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It is read that the decollation of Saint John Baptist was established for four causes, like as it is found in the Book of Office. First, for his decollation; secondly, for the burning and gathering together of his bones; thirdly, for the invention and finding of his head; and fourthly, for the translation of his finger and dedication of the Church. ... it is necessary to bear in mind that on account of the movable year of the old Egyptian calendar the true or astronomical dates of the official festivals must have varied from year to year, at least until the adoption of the fixed Alexandrian year in 30 (before this era). From that time onward, apparently, the dates of the festivals were by the new calendar, and so ceased to rotate throughout the length of the solar year. At all events Plutarch, writing about the end of the first century, implies that they were then fixed, not movable; for though he does not mention the Alexandrian calendar, he clearly dates his festivals by it. Moreover, the long festal calendar at Esne, an important document of the Imperial age, is obviously based on the fixed Alexandrian year; for it assigns the mark for New Year's Day to the day which corresponds to the twenty-ninth of August, which was the first day of the Alexandrian year, and its references to the rising of the Nile, the position of the sun, and the operations of agriculture are all in harmony with this supposition. Thus we may take it as fairly certain that from 30 (before this era) onwards the Egyptian festivals were stationary in the solar
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All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
John Locke, English philosopher, born on August 29, 1632; 'Essay on the Human Understanding'
When in doubt, win the trick.
Edmond Hoyle (1672–1769), British writer on cards; Hoyle's
Games, 'Whist: Twenty-Four Short Rules for Learners', (c. 1756)
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, born on August 29, 1809; The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table, vi
To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
If a face like Ingrid Bergman's looks at you as though you're adorable, everybody does. You don't have to act very much.
Humphrey Bogart on Ingrid Bergman, Swedish-born Hollywood actress, born on August 29, 1916, died on August 29, 1982
I've never sought success in order to get fame and money; it's the talent and the passion that count in success.
Ingrid Bergman
I don't regret a thing I've done. I only regret the things I didn't do.
Ingrid Bergman
I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.
Ingrid Bergman
The best way to keep young is to keep going in whatever it is that keeps you going. With me that's work, and a lot of it. And when a job is finished, relax and have fun.
Ingrid Bergman
I've gone from saint to whore and back to saint again, all in one lifetime.
Ingrid Bergman
Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.
Ingrid Bergman; to her daughter Isabella Rossellini, on acting
The minute I looked at her, I knew I had something. She had an extraordinary quality of purity and nobility and a definite star personality that is very rare.
David O
Selznick; on Ingrid Bergman
People didn't expect me to have emotion like other women.
Ingrid Bergman
I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn't enough. I was exploding inside.
Ingrid Bergman
Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress.
Ingrid Bergman
Oh, but she's a woman's woman. I mean, she is everything a woman should be. She's the kind of woman men aren't afraid of because she's so warm. She has a real quality. It's too bad she isn't queen of some country.
Goldie Hawn on Ingrid Bergman
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
Ingrid Bergman
You must train your intuition -- you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.
Ingrid Bergman
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight of the soul.
Ingrid Bergman
Be yourself. The world worships the original.
Ingrid Bergman; from Journey in Word, ed. Cyndi Craven; an internet collection of
quotations
Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.
Ingrid Bergman
Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your views become more extensive.
Ingrid Bergman
This little globe of ours is not a toy of yesterday.
Mohandas
Gandhi, who arrived in London as the representative of the Indian National Congress on August 29, 1931
If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land – you lose your culture, you lose self.
Richard Gere, American actor and activist for Tibet's freedom, born on August
29, 1949
August 29
is
the 241st
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (242nd
in leap years), with 124
days remaining.
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Feast
day of the Decollation of St John the Baptist
This
feast in Eastern
Orthodox Christianity and the Roman
Catholic Church commemorates John's martyrdom by beheading. John the Baptist
is the only Christian saint whose birth date (June 24) is a feast, as well as the day of his death, August 29.
John died a victim of the vengeance of a scheming woman. In about the year 30 he was imprisoned by King Herod Antipas (b. 20 BCE), whom John had rebuked for the sin of having sexual relations with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip (Luke 3:19). John's prison cell was in the castle of Machaerus, a fortress on the southern extremity of Peraea, about 16 km (about 9 miles) east of the Dead Sea.
It was here that John was beheaded at the instigation of Herodias who prompted her daughter (unnamed in the Biblical text but called Salomé in Christian mythology) to ask Herod for John's head when Herod offered the daughter a wish in exchange for her dancing, which had pleased him. Herod did not want to have this death on his hands and was deeply sorry, but because he was proud, he could not decline the request; thus, as St Augustine says, "an oath rashly taken was criminally kept". (Josephus simply attributes John's execution to Herod's uneasy jealousy over John's influence.)
John's head was brought to Salome "on a platter" as requested, and she gave it to her mother; his body was buried by Jesus' disciples. According to St Jerome (c. 340 - 420), Herodias kept John's head for a long time after, occasionally stabbing the saint's tongue with a dagger. John was buried at Sebaste, Samaria, the mountainous northern part of the area that we now call the West Bank.
In the early 16th Century, a visitor to a monastery in France was shown what the cleric said was the skull of St John the Baptist. "Ah! The monks of another monastery showed me the skull of John the Baptist yesterday," said the visitor. "True", said the cleric, "But those monks only have the skull of St John when he was a young man. We have the skull of John the Baptist when he was much older and wiser." Or, so it is said.
The patronage of St John includes baptism, bird dealers, converts, epileptics, farriers, hail, hailstorms, Jordan, Knights Hospitaller, Knights of Malta, lambs, monastic life, motorways (because he said "Make
straight the way of the Lord"), printers, spasms
and tailors. As a baptizer, he is
associated, naturally enough, with the healing qualities of water and sacred wells and
springs, so he is also the patron saint of Jordan,
Florence, Genoa
and Turin
and the patron of spas.
Blackburn, Bonnie and Leofranc (Blackburn, Bonnie and Leofranc, Holford-Strevens, The Oxford Book of Days, Oxford University Press, 2000) tell us that "in Lazio, Italy, St John was considered a protector of witches, who flew into Rome on broomsticks to cavort throughout the night, returning at first light to the walnut tree in Benevento at which they gathered. In contemporary Rome, Italians gather near the church of San Giovanni in Laterano to feast on snails on this day" (paraphrase from School of the Seasons).
Alexandrian New Year's Day
According to the Alexandrian calendar, which survives in the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches, this is New Year's Day. Frazer (see quote at head of page) writes that this was fixed at 30 CE and the dates of the old festivals were henceforth by the new calendar, and so ceased to rotate throughout the length of the solar year. The Fellowship of Isis calendar notes: "Harvest of achievement. Week of joy and thanksgiving."
Today's feast was also hallowed for other reasons, including the 'translation' (removal of relics) of St John's finger, for St Thecla brought his finger from the Middle East to Normandy where she built a church in the honour of the saint.
John the Baptist is regarded as a prophet by
at least three religions: Christianity,
Islam, and Mandaeanism.
Adherents of the latter believe that they follow the true teachings of
John and that Jesus was a false prophet.
The Greek Orthodox Church
celebrates February
24 as the Feast of the First and
Second Finding of St John the Baptist's Head:
