On This Day
1294 – Saint Celestine V resigns the papacy after only five months to return to his previous life as an ascetic hermit.
Pope Celestine V (Latin: Caelestinus V; 1215 – 19 May 1296), born Pietro Angelerio (according to some sources Angelario, Angelieri, Angelliero, or Angeleri), also known as Pietro da Morrone, Peter of Morrone, and Peter Celestine, was pope for five months from 5 July to 13 December 1294, when he resigned. He was also a monk and hermit who founded the order of the Celestines as a branch of the Benedictine order.
He was elected pope in the Catholic Church’s last non-conclave papal election, ending a two-year impasse. Among the few edicts of his to remain in force was the confirmation of the right of the pope to abdicate; nearly all of his other official acts were annulled by his successor, Boniface VIII.[1] On 13 December 1294, a week after issuing the decree, Celestine resigned, stating his desire to return to his humble, pre-papal life. He was subsequently imprisoned by Boniface in the castle of Fumone in the Campagna region, in order to prevent his potential installation as antipope. He died in prison on 19 May 1296 at the age of 81.[1]
Celestine was canonized on 5 May 1313 by Pope Clement V. No subsequent pope has taken the name Celestine.
Born On This Day
1476 – Lucy Brocadelli, Dominican tertiary and stigmatic (d. 1544)
The Blessed Lucy Brocadelli, O.S.D. (also known as the Blessed Lucy of Narni), (13 December 1476 in Narni – 15 November 1544 in Ferrara) was a Dominican tertiary who was famed as a mystic and a stigmatic. She has been venerated by the Roman Catholic Church since 1710. She is known for being the counselor of the Duke of Ferrara, for founding convents in two different and hostile city-states and for her remains being solemnly returned to her home city of Narni on 26 May 1935, 391 years after her death.
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1780 – Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, German chemist, invented the Döbereiner’s lamp (d. 1849)
Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (13 December 1780 – 24 March 1849) was a German chemist who is best known for work that foreshadowed the periodic law for the chemical elements and inventing the first lighter, which was known as the Döbereiner’s lamp.[1] He became a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Jena.
Life and work
As a coachman’s son, Döbereiner had little opportunity for formal schooling. So he was apprenticed to an apothecary, reading widely and attending science lectures. He eventually became a professor at the University of Jena in 1810; he also studied chemistry at Strasbourg. In work published in 1829,[2] Döbereiner reported trends in certain properties of selected groups of elements. For example, the average atomic mass of lithium and potassium was close to the atomic mass of sodium. A similar pattern was found with calcium, strontium, and barium, with sulfur, selenium, and tellurium, and also with chlorine, bromine, and iodine. Moreover, the densities for some of these triads followed a similar pattern. These sets of elements became known as “Döbereiner’s triads”.[3][4]
Döbereiner also is known for his discovery of furfural,[5] for his work on the use of platinum as a catalyst, and for a lighter, known as Döbereiner’s lamp. By 1828 hundreds of thousands of these lighters had been mass produced by the German manufacturer Gottfried Piegler in Schleiz.[6]
The German writer Goethe was a friend of Döbereiner, attended his lectures weekly, and used his theories of chemical affinities as a basis for his famous 1809 novella Elective Affinities.
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Recipes
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