There is a curious collection of the impious residing eternally in and around Westminster: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, John Dryden – and the admittedly agnostic Charles Darwin!

Like most public figures during the post-Revolutionary Royalist reaction, Champollion was compelled to keep his religious opinions discreet.

30,000 pilgrims arrived daily, and one of them says, "day and night two clerics stood at the altar of St. Peter with rakes and drew off the infinite sums of money."

Sir George A. Macferren calls Beethoven a "freethinker" in his article in the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography; the Catholic Encyclopedia does not dare to claim him.

What is seldom admitted is that the Church was hurting from the loss of income to the Protestant churches, and stipulated a meeting in an Italian town — so that the Inquisition could finish off the heretics.

As his own end drew near, Berlioz maintained his disbelief in God and immortality. In one of his last letters, written shortly before his death, Berlioz wrote his creed: "I believe nothing."

What Pius IX condemned generally as "Liberalism" is today seen as general principles of modern civilization.

If the supposedly perfect Supreme Being was right in 1965, was he wrong in 1054 — when both excommunication and faith were stronger?

In his Christian conquest, Cortes committed perhaps the greatest crime to history: he nearly obliterated the Aztec culture in his zeal. So when Cortes died, on this date in 1547, he died a good Catholic, if not a good man.

"On no account should the church allow infidels to have power over the faithful or to be set above them in any way. ... The church is above the state ... kings must be subject to priests." (Thomas Aquinas)