May 14, 1572: Gregory XIII, who reformed the Julian calendar into the calendar used today and celebrated the killing of French Huguenots (Protestants) with a Te Deum (a Latin hymn), is named pope.

May 14, 1607: Robert Hunt holds the first Anglican service in the New World the day after the Virginia Company lands in Jamestown.

May 14, 1759: Anglican evangelical John Berridge preaches his first outdoor sermon. Outdoor preaching became a prominent feature of his ministry, as it did for George Whitefield, John Wesley, and the early Methodist movement as a whole.

May 15, 1525: Radical reformer Thomas Munzer and his followers are killed in the Battle of Frankenhausen. Though many of his beliefs were rejected by later, nonviolent Anabaptists, his emphasis on suffering discipleship, his rejection of infant baptism, and his call for judgment of the church became key teachings in the movement.

May 15, 1886: American poet Emily Dickinson, author of many poems on death, eternity, God, and the afterlife, dies. Only 7 of her 1,775 poems were published at the time.

May 15, 1984: American evangelical Francis A. Schaeffer dies in Rochester, Minnesota. Many of his books, which include The God Who is There (1968) and How Should We Then Live (1976), argue that moral relativity is responsible for social ills.

May 16, 583 (traditional date): Brendan the Navigator, founder of a Celtic monastery in Clonfert, Ireland, dies. Some Irish scholars have asserted that Brendan was among the first Europeans to reach America, nine centuries before Columbus.

May 16, 1805: Henry Martyn, a well-educated Englishman, arrives in India to aid William Carey with translation work.

May 18, 1291: The last Christian territory taken by the Crusaders, Acre, falls to the Sultan of Egypt.

May 18, 1834: Sheldon Jackson, Presbyterian missionary to the frontier West and Alaska, is born in Minaville, New York. Jackson's reputation for ministering to the spiritual, physical, and social needs of both natives and settlers earned him the nicknames "Bishop of All Beyond" and "Apostle to Alaska".

May 18, 1920: Karol Wojtyla (who would take the name John Paul II when elected pope) is born in Wadowice, Poland.

May 19, 804: Alcuin of York, an English scholar who became an adviser to Charlemagne and the most prominent figure in the Carolingian Renaissance (the rebirth of classical learning under Charlemagne), dies. He also devised a handwriting system using both small and capital letters for easier reading.

May 19, 1805: Joshua V. Himes, best known for promoting William Miller's Second Advent movement, is born. Miller predicted the Second Coming between 1843 and 1844. When this did not happen, many followers deserted; others reorganized themselves as Seventh-Day Adventists.

May 19, 1971: The musical Godspell, based on Matthew's gospel, opens at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York.