Lent marks a 40-day period on the church calendar leading up to the celebration of Easter. During Lent, Christians have traditionally engaged in practices of self-denial, like fasting, meant to orient their hearts and minds to the sufferings of Christ, who spent 40 days in the desert fasting and enduring temptations from Satan. While many evangelicals reject Lenten disciplines for their associations with Catholicism, in recent years a greater number have experimented with practices like giving up a favorite indulgence or abstaining from meat on Fridays.
July 15, 1015: Vladimir, the grand prince of Russia who made Orthodox Christianity the national religion, dies at age 59 (see issue 18: Russian Christianity).
July 15, 1099: The First Crusade captures Jerusalem, massacring thousands. "The city was filled with corpses and blood," wrote one chronicler (see issue 40: The Crusades).
July 15, 1606: Dutch Painter Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn is born to a wealthy family in Leyden. Personal tragedies seemed to deepen the spiritual dimensions of his art, and ...
