Martin Rinkart (1586 to 1649)
Reformed
Forty Funerals a Day.
Birth of Martin Rinkart, at Eilenburg, Saxony. This German clergyman, Latin scholar and chorister, wrote the hymn "Now Thank We All Our God." He served his church in Eilenburg during the horrors of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and since more than eight thousand people died in his city (he was the only minister there) Rinkart officiated at as many as forty funerals a day, including one for his own wife. However, this gifted poet, dramatist and musician, demonstrated strong faith in these difficult times.
Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828 to 1892)
Church of England
His Text Undergirds Modern Translations.
Birth, in Dublin, Ireland, of Fenton John Anthony Hort, English New Testament textual critic and Biblical scholar. Educated at Rugby, then at Trinity College, Cambridge, he became Huslean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. He taught there most of his life, and became closely associated with two other famous Cambridge scholars, J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Weston. There is little doubt that Hort was the greatest genius of the Cambridge school. In 1881 he and Westcott edited the famous critical edition of the Greek New Testament, which has become the textual foundation for nearly all modem translation of the Bible.