The Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord (Candlemas)

672 Saint Chad of Mercia, a 7th century Anglo-Saxon churchman who became abbot of several monasteries, bishop of the Northumbrians and later bishop of the Mercians and Lindsey People, died.

767 Alcuin (ca. 735–804), the academic who would later play a large role in establishing schools under Charlemagne, became headmaster of York Cathedral School.

962 Pope John XII (ca 937–964) crowned Otto the Great (912–973) as Holy Roman Emperor, the first in nearly forty years.

1467 Columba of Rieti (d. 20 May 1501), a Dominican tertiary mystic renowned for her spiritual advice and fantastic miracles, was born.

1594 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, gifted composer of medieval church music, church musician, religious composer and Italian choirmaster, died (b. ca. 1525).

1613 Noël Chabanel, French Jesuit missionary at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, and one of the North American Martyrs was born (d. 8 December 1649).

1619 Tobias Clausnitzer, hymnist, was born (d. 7 May 1684).

1649 Pope Benedict XIII was born (d. 21 February 1730).

1745 Popular British philanthropist, poet and dramatist Hannah More was born at Stapleton, near Bristol, England (d. 7 September 1833).

1769 Pope Clement XIII died (b. 7 March 1693).

1784 Henry Alline (b. 1748), colonial American Free Will Baptist evangelist, died.

1807 Eliza Agnew, Presbyterian missionary, was born in New York City (d. 14 June 1883).

1822 Carl Johann Hermann Fick, a charter member of the Missouri Synod, was born in Doenhausen, Hannover, Germany (d. 30 April 1885, Boston).

1832 Twenty-three-year-old Baptist seminary student Samuel Francis Smith (1808–1895) wrote the lyrics to “America.”

1835 Albert Kuhn, president of the Minnesota Synod, was born in Saint Gallen canton, Switzerland (d. 1 May 1915).

1841 Friedrich Wilhelm August Notz, professor of Greek and Hebrew at Northwestern College (Watertown, Wisconsin), was born in Lehren-Steinsfeld, near Weinsberg, Wuerttemberg (d. 16 December 1922).

1841 Charles Henkel, who translated the Augsburg Confession into English in the early 1830s, died (b. 17/18 May 1798).

1881 The Christian Endeavor Society was founded by Rev. Francis E. Clark in the Williston Congregational Church, Portland, Maine.

1882 The Roman Catholic Church permitted the organization of the Knights of Columbus, bowing to an increasing national interest in fraternal groups.

1895 Theodore Näther (1866–1904) opened Missouri Synod mission work at Krishnagiri, India.

1895 Adoniram Judson Gordon (b. 13 April 1836), American Baptist clergyman, died.

1952 Charles Frederick William Dallmann president of the English Synod of Missouri (1899–1901) and vice-president of the LCMS (1926–1932), died (b. 22 December 1862).

1981 Roy A. Suelflow, missionary in China and Japan Bible School, president of Concordia Seminary (Taiwan), and professor at Concordia College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis, Missouri), died (b. 24 March 1918, Germantown, Wisconsin).