March 19

Saint Joseph, Guardian of Jesus

1263 Hugh of Saint Cher, French cardinal, died (b. ca. 1200 at Saint Cher, a suburb of Vienne, France).

1488 Johannes Magnus, last Catholic Archbishop of Sweden, was born (d. 22 March 1544).

1534 José de Anchieta, Spanish Jesuit missionary to Brazil, was born (d. 9 June 1597).

1590 William Bradford, Pilgrim and First Governor of the Plymouth Colony, was born (d. 9 May 1657)

1641 The General Court (which had convened three days earlier) that declared Rhode Island to be a democracy ended. It adopted a new constitution granting religious freedom to all Rhode Island citizens.

1657 Jean Leclerc (Johannes Clericus), learned theologian and Arminian, was born in Geneva (d. 8 January 1736).

1684 Jean Astruc, French physician and the founder of modern Pentateuchal criticism, was born at Sauve, Languedoc, France (d. 5 May 1766).

1711 Thomas Ken, Anglican bishop and hymnist, died at Frome, Selwood, England (b. July 1637).

1720 Johann Ernst Gründler, missionary to India, died (b. 7 April 1677, Weissensee, Thuringia).

1721 Pope Clement XI died (b. 23 July 1649).

1799 The first performance of Creation by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) took place in Vienna.

1813 David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer, was born in Blantyre, Scotland (near Glasgow) (d. 1 May 1873).

1824 Johann Michael Ferdinand Heinrich Hofmann, painter of New Testament subjects, was born at Darmstadt, Germany (d. 23 June 1911).

1825 John J. Husband (b. 1760), English-born American music teacher and sacred music chorister, died.

1860 William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and opponent of evolution in the Scopes Trial, was born in Salem, Illinois (d. 26 July 1925).

1861 Gustaf Albert Brandelle, Augustana Synod leader, was born (d. 16 January 1936).

1863 Carl Johan Eastvold, Norwegian Lutheran leader in America, was born in Hoiland, near Stavanger, Norway (d. 23 July 1929).

1884 John William Behnken, sixth president of the Missouri Synod, was born in Cypress, Harris County, Texas (d. 23 February 1968).

1930 Arthur James Balfour (b. 25 July 1848), British statesman and philosopher who authored the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, died.

1937 Pope Pius XI (1857–1939) issued the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, which condemned Russian Bolshevik Communism for its materialism, its conceptions of man and society, its atheism and terrorism.