28 September 2017
2017 is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of the ninety-five theses to the door of the University church in Wittenberg, an event which sparked the series of events which have come to be known as the European Reformation.
To mark this event, Woldingham students and staff enjoyed a lecture given by Dr Edmund Wareham, Research Associate of Somerville College Oxford, based on his work on 'The Nuns' Network' project. This is investigating 1800 surviving letters from the Benedictine Convent of Lüne in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and is uncovering a lost culture of late medieval and early modern female writing.
His most interesting lecture compared and contrasted the writings of nuns in opposition to the Reformation, with those of Argula von Grumbach, a Bavarian noblewoman who became the first Protestant woman writer.