Lecture to analyse the impact of the Long Reformation

Posted on Tuesday 9 March 2010

Professor Alexandra Walsham will use the Gerald Aylmer Lecture to offer a new perspective on the consequences of the complex religious changes that took place in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

She will argue that historians have focused heavily on the impact on ecclesiastical structures and artefacts but devoted surprisingly little attention to how these events left their imprint on the wider landscape beyond the churchyard wall and outside the precincts of priories, cathedrals and convents.

The lecture will explore how the Reformation affected perceptions of, and practices associated with, trees, woods, caves and other features of the landscape of the British Isles. It will also examine Protestantism's drive to eradicate sources of idolatry in the physical environment and the decisive part that the landscape played in shaping religious identity and social memory between 1500 and 1750.

The Gerald Aylmer Lecture is an annual event hosted by the Department of History and is named in memory of the University’s founding Professor of History.

Professor Walsham is Professor of History at Exeter University and is Professor elect of Modern History at Cambridge University.

Her lecture, on Wednesday 10 March, will begin at 5.30pm in room P/L002 in the Department of Physics. Admission is free and open to all.