922 A.D.
Robert I, great grandson of Charlemagne the Great, is coronated King of France. He would only live five years as the interim monarch between Catholic kings Charles III and Rudolf, who founded Burgundy.
1214 A.D.
Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of excommunication against England and King John who had refused to acknowledge the Pope's appointment of Bishop Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury. The Holy Father only lifted the interdiction after John made full apology and submission to Rome and declared his Anglo-Irish domains a papal fiefdom.
1312 A.D.
Pope Clement V, held prisoner by Robert of Sicily at St. Peter's, assigns three cardinals to officially coronate Henry IV of Luxembourg as the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII at the Lateran.
1748 A.D.
Pope Benedict XIV releases the fifth encyclical - Magnae Nobison marriage impediments and dispensations and written for the bishops of Poland.
1881 A.D.
Pope Leo XIII issues his seventh encyclical - Diuturnium on the origin of civil power.
1896 A.D.
Pope Leo XIII ushers his 61st encyclical on the unity of the Church Satis cognitum.
1936 A.D.
Pope Pius XI releases his encyclical to the bishops of the United States on motion pictures with Vigilanti cura, something succeeding pontiffs have also done, but none as consistently as Pope John Paul II.
1958 A.D.
Forty years ago today Pope Pius XII issued his next-to-last encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis, this one was targeted for the Bishops of China on Communism and the Church in China. From the state of things today, very little has changed behind the great wall.
1959 A.D.
Pope John XXIII issued his first encyclical on this date on truth, unity, and peace entitled Ad Petri Cathedram.