How do you write a history of a profound, traumatic event? How do you make sense of an event that is absolutely overwhelming in its scale, scope and the sheer numbers of those who died, perhaps somewhere between 70 and 100 k men? And how do you write that history when one side is literate, and the other’s leaders are all executed, or are illiterate?
This lecture, on the 500th Anniversary of the Battle of Frankenhausen when the peasants were defeated, explores how people at the time wrote the history of 1525. The answers they found raise for us the question: how do we write history today?
As Professor Lyndal Roper prepares to step down from the Regius Chair of History at Oxford University, this farewell lecture offers a rare opportunity to hear her reflect on the power of narrative in shapring our understanding of the past - focusing on the German Peasants' War of 1525 on the 500th anniversary of one of its major battles. Please join us in celebrating Professor Roper's extraordinary contribution to historical scholarship and to the university.
