Martin Chemnitz, Pastor and Confessor

Martin Chemnitz (15221586), born on this date, is regarded after Martin Luther as the most important theologian in the history of the Lutheran Church.

1282 Pope Martin IV (ca. 12201285) excommunicated King Peter III of Aragon (12391285).

1590 Johannes M. Meyfart, hymnist, was born at Jena (d. January 1642). [German Wikipedia article]

1697 Pope Innocent XII (16151700) ordered the city of Cervia, Italy, to be rebuilt.

1800 Asa Mahan, American Congregational clergyman and president of Oberlin College in Ohio, was born in Vernon, New York (d. 1889).

1802 Elijah P. Lovejoy, American Presbyterian newspaper editor and abolitionist, was born in Albion, Maine (d. 7 November 1837).

1807 Friedrich Wilhelm Husmann, the first secretary of the Missouri Synod, was born at Nordel, Hanover, Germany (d. 4 May 1881).

1837 Moses Montefiore (17841885) became the first Jew to be knighted in England.

1851 Kentucky marshals abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank (18161898) from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and took him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.

1851 William Crosswell, hymnist, died in Boston, Massachusetts (b. 7 November 1804).

1865 Henry Ballantine (Ballentine), missionary to India who helped translate Bible into Marathi, died. Educated at the University of Ohio and at Princeton, Union (Virginia) and Andover seminaries, he was sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to India in 1835 and was stationed at Ahmadnagar. Besides assisting in the translation of the Bible into Marathi, he also translated and wrote hymns in that language.

1867 J. F. William Moenkemoeller, professor at Concordia College (Saint Paul, Minnesota), was born in Westphalia, Germany (d. 9 May 1933).

1889 William August Dobberfuhl was born in Freistadt, Wisconsin (d. 9 February 1954, Saint Paul, Minnesota). He graduated from Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) in 1913 and served as a pastor in Detroit, Michigan (19131923), where he was also chairman of the Detroit Pastoral Conference and secretary of the Michigan District of the Missouri Synod. He became a professor at Concordia College (Saint Paul) in 1923, where he taught Greek, Latin, Hebrew and German.

1932  Melanchthon Gideon Groseclose Scherer, Lutheran theologian, died (b. 16 March 1861).

1938 In Nazi Germany the worst campaign of terror against the Jews by the Third Reich took place. The event came to be known as the Kristallnacht (“Night of Glass”) because of the thousands of windows that were broken by Nazi thugs.

1975 The Eastern Shore Lutheran Mission was dedicated near the historic site of Williamsburg, Virginia.

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