June 11, 1850: David C. Cook, a pioneer publisher of Sunday School materials, is born in East Worcester, New York. By his death in 1927, his company was the largest publisher of nondenominational Sunday school literature in the world.

June 13, 1231: Anthony of Padua dies at age 36. His mentor, Francis of Assisi, wrote early in his ministry, "It pleases me that you teach sacred theology to the brothers, as long as-in the words of the Rule-you 'do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion' with study of this kind." With this blessing, Anthony went on to a life of teaching and preaching, becoming the most popular and effective preacher of his day.

June 13, 1525: German reformer Martin Luther marries Katherine von Bora, 16 years his younger, having sneaked her and several other nuns out of their Cistercian convent in empty herring barrels two years earlier. Many viewed the marriage, which lasted 21 happy years, as a scandal.

June 13, 1893: Dorothy Sayers, English mystery writer and apologist, is born in Oxford, England. "Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something," she once said.

June 14, 847: Methodius, an Eastern church leader who fought vigorously for icons to be preserved and venerated, dies of dropsy. He had earlier survived seven years of imprisonment with a decaying corpse, as ordered by officials under iconoclastic Emperor Theophilus. Upon Theophilus's death his wife, Theodora, took Methodius's side, and he was named Patriarch of Constantinople.

June 14, 1936: English writer G.K. Chesterton dies at age 62. Authors from T.S. Eliot (who penned his obituary) to H.G. Wells, a longtime friend and debating opponent, expressed their grief. After the funeral, Pope Pius XI declared the rotund writer (a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism) Defender of the Faith.

June 14, 1966: The Vatican announces that its "Index of Prohibited Books" (created in 1557 by the Congregation of the Inquisition under Pope Paul IV) no longer carried the force of ecclesiastical law. But the announcement made clear that the Index retains moral force.

June 15, 1215: King John signs the Magna Carta, which begins, "The Church of England shall be free."

June 15, 1520: In the papal encyclical "Exsurge Domine," Leo X condemns Martin Luther on 41 of counts of heresy, branding him an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. After the encyclical, Luther's works were burned in Rome.

June 16, 1846: Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti is named Pope Pius IX. Roman Catholics remember him for his 31-year pontificate-the longest in history-for his declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and for the First Vatican Council's declaration of the infallibility of the pope.

June 16, 1855: William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army, marry, having fallen in love the first night they met. William had escorted Catherine home, and she later wrote, "Before we reached my home, we both felt as though we had been made for each other".