Sarah (died circa 303) is a 4th-century martyr venerated as a saint in the Coptic Orthodox Church. She is commemorated on the 25th day of Baramouda (3 May).
Unable to baptise her two sons in Antioch on account of the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian, she took them by boat to Egypt. A great storm blew up, and in fear of her sons drowning unbaptised, she performed their baptisms herself, cutting her breast, marking the cross on their foreheads and over their hearts in her blood, and dipping them three times in the sea, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The storm died down, and the ship reached Alexandria. Sarah immediately took her sons to Pope Peter I for official baptism, but when he went to baptise them, the water froze. He continued baptising other children and came again to Sarah's children at the end, but three times he tried, and three times the water froze, whereupon he said, "It is indeed one baptism."
On returning to Antioch, she was accused by her husband of having gone to Alexandria to commit adultery with Christians, and sent before the Emperor, but refused to confess, or reveal her true purpose (which probably would have resulted in death anyway). She and her two sons were burned. The year was probably AD 303 or 304.
Cyril of Alexandria was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444. He was enthroned when the city was at the height of its influence and power within the Roman Empire. Cyril wrote extensively and was a leading antagonist in the Christological controversies of the late-4th and 5th centuries. He was a central figure in the Council of Ephesus in 431, which led to the deposition of Nestorius as Patriarch of Constantinople. Cyril is counted among the Church Fathers and also as a Doctor of the Church, and his reputation within the Christian world has resulted in his titles Pillar of Faith and Seal of all the Fathers. The Nestorian bishops at their synod at the Council of Ephesus declared him a heretic, labelling him as a "monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church."
The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325.
Infant baptism is the practice of baptising infants or young children. Infant baptism is also called christening by some faith traditions.
Pope Siricius was the bishop of Rome from December 384 to his death. In response to inquiries from Bishop Himerius of Tarragona, Siricius issued the Directa decretal, containing decrees of baptism, church discipline and other matters. His are the oldest completely preserved papal decretals. He is sometimes said to have been the first bishop of Rome to call himself pope.
Antioch on the Orontes was a Hellenistic city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the current city of Antakya, Turkey, to which the ancient city lends its name.
Septimia Zenobia was a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. Many legends surround her ancestry; she was probably not a commoner and she married the ruler of the city, Odaenathus. Her husband became king in 260, elevating Palmyra to supreme power in the Near East by defeating the Sassanians and stabilizing the Roman East. After Odaenathus' assassination, Zenobia became the regent of her son Vaballathus and held de facto power throughout his reign.
Pope Felix III was the bishop of Rome from 13 March 483 to his death. His repudiation of the Henotikon is considered the beginning of the Acacian schism. He is commemorated on March 1.
Aelia Eudocia Augusta, also called Saint Eudocia, was an Eastern Roman empress by marriage to Emperor Theodosius II, and a prominent Greek historical figure in understanding the rise of Christianity during the beginning of the Byzantine Empire. Eudocia lived in a world where Greek paganism and Christianity existed side by side with both pagans and non-orthodox Christians being persecuted. Although Eudocia's work has been mostly ignored by modern scholars, her poetry and literary work are great examples of how her Christian faith and Greek heritage/upbringing were intertwined, exemplifying a legacy that the Roman Empire left behind on the Christian world.
Saint Meletius was a Christian bishop of Antioch from 360 until his death in 381. He was opposed by a rival bishop named Paulinus and his episcopate was dominated by the schism, usually called the Meletian schism. As a result, he was exiled from Antioch in 361–362, 365–366 and 371–378. One of his last acts was to preside over the First Council of Constantinople in 381.
Severus the Great of Antioch, also known as Severus of Gaza, was the Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, from 512 until his death in 538. He is venerated as a saint in the Oriental Orthodox Church, and his feast day is 8 February.
The Mortara case was an Italian cause célèbre that captured the attention of much of Europe and North America in the 1850s and 1860s. It concerned the Papal States' seizure of a six-year-old boy named Edgardo Mortara from his Jewish family in Bologna, on the basis of a former servant's testimony that she had administered an emergency baptism to the boy when he fell ill as an infant. Mortara grew up as a Catholic under the protection of Pope Pius IX, who refused his parents' desperate pleas for his return; eventually Mortara became a priest. The domestic and international outrage against the Pontifical State's actions may have contributed to its downfall amid the unification of Italy.
A Christian name, sometimes referred to as a baptismal name, is a religious personal name historically given on the occasion of a Christian baptism, though now most often assigned by parents at birth. In English-speaking cultures, a person's Christian name is commonly their first name and is typically the name by which the person is primarily known.
The Medieval history of Cyprus starts with the division of the Roman Empire into an Eastern and Western half.
Sarah Fairbrother was an English actress and the mistress of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, a male-line grandson of George III. As the couple married in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772, their marriage was not recognised under the law.
Agnes of Antioch was Queen of Hungary from 1172 until 1184 as the first wife of Béla III.
Saint Domnina and her daughters Berenice and Prosdoce are venerated as Christian martyrs by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
The Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England was a process spanning the 7th century. It was essentially the result of the Gregorian mission of 597, which was joined by the efforts of the Hiberno-Scottish mission from the 630s. From the 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon mission was, in turn, instrumental in the conversion of the population of the Frankish Empire.
William Mullins and his family traveled as passengers on the historic 1620 voyage to America on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact. Mullins perished in the pilgrims' first winter in the New World, with his wife and son dying soon after.
Edward Hutchinson was a mercer and a resident of Lincolnshire, England, most noted for the careers of his children in New England. While his father and several of his uncles and brothers became prominent as clergymen, aldermen, sheriffs, and mayors in the city of Lincoln, Edward focused his efforts on his business after moving to the town of Alford. Remarkably, not a single record for him has been found in Alford, other than his burial and the baptisms of his 11 children, but he likely gained a considerable estate, and his children married into prominent families. What was most exceptional about Edward Hutchinson occurred following his 1632 death. Beginning in 1634, five of his nine surviving children and his widow immigrated to New England, and all six of them were exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a result of the events of the Antinomian Controversy from 1636 to 1638. From Boston two of his children went south and became founding settlers of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and three of them, with his widow, went north to establish Exeter in the Province of New Hampshire, and then proceeded to Wells, Maine. Because of their involvement in the controversy, his children had a disproportionately large role in the establishment of these new settlements in New England.
Theodore Paleologus was a 16th and 17th-century Italian nobleman, soldier and assassin. According to the genealogy presented on Theodore's tombstone, he was a direct male-line descendant of the Palaiologos dynasty, which had ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to its fall in 1453. Though most of the figures in the genealogy can be verified to have been real historical figures, the veracity of his imperial descent is uncertain.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
