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May 6, 1527: An army of barbarians who had been sent—but were no longer controlled—by Emperor Charles V sacks Rome. Many Protestants interpreted the attack as a divine rebuke, and some Catholics agreed: "We who should have been the salt of the earth decayed until we were good for nothing," wrote Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's adversary. "Everyone is convinced that all this has happened as a judgment of God on the great tyranny and disorders of the papal court.
May 6, 1638: Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, who inspired a reform movement in the Roman Catholic Church, dies. Jansen opposed the teachings of the Jesuits and of Thomas Aquinas, urging the church to rediscover Augustine's doctrine of irresistible grace. For his views on grace and predestination, the church prohibited Jansen's teachings.
May 7, 1274: The Second Council of Lyons convenes with the goal of reunifying the Roman and Greek churches. Orthodox delegates agreed to recognize the papal claims and recite the Creed with the filioque clause, but the union was fiercely rejected by the majority of Orthodox clergy and laity fiercely rejected the union (see issue 54: Eastern Orthodoxy)
May 7, 1605: Russian prelate Nikon, patriarch of Moscow and the head of the Russian church, is born in Valdemanovo. When he tried to reform the church in 1642, a schism erupted, and the church deposed and banished him (see issue 18: Christianity in Russia).
May 7, 1833: German pianist and composer Johannes Brahms is born in Hamburg. Intensely religious, he wrote many works for the church though one never officially employed him. He even compiled the biblical texts for his "German Requiem" himself.
May 7, 1839: Hymnwriter and pastor Elisha A. Hoffman is born in Pennsylvania. His songs include "I Must Tell Jesus," "Down at the Cross," "Are You Washed in the Blood?" and "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.
May 8, 1373: English mystic Julian of Norwich receives 15 revelations (she received another the following day) in which she saw, among other things, the Trinity and the sufferings of Christ. She recorded her visions and her meditations on them 20 years later in her book The Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (see issue 30: Woman in the Medieval Church).
May 8, 1559: The Act of Uniformity receives Queen Elizabeth I's royal assent, reinstating the forms of worship Henry VIII had ordered and mandating the use of the Book of Common Prayer (1552).
May 8, 1603: The University of Leiden appoints Jacob Arminius, Dutch founder of an anti-Calvinist Reformed theology, professor of theology.
May 8, 1828: Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross and the Young Men's Christian Association, is born in Geneva. He won the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
May 8, 1845: The Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest denominations in America, organizes inAugusta, Georgia.
May 8, 1895: Roman Catholic archbishop and broadcaster Fulton J. Sheen is born in El Paso, Illinois. With his ABC shows "Life is Worth Living" and the "Bishop Sheen Program," he became the most prominent American Catholic of broadcasting's golden era.
May 8, 1915: Henry McNeal Turner, the first black army chaplain in the United States, dies in Windsor, Ontario, embittered toward America for its racism. Many consider him to be the precursor of black theology for his statement, "God is a Negro.
May 9, 1760: Count Nicholaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian Brethren and a pioneer of ecumenism and mission work, dies in Herrnhut, Germany. By his death the Moravians (which themselves only numbered in the hundreds) had sent out 226 missionaries around the world (see issue 1: Nicolaus Zinzendorf and the Moravians).
May 9, 1983: Pope John Paul II reverses the Catholic Church's 1633 condemnation of Galileo Galilei's Copernican heliocentric theory of the universe.
May 10, 1310: In Paris, 54 Knights Templar are burned alive. The catholic church created the Templars to protect Holy Land pilgrims from bandits, but the knights' quick rise in power and wealth made them unpopular. Philip the Fair of France against them trumped up charges of blasphemy and homosexuality to convince Pope Clement to disband the order and persecute its members (see issue 40: The Crusades).
May 10, 1886: Karl Barth, the most important theologian of the twentieth century and opponent of theological liberalism and political fascism (especially under Hitler), is born in Basel, Switzerland. When asked in 1962 (on his one visit to America) how he would summarize the essence of the millions of words he had published, he replied, "Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so" (see issue 65: The Ten Most Influential Christians of the Twentieth Century).
May 11, 330: Roman emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor, inaugurates Constantinople as his capital on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium (see issue 57: Converting the Empire).
May 11, 603: Comgall, founder and first abbot of Bangor, dies. Considered the founder of Irish monasticism, by his death he oversaw 3,000 monks—including the famous missionary Columbanus (see issue 60: How the Irish Were Saved).
May 11, 1610: Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, the first Catholic missionary to China, dies. Entering the country as a repairer of clocks, Ricci was criticized for becoming a Confucian scholar and allowing ancestor "worship." Though the number of his converts was relatively small, it included many influential Chinese scholars and families, who played key roles in the future of Christianity in China (see issue 52: Hudson Taylor).
May 11, 1682: The General Court of Massachusetts repeals two 2-year-old laws: (1) a ban on the celebration of Christmas, and (2) capital punishment for banished Quakers who returned to the colony.
May 11, 1825: The American Tract Society organizes in New York City. A leader in developing printing technology, the nondenominational organization was publishing 30 million tracts a year by its sesquicentennial.
May 12, 1792: Father of Modern Missions William Carey publishes his highly influential (though deplorably titled) book on the importance of evangelism, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the practicability of Further Undertakings, are Considered (see issue 36: William Carey).
May 12, 1861: Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," published in the Atlantic Monthly three months earlier, is first performed at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, during a flag-raising ceremony for new Union recruits (see issue 33: Christianity and the Civil War).
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