904 Sergius III (904-911) came out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed Antipope Christopher (903-904).

993 Ulric (890–973), bishop of Augsburg from 923, was formally canonized by Pope John XV, the first recorded canonization by a pope.

1336 Pope Benedict XII (ca. 1280–1342) issued the bull Benedictus Deus, which decided the dispute regarding the Beatific Vision.

1499 Katharina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther, was born near Leipzig (d. 20 December 1552).

1523 Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) defended his 67 theses before an audience of more than six hundred people gathered at the first Zurich Disputation.

1535 The French royal family, church officials and many other dignitaries joined in an immense torch-lit procession from the Louvre to Notre Dame in an attempt to purge Paris from the defilement caused by overzealous Protestants and their placards.

1597 Elias Ammerbach, German organist and arranger of organ music of the Renaissance, who published the earliest printed book of organ music in Germany, died (b. ca. 1530).

1688 Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish mystic and scientist, was born in Stockholm, Sweden (d. 29 March 1772).

1718 Paul Rabaut, French Huguenot pastor, was born (d. 25 September 1794).

1739 Thomas Shepherd (b. 1665), nonconformist English clergyman and hymnist, died.

1815 Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote to Charles Clay about “the loathesome combination of Church and State.”

1824 Nils Olsen Brandt, professor at Luther College (Decorah, Iowa), an editor and an organizer of the Norwegian Synod, was born in Norway (d. 1921).

1850 Rufus H. McDaniel, American Christian Church clergyman and hymnist, was born in Brown County, Ohio (d. 13 February 1940, Dayton, Ohio).

1851 Andreas Schroedel, president of the Minnesota District of the Wisconsin Synod, was born in Neustadt, Bavaria, Germany (d. 21 November 1909). He came to America in 1853 and was educated at Northwestern College (Watertown, Wisconsin) and Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis). He served as pastor at Naugart and Ridgeville (serving also Norwalk and Tomah), Wisconsin. He became a professor at Northwestern College in 1889, then returned to the parish as a pastor in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1893. He was president of the Minnesota District from 1906 to 1909.

1854 Ernst Carl Ludwig Schulze, president of the Atlantic District of the Missouri Synod from 1906 until his death, was born in Huellhorst, Rheinberg, Westphalia (d. 9/10 October 1918).

1860 Ernst Moritz Arndt, historian, hymnist and poet, died (b. 26 December 1769).

1866 The English church worker Katherine Hankey (1834–1911) penned the words to the Gospel song “Tell Me the Old, Old Story.”

1880 Frederick Oakeley (b. 5 September 1802), one of the Tractarian authors during the Oxford Movement in England, died.

1907 Martin Hans Franzmann, hymnist and theologian, was born in Lake City, Minnesota (d. 28 March 1976, Cambridge, England).

1957 The University of Chicago Press published the first edition of its English translation of Walter Bauer’s New Testament Greek lexicon (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature).

1968 Theodore Raymond “Ted” Drewes, Sr. died on this date (b. 27 September 1897). He was the son of the Rev. Christopher F. Drewes and a St. Louis tennis champion. Among his many local, regional, and national titles he held 28 St. Louis Municipal Tennis Association (aka Muny) titles from 1918 to 1935, 14 for singles and 14 for doubles. He was inducted into the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991. He was the tennis coach for Concordia Seminary for 23 years and the tennis courts at Concordia Seminary are named in his honor. He is also known for starting, along with his wife Mildred, a frozen custard business in St. Louis. Known as Ted Drewes Custard, it has become a must visit attraction for tourists and citizens of St. Louis.

1979 Federico Lange, president of Concordia Seminary in Argentina from 1946 to 1965, died in Buenos Aires. Lange had joined the clergy of the Argentine District of the Missouri Synod in 1929. He served as a professor of the Old Testament at the seminary and authored an introduction to the Old Testament in Spanish. Lange edited a theological magazine for Spanish-speaking pastors in Latin America and in the U. S. called Revista Teologica. He was president of an inter-Lutheran committee that prepared and published seven volumes of Luther’s works in Spanish, using the facilities of Argentine publication houses. Lange was an active participant in the Argentine Bible Society and had helped promote Scripture sales at national book fairs. A musician also, he wrote or translated hymns in Spanish and directed the Lutheran Chorus of Buenos Aires. Lange was a 1929 graduate of the Evangelical (Lutheran) Seminary of Zehlendorf near Berlin.