January 28, 1547: England's Henry VIII, who split the church of England from Rome and presided over the founding of the Anglican church, dies.

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January 28, 1769: Thomas Middleton, first Anglican bishop of Calcutta, is born in England. While he oversaw a vast diocese covering all the territories of the East India Company, the church made some great advances, including the establishment of Bishop's College in Calcutta (a training college for missionaries in Asia).

January 29, 1499: Katherine von Bora, a German nun who married Martin Luther in 1525, is born. At their wedding, she was 26 and he was 41.

January 29, 1535: The French royal family, church officials, and many other dignitaries join in an immense torch-lit procession from the Louvre to Notre Dame-an attempt to purge Paris from the defilement caused by overzealous Protestants and their placards (a man named Feret had nailed one of the most inflammatory placards to the king's bedroom door months before). The day ended with six Protestants being hung from ropes and roasted.

January 30, 1536: Catholic priest Menno Simons leaves the Roman Catholic church over his doubts about transubstantiation and converts to the Anabaptist movement, which he would soon lead.

January 30, 1877: Responding to Henry Stanley's plea for "some pious, practical missionary" to follow up David Livingstone's missionary foray into Uganda, three members of Alexander Mackay's Church Missionary Society team arrive at King Mutesa's court. Though missions saw few immediate results, the Ugandan church quickly strengthened and grew after the missionaries' deaths.

February 2, 767: Alcuin, the academic who would later play a large role in establishing schools under Charlemagne, becomes headmaster of York Cathedral School, where he once studied. Alcuin's curriculum was built on the seven liberal arts: the elementary Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the more advanced Quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy).

February 2, 1594: Giovanni F. da Palestrina, the most gifted composer of Renaissance church music, dies.

February 3, 865 (traditional date): Anskar, the first archbishop of Hamburg and called the "Apostle of the North," dies. Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, he converted many, including the King of Jutland.

February 3, 1468: Johann Gutenberg, who developed a printing press with movable type that helped the Protestant Reformation (by allowing the easy dissemination of reformers' writings), dies at age 67.

February 3, 1809: German composer Felix Mendelssohn, a very devout Lutheran, is born in Hamburg. His "Elijah" oratorio is considered second only to Handel's "Messiah," and he is responsible for rediscovering Bach, whose music had been forgotten for 80 years.

February 3, 1864: The Christian Union, composed of Protestant congregations opposed to "political preaching" during the Civil War, is formed in Columbus, Ohio.