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Many animals have been associated with theology—the lamb, the lion, the fish, the pelican (believed to feed its young with its own blood)—but one of the most prominent pets with roots in church history is the Saint Bernard. Reportedly bred first around 1660 as guard dogs for the monastery and hospice founded six centuries earlier by Bernard of Menthon (Monthen/ Montjou/ Aotha/ Montjoux), they gained a reputation as rescuers, credited with more than 2,000 saves over the past two centuries. One dog saved more than 40 people between 1800 and 1812.

Recently, however, the dogs (now 18 adults and 16 pups) themselves needed rescue: "We no longer have the money to breed and care for these marvelous dogs," the monastery's Father Ilario told The Times of London last year. The animals eat more than four pounds of meat a day, and helicopters and other technology have put them out of the rescue business since 1975. So in January, Swiss philanthropists announced that they would grant the monks more than $4 million to care for the animals and to build a museum honoring them and the monastery's longtime hospitality.

Such tourism with a spiritual twist is consistent with Bernard's history: after his appointment as Archdeacon of Aosta, Italy, Bernard was largely focused on converting Alpine people. He soon became concerned about reports of French and German pilgrims trapped by avalanches as they traveled to Rome. The four monks who remain at the monastery he founded for their safety say their pleas for help were largely driven by a desire to spend more time ministering to modern-day pilgrims and less to the canines.

A suit from Americans United for Separation of Church and State challenges a $10 million federal matching grant to rehabilitate the deteriorating buildings of California's 21 Spanish missions, 19 of which still have active congregations. In unrelated news, Los Angeles County redesigned its seal to remove a cross from the mission depicted on it. But church and state have been intertwined with the missions since their founding.

Spread along 600 miles of what was then El Camino Real, the missions from Mission San Diego de Alcalá (founded by Junípero Serra in 1769) to Sonoma's Mission San Francisco Solano (1823) are set about 30 miles apart, "a stiff day's march," for the benefit of Spain's colonizers, not the native Americans. There's no doubt, though, that Serra's foremost concerns were for conversion not colonization. "It seemed to me that [the native residents] would fall shortly into the apostolic and evangelic net," he wrote. After 65 years, when the missions were ordered to secularize, 31,000 converts were living among the missions, along with fewer than 60 padres and 300 soldiers.

That painting you've seen of Augustine or Patrick may be beautiful, but it's probably not very accurate: imagination and devotion, not historical fidelity, were foremost in artists' minds. Many saints weren't depicted until centuries after their deaths. But one anonymous engraving from the 1400s took a decidedly different turn. An unknown German engraver shows Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444), the Franciscan "Apostle of Italy," as he appeared in life—and Bernardino's death mask proves it. The engraving is the first known Western artwork to take such care in portraying its subject as he appeared, Andrew Robison told the Associated Press. Robison is senior curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where the print is on display through May. Another item in the "Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings" exhibit has a similar place in history: a 1486 book from Mainz, Germany, has the first-known realistic print of an identifiable building. A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land's image of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher looks much as it did in the 15th century.

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