Curated category
People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar
- RembrandtRembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn signed his first name alone, the way Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo were known. In 1633 he added a single letter, a "d"…
- MichelangeloMichelangelo carved one of his most famous works, the Pietà, before he turned 30, then sculpted David before the same milestone.
- Nicolaus CopernicusNicolaus Copernicus spent his final years in a small tower at Frombork, on the Baltic coast of Royal Prussia, watching the sky with a quadrant, a triquetrum…
- Johann Sebastian BachIn May 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach sat at a new and unfamiliar instrument in the court of King Frederick the Great in Potsdam.
- NoahNoah is a figure whose name appears in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, and the writings of the Bahai Faith, making him one of the few characters shared across…
- OrigenOrigen of Alexandria was, by any measure, one of the most restless minds the ancient world produced. He wrote roughly 2,000 treatises over a lifetime that…
- John CalvinJohn Calvin once described God's predestination as a decree dreadful indeed, writing in Latin, "Decretum quidem horribile, fateor." This was a man who could…
- Leonhard EulerPierre-Simon Laplace told his colleagues to read Leonhard Euler, calling him the master of us all. The man he was describing was a Swiss polymath born in…
- John WesleyOn the evening of the 24th of May 1738, John Wesley went very unwillingly to a religious society on Aldersgate Street in London.
- Thomas CranmerThomas Cranmer was born on the 2nd of July 1489 in the village of Aslockton in Nottinghamshire, England, a younger son from a modest gentry family with deep…
- Martin LutherMartin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms on the 17th of April 1521, a German priest summoned to answer for his own books. The Emperor Charles V presided.
- Francis XavierFrancis Xavier died early in December 1552, in a small hut on the Chinese island of Shangchuan, fourteen kilometres from the mainland he so badly wanted to…
- Albrecht DürerAlbrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg on the 21st of May 1471, the third child of a Hungarian goldsmith who had translated his own family name from the word…
- Bartolomé de las CasasBartolomé de las Casas stood on the shores of Hispaniola in 1502 as a slave owner and land holder, his encomienda rich with gold and Indigenous labor.
- William TyndaleWilliam Tyndale died with a prayer on his lips. Tied to a stake outside Brussels in the autumn of 1536, he called out in a loud voice: "Lord!
- MetatronMetatron is an angel whose name does not appear anywhere in the Torah or the Bible, yet who became one of the most discussed and debated figures in Jewish…
- Søren KierkegaardSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on the 5th of May 1813 in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children in a family that was both prosperous and haunted.
- Florence NightingaleFlorence Nightingale was born on the 12th of May 1820 at the Villa Colombaia in Florence, Tuscany, and was named after the city of her birth.