April 8, 1378: Bartolomeo Prignano is elected Pope Urban VI. Mired in political controversy even before his election (threats from masses of violent demonstrators helped drive his election), his violent demeanor did little to contradict rumors that he was insane. His electors conspired to leave Rome and name a new pope (Clement VII), starting the Great Western Schism.

April 8, 1857: A small group of Dutch immigrants, meeting in Zeeland, Michigan, organize the Christian Reformed Church.

April 8, 1901: After nearly 30 years of successful church planting in New Guinea, Presbyterian missionary James Chalmers (accompanied by missionary Oliver Tomkins, who had just arrived in the field) sets out to explore a new part of the islands. No one ever saw the two again. A rescue party learned the men had been clubbed to death and eaten by cannibals. When London preacher Joseph Parker heard the news, he exclaimed, "I do not want to believe it! Such a mystery of Providence makes it hard for our strained faith to recover. Yet Jesus was murdered. Paul was murdered ... I cannot but feel that our honored and nobleminded friend has joined a great assembly."

April 9, 1761: English devotional writer William Law dies. His writings, such as A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, greatly influenced George Whitefield and John Wesley though they later distanced themselves when Law wrote of the indwelling of Christ in the soul.

April 9, 1816: Richard Allen and others organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. The next day he was named the denomination's first bishop, thereby becoming the first black bishop in the United States. A few years earlier, Allen and his colleagues had left the Methodist Episcopal Church when it removed blacks from "white" seats during prayer.

April 9, 1906: In Los Angeles, Holiness minister William Seymour and several associates experience what they called the "baptism of the Spirit," marked by speaking in tongues. This launched the three-year "Azusa Street Revival," considered the first major public event of Pentecostalism.

April 12, 1204: The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, an allied city. The attack virtually destroyed the Byzantine Empire and ruined any hope of reunifying eastern and western Christians.

April 12, 1850: Adoniram Judson, pioneer Baptist missionary to India and Burma, and Bible translator, dies during a sea voyage. He and his wife, Ann, were the foremost American missionary heroes of their day.

April 13, 1534: Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, refuses to take the oath to the English succession. One year later, Henry VIII indicted him for treason and had him beheaded.

April 13, 1742: Handel's famous oratorio Messiah premieres in Dublin's Fishamble Street Musick Hall and is met with critical praise.

April 13, 1829: In the Emancipation Act, the English Parliament grants freedom of religion to Roman Catholics. Within three weeks, the first Catholic was elected to Parliament.

April 13, 1986: Pope John Paul II visits a Jewish synagogue in Rome, marking the first such visit by a pope in recorded history.

April 14, 1775: America's first society to abolish slavery organizes in Philadelphia.