman beside her and a longship and dock behind them. — King Malcolm III of Scots greets St. Margaret of Scotland on her arrival at the Firth of Forth, in a detail from William Hole's mural at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

After the Norman Conquest, Saint Margaret of Scotland fled England with her mother, her sister and her brother Edgar, the last male heir of the old English royal line. A storm drove their ship into a bay on the Firth of Forth, and King Malcolm III of Scots took the family in at Dunfermline. When William the Conqueror demanded that Edgar and St. Margaret be handed over, Malcolm refused.

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A sepia-toned 19th-century studio photograph of a woman with dark hair parted in the center, wearing a dark silk dress buttoned to the neck, seated with her hands folded in her lap.

event · ALENÇON, Normandy, October 8, 1870 AD

St. Zélie Martin's baby Thérèse dies at seven weeks old in Alençon

Marie-Mélanie-Thérèse Martin died at Alençon on October 8, 1870 AD, seven weeks after she was born. Her mother, Saint Zélie Martin, wrote to her sister-in-law the same afternoon and set the week down day by day. It was the fourth child the Martins had lost in less than four years.

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More in this edition

A medieval manuscript illumination in two scenes: at left, a haloed woman in blue points as she speaks to a crowned, bearded duke holding a shield, surrounded by attendants; at right, masons and carpenters work atop the brick walls of a church under construction, with a crane lifting materials to the roof.

column · TREBNITZ, Silesia, 1203 AD

St. Hedwig gives her widow's lands to feed a thousand at Trebnitz

Saint Hedwig of Silesia has given the convent her husband, Duke Henry, is building at Trebnitz the estate set aside to support her as a widow, about four hundred farms. The house, the first for religious women in Silesia, is endowed for a thousand people, and its nuns came from Bamberg in Germany.

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A painting of an elderly, bearded friar in a black Servite habit, rising into clouds among angels and cherubs, his arms spread, above a crucifix in the foreground.

legacy · FORLÌ, Romagna, October 8, 1608 AD

Forlì woman comes unasked to swear St. Peregrine cleared her face

Magdalena de Savorellis came of her own accord before the notary of Forlì's sworn inquiry into the holiness of Saint Peregrine Laziosi, a Servite friar who died in the city in 1345 AD. She swore that about thirty years earlier a surgeon had called the growth under her eye a tumour very hard to cure. It began to heal as soon as she made a vow to St. Peregrine.

A painting in a Tudor panelled hall: a dark-haired boy in a plain black coat stands before a long white-clothed table, pouring from a pewter ewer, while an old white-haired man in a black cap sits at the left end and four men in black caps and fur-collared gowns sit along the far side with cups, loaves and a clasped book on the cloth. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of oil and tempera on oak panel after Hans Holbein the Younger, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Sir Thomas More (Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527, The Frick Collection, New York) View source artwork.

writings · LONDON, 1516 AD

St. Thomas More writes the cardinal he served as a boy into Utopia

Saint Thomas More was a page of thirteen in the household of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Twenty-five years later, in Utopia, he set the old Cardinal at his own dinner table as the one man there who would hear a new idea out.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Saint of the day

Saints Sergius and Bacchus

Saints Sergius and Bacchus are honoured by the Church as martyrs who gave their lives for Christ in Syria.

On this day in the Church

1372 Returning from the Holy Land, St. Bridget of Sweden and her pilgrims landed again at Famagusta in Cyprus, where the queen and the young king received them.Our report Source
1690 St. Margaret Mary Alacoque took to her bed at Paray-le-Monial on the first day of her community's retreat, and no one in the house was alarmed.Our report Source
1863 On business in Paris, St. Louis Martin received Communion at Notre-Dame des Victoires, lit a candle there for his family and wrote to St. Zélie that the church was "like a little earthly paradise".Source

Quote of the day

“I am desolate, I loved this child so much.”

— St. Zélie Martin, at Alençon, on the day her baby daughter Thérèse died, Letter from Mrs. Martin to Mrs. Guérin, CF 60, 8 October 1870 (Archives du Carmel de Lisieux)