January 8, 1438: In an attempt to forge an alliance that would save Constantinople from the Turks, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches meet at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. A temporary union was reached, but Constantinople fell anyway in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire.

January 8, 1956: Missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming are killed by Ecuadorean Indians they sought to evangelize. The story of the missionaries and their deaths along the Curaray River was publicized by Elliot's widow, Elizabeth, in Through Gates of Splendor, published the following year.

January 9, 1569: Philip of Moscow, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, is murdered by Czar Ivan IV, also called Ivan the Terrible.

January 10, 236: Fabian is elected pope. He served until 250, when he became the first martyr under Decius, the emperor who initiated Empire wide persecution of Christians. After Fabian's death, Decius is reported to have said, "I would far rather receive news of a rival to the throne than of another bishop of Rome".

January 10, 1645: The controversial archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, William Laud, is beheaded. An enemy and persecutor of the Puritans and a staunch defender of the "divine right of kings", he found himself on the wrong side of history when the Puritan revolution began in the 1640s.

January 11, 1759: The first American life insurance company is incorporated in Philadelphia-the "Corporation of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers."

January 13, 1501: Christianity's first vernacular hymnal is printed in Prague, containing 89 hymns in Czech.

January 13, 1616: Flemish mystic Antoinette Bourignon is born. A mystical writer whose works were included by John Wesley in his Christian Library, she soon found herself estranged from mainstream Christianity, especially when she declared herself the "woman clothed with the sun" of Revelation 12. Still, her ideas were so influential that, for 178 years, ministers of the Church of Scotland had to make an explicit denial of Bouringnonism before they could be ordained.

January 13, 1635: Philip Jacob Spener, founder of German pietism, is born in Rappolstein. His emphasis on new birth and holy living revitalized the German Lutheran Church and many later movements, including American evangelicalism.

January 13, 1691: George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), dies. Fox left the Anglican church to rely on the "Inner Light of the Living Christ."