Today in History

King Saint Edward the Confessor

Today is the feast of Saint Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England. But I’m not going to talk about him today.

On this day in 1307 – on the 63rd birthday of their Grand Master Jacques de Molay – hundreds of Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Phillip IV. I’m not going to talk about that either.

Today I’d like to briefly touch on the remarkable event that occurred on this day in 1917, at the height of the Great War. In Fátima, Portugal an estimated 70,000 people witnessed the “Miracle of the Sun”.

Avelino de Almeida, writing for Portugal’s popular pro-government and anti-clerical newspaper O Século, said

Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws – the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expression of the people.

Almeida’s previous articles about the ongoing events at Fátima had been vicious satires. Three children in the town claimed that the Virgin Mary was appearing to them. They said she had told them that her last visit would be on 13 October 1917. She promised a miracle for the occasion.

Thousands came out to see, many like Almeida to mock the gullibility of the people who came expecting a miracle. Most folks, no doubt, came out of simple curiousity.

Estimates of the crowd run from a low of 30,000 (by Almeida) to upwards of 100,000 (by Dr. Joseph Garrett, a professor of natural sciences at the University of Coimbra). Both men were present that day. None knew what to expect, for they were only told that there would be a miracle. Most focused on the little tree in the field where the children said that the Virgin typically appeared to them.

The morning was rainy. As the rain cleared, a thin layer of clouds surrounded the sun making it possible to look more or less directly at it. One of the children, Lúcia, called out to the crowd to look at the sun.

What the crowd saw astonished them. For suddenly, the sun started to whirl and dance.

The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceedingly swift and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be approaching the earth, strongly radiating heat.

(Optamologist Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem)

The strange solar activity was reported by those up to 11 miles away.

As abruptly as it began, it stopped. The entire event lasted perhaps ten minutes.

Skeptics since have tried to explain the event as a mass hallucination, or any one of several vaguely plausible atmospheric events. No one who witnessed the events, believers and non-believers alike, had any doubt about what they saw.

So what does it all mean?

I personally find it interesting that the Virgin chose to appear in a town named after the daughter of the founder of Islam. The core of her message was to pray for unbelievers, that they might accept God’s great mercy.

Sounds good to me!