On this day: St. Andrew Avellino

NCR Today
Nov 10, 2011

On this day we celebrate the feast of St. Andrew Avellino, 1521-1608.

Lancelotto Avellino was a canon lawyer and a priest for the diocese of Naples. One day, while pleading a case, he told a lie. His remorse caused him to give up the practice of law.

On this day: Margery Kempe

NCR Today
Nov 9, 2011

On this day the Anglican Communion commemorates Margery Kempe, Mystic.

Margery Brunham was born in Lynn in Norfolk, about 1373. At the age of 20 she married John Kempe. They would be the parents of 14 children.

"The Book of Margery Kempe, often described as the first autobiography in English, was probably written in the late 1430s and presents an account of the visionary encounters and conversations with Christ experienced by a woman from a prosperous urban mercantile family, who lived in Lynn in Norfolk. It details her attempts to follow a life of intense spirituality while living in the world, rather than withdrawing from it as an anchoress or nun, and describes the approbation and criticism which she received as a result."

--from the Preface to A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe, edited by John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis, D. S. Brewer, 2004, page xvii.

On this day: Duns Scotus

NCR Today
Nov 8, 2011

On this day we celebrate the feast of Bl. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308).

"No one knows precisely when John Duns was born, but we are fairly certain he came from the eponymous town of Duns near the Scottish border with England. He, like many other of his compatriots, was called 'Scotus,' or 'the Scot,' from the country of his birth. He was ordained a priest on 17 March 1291. Because his bishop had just ordained another group at the end of 1290, we can place Scotus’s birth in the first quarter of 1266, if he was ordained as early as canon law permitted. When he was a boy he joined the Franciscans, who sent him to study at Oxford, probably in 1288. . . He probably completed his Oxford studies in 1301. He was not, however, incepted as a master at Oxford, for his provincial sent him to the more prestigious University of Paris, where he would lecture on the Sentences a second time.

--from "John Duns Scotus," by Jeffrey Hause of Creighton University, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007, an interesting and friendly introduction to the Subtle Doctor.

On this day: All Saints of the Dominican Order

NCR Today
Nov 7, 2011

On this day we celebrate the Feast of All Saints of the Dominican Order.

Click here for a Litany of the Dominican Saints and Blesseds.