January 25, 98: Upon the sudden death of Emperor Nerva, Trajan takes the throne. In 110, he asked Pliny the Younger to investigate a new superstition, "Christianity." Pliny's report of a relatively harmless though widespread cult led to moderate persecution—and the first recognition that Christians were distinct from Jews (see issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church).

January 25, 1627: Noted physicist and chemist Robert Boyle is born in Ireland. After a lifetime of writing about science, religion, and harmony between the two, he underwrote an annual eight-lecture series defending Christianity against unbelievers (see issue 76: Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution).

January 25, 1841: Anglican clergyman John Henry Newman publishes Tract 90 (in a series begun in 1833), an argument for a catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles. It was the pinnacle of the Oxford Movement, but the last straw for the bishop of Oxford and others. Newman was forced to resign his parish, and he converted to Roman Catholicism four years later.

January 25, 1907: Social reformer and author Julia Ward Howe, composer of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," becomes the first woman elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters (see issue 33: Christianity and the Civil War).

January 25, 1959: Ninety days after his election to the papacy, Pope John XXIII announces his intention to hold an ecumenical church council. The Second Vatican Council opened October 11, 1962, and was the Catholic church's most searching self-examination ever (see issue 28: The 100 Most Important Events in Church History).

January 24, 1076: Germany’s Henry IV convenes the Synod of Worms to secure the deposition of Pope Gregory VII. The Synod charged the pope with serious crimes, called upon Rome to depose him, and issued other anti-papal statements. The pope quickly excommunicated Henry. One year later, Henry traveled to Canossa, Italy, and stood three days in the snow in an attempt to gain Gregory’s forgiveness. Gregory granted it, but the two men soon fought again; Henry set up an antipope in Gregory’s place.

January 24, 1573: English poet and preacher John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, is born. One of the most prominent preachers of his day and one of the greatest English poets, he is known for such famous lines as “No man is an island,” “For whom does the bell toll? It tolls for thee,” and “Death be not proud.

January 23, 1786: John Carroll, who would become America’s first Roman Catholic bishop, founds the Catholic academy that is now Georgetown University.

January 23, 1893: Episcopal minister Phillips Brooks, bishop of Massachusetts, staunch abolitionist, substitute evangelist for D.L. Moody, and author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” dies. He was considered the most “considerable American preacher of his generation.”

January 22, 304 (traditional date): Vincent of Saragossa, one of the most famous martyrs of the early church, is killed. Starved, racked, roasted on a gridiron, thrown into prison, and set in stocks, he refused to sacrifice. According to Augustine, his fame extended everywhere in the Roman Empire and "wherever the name of Christ was known" (see issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church).

January 22, 1899: Pope Leo XIII warns James Cardinal Gibbons, senior hierarch of the Catholic church in America, against the "phantom heresy" of Americanism—the attempt to adapt the traditional doctrines and practices of the church to a more independent modern world.

January 22, 1973: The United States Supreme court legalizes abortion in its Roe v. Wade decision.

January 21, 1525: Conrad Grebel (Ulrich Zwingli's former protege) rebaptizes George Blaurock, a former monk, in a secret, illegal meeting of six men in Zurich. This meeting is now considered the birth of the Anabaptist movement (see issue 5: Anabaptists).

January 21, 1549: In the first of four Acts of Uniformity, the English Parliament requires all Anglican public services to exclusively use of The Book of Common Prayer.

January 21, 1621: Pilgrims leave the Mayflower and gather on shore at Plymouth, Massachusetts, for their first religious service in America (see issue 41: The American Puritans).

January 20, 1541: A town meeting in Geneva ratifies John Calvin’s plan to set up a church court that would meet weekly to judge offenders and maintain discipline (see issue 12: Calvin).

January 20, 1569: Miles Coverdale, publisher of the first printed English Bible and the man who completed William Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament, dies at 81 (see issue 43: How We Got Our Bible and issue 16: William Tyndale).

January 20, 1918: Following the Bolshevik Revolution, all church property in Russia is confiscated and all religious instruction in schools abolished (see issue 18: Russian Christianity).