On October 30, the Christian church commemorates St. Serapion, a bishop of Antioch who died in 211 AD. An opponent of heresy of Montanism and docetism, he was to forbade the readying of the apocryphal Gospel of Peter in the church at Rhossos. Several other saints were to take the same name. Serapion the Scholastic, was a friend of St. Antony and a hermit in the Egyptian desert. He was called to become a bishop and defend the faith against the Arian and Manichean heresies. As bishop of Thumis in Lower Egypt and head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, Serapion supported St. Athanasius and took part in the Council of Sardis in 347 AD. He wrote a treatise against the Manicheans, on the Psalms, and a sacramentary called the Euchologium. Exiled by the emperor Constantius II for his opposition to heresy and his support of St. Athanasius, he was to die in exile. Serapion the Scholastic is commemorated on March 21.
A third Serapion was an Englishman who was to receive the crown of martyrdom in 1240. After serving King Alfonso IX of Castille against the Mohammadans. He joined the Mercedarian order, which was dedicated to liberating Christians from slavery to Moslems. Serapion was successful in freeing Christian prisoners in Spain and North Africa. At Algiers he was held hostage for the balance of the ransom he was to pay for the Christians released. When it was discovered that he had successfully converted several Moors, he was crucified. Serapion the Englishman is commemorated on November 14.
On this date in 1735 was born John Adams, the second President of the United States and diminuitive Massachusetts lawyer and legislator. He was the father of the sixth president, John Quincy Adams. Ezra Pound, English poet and socialist, and apologist for Italian fascism, was born on this date in 1885.
Napoleon Bonaparte wrote a letter to his cousin, who was serving as the imperial minister of Algeria and the colonies, on this date in 1858 that hinted at the withdrawal of his sanction from an attempt to obtain slaves from Africa as laborers. Wrote Napoleon, “If their enrolment be on the slave trade in disguise, I will have it on no terms.” He recommended instead that impoverished Hindus be obtained as free laborers.
On this date in 1350, the assembled armies of Portugal and Castille defeated invading Moslem armies at Rio Salado. The Christian armies were met by Sultan Abu al-Hasan 'Ali of the Marinid dynasty of Morocco and the Nasrid ruler Yusuf I of the Kingdom of Granada. While the Moslems were initially successful in their invasion when they destroyed a Christian fleet of galleys at Gibraltar, they were to suffer a disastrous defeat at Rio Salado. Having first invaded Spain in 711 AD, the Moslems were never again to successfully invade the Iberian Peninsula
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