John Newton (#54)

Background

John Henry Newton was born on July 24, 1725 in Wapping, London, the son of a shipmaster. Newton's mother, Elizabeth Seatcliffe Newton was the daughter of an instrument maker from London, but she died of tuberculosis when John was only seven years old. Two years later, Newton went to live with his father's new wife, during which he attended school. 

When he was eleven, Newton worked at sea with his father. When his father retired, Newton was expected to go work on a sugar plantation in Jamaica, but Newton decided to sign on with a merchant ship in the Mediterranean instead.

Life at Sea

In 1743, Newton was captured and pressed into the naval service by the Royal Navy. He became a midshipman on the HMS Hardwich. Newton attempted to desert, but was captured and was given eight dozen lashes and was reduced to the rank of common seaman. After this event, Newton contemplated murdering the captain and committing suicide himself. Newton eventually recovered, both physically and mentally, and was transfered to the Pegasus, a slave ship bound for West Africa. 

Newton was deemed a problem by the crew of the Pegasus and was handed over to a slave dealer named Amos Clowe. Clowe took Newton to the coast and gave him to Clowe's wife, an African duchess, as a slave. Newton was abused and mistreated while there, but was rescued in 1748 by a sea captain who had been hired by Newton's father to search for him.

The sea captain returned Newton to Liverpool, where Newton acquired a slave ship Brownlow. During a voyage to the West Indies, Newton became sick with fever. While sick, Newton recognized the inadequacy of his spiritual life. He then professed his full belief in Christ. After this, in 1750, Newton married his childhood sweetheart. Newton did, however, continued working in the slave trade until 1754. 

Ministry

Newton settled down in 1755 to become a tax collector, and in his spare time, he studied Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac and soon became a well known evangelical lay minister. In 1757, he applied to be ordained as a priest of the Church of England. He was refused multiple times by the Church of England, the Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church. It wasn't until 1764, that Newton was accepted as the priest of Olney on the recommendation of Lord Dartmouth.

In 1767, a poet named William Cowper moved to Olney. He attended Newton's church, and the two worked together to create a volume of hymns, published in 1779 as the Olney Hymns. Among these hymns was the most famous ever written, titled "Amazing Grace". 

In 1788, Newton published a pamphlet entitled "Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade", in which he described the horrible conditions of slave ships he had experienced 34 years prior. In the pamphlet, Newton denounced slavery and expressed shame and humiliation for ever being part of the slave trade. Newton became an ally with William Wilberforce, who led the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade. 

The End

Newton lived with his wife, Mary Catlett until her death in 1790. After her death, Newton published Letters to a Wife, in which he expressed his sorrow at her passing. Newton died on December 21, 1807, but before his death, he was able to see the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished slavery in the British Empire. Newton is on our list because despite entering the world of slavery and cruelty, he was able to turn his life around, write one of the most famous hymns in the world, and fight against the slavery that he once practiced.

The Salem Witch Trials (August 19th)

In the colony of Massachusetts, many believed in the supernatural. The majority of people in Massachusetts were Puritans, who had a strong belief of the work of Satan, demons, and evil spirits in the world. The idea of a person using these supernatural beings became known as dark magic, and the practice of dark magic was known as witchcraft.

Witchcraft and dark magic was used to explain bad crops, strange sounds, and many other bad occurrences. In 1692, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, who were 9 and 11 years old respectively, began to have fits . They began to scream, throw things across the room, crawl under furniture, and contort themselves into peculiar positions. The doctor, William Griggs, found no physical evidence of ailment, but soon, many other women in the town began experiencing similar symptoms.

Soon, several women were arrested for using witchcraft to afflict the young women. These accused "witches" were Sarah Good, a homeless beggar, Sara Osborne, a woman who didn't attend church, and Tituba, an African slave. These women were the first to be sent to jail for witchcraft. Over the next four years, many more women were arrested for witchcraft.

On August 19, 1692, the first six "witches" were executed in Salem. The witch hunt spread across Puritan Massachusetts, and dozens of women were arrested, and a total of twelve women were executed as witches.

Saint Dionysius Exiguus (#94)

Background

Dionysius Exiguus, later known as Dennis the Humble, was born in in the Roman empire around the year A.D. 470. Little is known about his life, but most believe he was born in the section of the Roman Empire known as Scythia Minor. He was amember of the Scythian monks from the city of Tomis. Dionysius was a Catholic and was fluent in both Latin and Greek.

Works

The main work of  Dionysius  was a Scythian monk was to translate religious documents from Greek to Latin. His translated works include The Life of St. Pachomius and Instruction of St. Proclus of Constantinople. He also translated a history of the discovery of the head of St. John the Baptist. In total,  Dionysius  is said to have translated 401 ecclesiastical canons which were collected into the book Collectio Dionysiana. At the request of Pope John I in 525,  Dionysius  also created a table listing out all the future dates of Easter and a set of arguments justifying the calculations.  Dionysius  ignored the Easter Tables used by the Church of Rome that were prepared in 457 by Victorius of Aquitaine. He stated that they did not obey Alexandrian principles. His tables were not, however, used to calculate Easter, using, instead, the tables created by Cyril of Alexandria. By far, though,  Dionysius 's most famous work is as the inventor of the Anno Domini era. Using different references and documents,  Dionysius  calculated the year in which Jesus was born, stating that the year that he made this calculation was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ." This year system was then applied to both the Julian and the Gregorian calender as a way of referencing the year. Before the birth of Jesus, the years are noted as B.C., or the years Before Christ. The years after the birth of Jesus are noted with A.D., or Anno Domini, or "In the Year of Our Lord. The Anno Domini era became dominant in Western Europe after it was used in 731 by the Venerable Bede to date events in his book, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The Anno Domini year system is now the most used system of noting the year.

The End

Not much is known about the death of Dionysius Exiguus except that it was around the year A.D. 544. Dionysius is on our list because without him, we would really have a way of telling what year he did die in. Even though some people now use the notation C.E. and B.C.E. (Current Era and Before Current Era), they still are based on Dionysius's calculation of the birth of Jesus, and even though Dionysius's calculation are off by about three years, his system was still accepted and is used to this day. Without him, we wouldn't have any cool doomsday names like "Y2K" or "Twenty-Twelve."