2024/2025: Professor Alexandra Walsham - Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History Alexandra Walsham, 1930 Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge Alexandra Walsham is the 1930 Professor of Modern History and a Fellow of Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge. Her research centres on the religious and cultural history of early modern Britain and she has published extensively in this field. Her books include The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (2011), joint winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and Generations: Age, Ancestry and Memory in the English Reformations (2023), which arose from the Ford Lectures delivered at the University of Oxford in 2018. She has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2009 and was appointed a CBE for services to History in 2017. She served as editor of the journal Past and Present for a decade and is currently President of the Historical Association.Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History Mobility is both a central feature of human experience and a rich metaphor for the dynamic role that religion plays in the making of history. In our globalised world, people, objects, organisms and ideas travel through space and time at speed. These movements help to create opportunities, foster relationships, and forge identities, but they are also a perennial source of unease, anxiety, and danger. The turbulence that surrounds us in everyday life is mirrored by the turmoil that so many feel inside. The Gifford Lectures 2025 are a series of variations on these resonant themes in the context of the profound theological, social, and cultural upheavals associated with the Reformations. Ranging across the period between 1500 and 1800, they explore the piety, ethics, and politics of physical movement in tandem with the internal transformations that took place within hearts and souls, bodies and minds. By probing the connections between motion and emotion in early modern Christianity, they seek to illuminate larger questions about the origin, agency, and impact of religious change. Professor Alexandra Walsham Book your free tickets via Eventbrite here Lecture abstractsMonday 12 May: Lecture 1 - UpheavalsThis lecture establishes a conceptual framework for the rest of the series by examining early modern assumptions about motion and emotion. It demonstrates their close interconnection in the spheres of religion, medicine, and natural philosophy. It begins by analysing contemporary thinking about earthquakes, which were interpreted as both eschatological signs and events whose secondary causes could be discerned by empirical means. It then turns to reconstruct prevailing assumptions about the operation of the affections and passions in the body and soul. It culminates by considering the shifting ways in which a providential God was understood to be at work in the created world, casting light upon the genesis of the field of natural theology itself. Tuesday 13 May: Lecture 2 - JourneysThe medieval tradition of religious mobility was transformed and challenged by the Reformations. While Protestantism firmly repudiated that idea that arduous journeys could assist believers in the task of securing a place in paradise, the early modern period saw the revival and transformation of pilgrimage as a spiritual practice. This lecture considers the physical and virtual pathways to heaven that people of all confessions pursued, from the quotidian act of walking in the landscape and long-distance travel to other lands to mystical inner peregrinations that took place in the realm of the mind. The final part investigates the moral and social fears provoked by the restless itinerancy of poor, underprivileged, and marginal people who were perpetually on the move. Thursday 15 May: Lecture 3 - MigrationsReligiously motivated migration was a major consequence of the conflicts and ruptures wrought by the Reformations. This lecture analyses the movements of devout people who went into exile and sought refuge from persecution and discrimination by crossing borders and seas. It investigates the conscientious dilemmas linked with mobility, the emotional experience of physical dislocation from one’s homeland, and the mixture of compassion and prejudice with which displaced people were regarded in this period. The voluntary migrations of religious minorities and of those whose evangelical convictions incited them to undertake missionary enterprises are juxtaposed with the coerced movements associated with the processes of deportation, transportation, and enslavement.Monday 19 May: Lecture 4 - ConversionsThe Reformation era was an age of religious conversion. The powerful ideas and feelings that it unleashed inspired many to move from nominal and lukewarm commitment to intense zeal. Such translations of the soul were formative experiences for self-conscious believers. The schism within Christendom also compelled people to make difficult personal decisions in the interests of their spiritual health: could they find salvation in the ecclesiastical institution to which they belonged or should they abandon it as a limb of Satan? Apostates and side-changers were widely regarded with distrust and suspicion. In search of certainty, some underwent multiple metamorphoses and serial conversions between Christian denominations, but also to other faiths entirely. These interior alterations often coincided with translations in space. Individuals with mobile identities often led mobile lives.Tuesday 20 May: Lecture 5 - CommotionsThe fifth lecture explores the turbulence stirred up by the imposition and spread of religious change. One of the vernacular terms contemporaries used to describe such disturbances was ‘hurly burlies’. Others worried that the world was being turned upside down. From outbreaks of iconoclastic violence and sectarian riots to large scale rebellions, such ‘commotions’ were key elements of the confessional conflicts and wars that engulfed post-Reformation Europe. The antagonisms and passions that underpinned them are another dimension of the flux and instability that characterised societies divided by faith. Simultaneously, this lecture investigates evolving perceptions of the emotional and corporeal experiences of those transported by the Holy Spirit, which were increasingly diagnosed as forms of religious ‘enthusiasm’.Thursday 22 May: Lecture 6 - MovementsThe concluding instalment of this series draws together the threads woven through the previous ones by examining the religious movements that drove the successive phases of Reformation itself. It provides a snapshot of three moments in early modern Christian history in which individuals driven by strong convictions coalesced into groups intent upon achieving radical social and spiritual goals. It progresses from the Anabaptist kingdom of Munster of 1534-5 to the explosion of sects in Civil War Britain, before turning to Methodism as the epitome of eighteenth-century evangelical heart religion. By teasing out further links between motion and emotion, it hopes to open a window into when religious movements emerge and why people unite to transform the present and reshape the future. For any questions, please contact GiffordLectures@ed.ac.uk. May 12 2025 - May 22 2025 2024/2025: Professor Alexandra Walsham - Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History The University of Edinburgh are delighted to host Professor Alexandra Walsham as this year's Gifford Lectures speaker. Informatics Forum 10 Crichton Street Edinburgh EH8 9AB Google Maps Book your free tickets here
2024/2025: Professor Alexandra Walsham - Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History Alexandra Walsham, 1930 Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge Alexandra Walsham is the 1930 Professor of Modern History and a Fellow of Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge. Her research centres on the religious and cultural history of early modern Britain and she has published extensively in this field. Her books include The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (2011), joint winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and Generations: Age, Ancestry and Memory in the English Reformations (2023), which arose from the Ford Lectures delivered at the University of Oxford in 2018. She has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2009 and was appointed a CBE for services to History in 2017. She served as editor of the journal Past and Present for a decade and is currently President of the Historical Association.Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History Mobility is both a central feature of human experience and a rich metaphor for the dynamic role that religion plays in the making of history. In our globalised world, people, objects, organisms and ideas travel through space and time at speed. These movements help to create opportunities, foster relationships, and forge identities, but they are also a perennial source of unease, anxiety, and danger. The turbulence that surrounds us in everyday life is mirrored by the turmoil that so many feel inside. The Gifford Lectures 2025 are a series of variations on these resonant themes in the context of the profound theological, social, and cultural upheavals associated with the Reformations. Ranging across the period between 1500 and 1800, they explore the piety, ethics, and politics of physical movement in tandem with the internal transformations that took place within hearts and souls, bodies and minds. By probing the connections between motion and emotion in early modern Christianity, they seek to illuminate larger questions about the origin, agency, and impact of religious change. Professor Alexandra Walsham Book your free tickets via Eventbrite here Lecture abstractsMonday 12 May: Lecture 1 - UpheavalsThis lecture establishes a conceptual framework for the rest of the series by examining early modern assumptions about motion and emotion. It demonstrates their close interconnection in the spheres of religion, medicine, and natural philosophy. It begins by analysing contemporary thinking about earthquakes, which were interpreted as both eschatological signs and events whose secondary causes could be discerned by empirical means. It then turns to reconstruct prevailing assumptions about the operation of the affections and passions in the body and soul. It culminates by considering the shifting ways in which a providential God was understood to be at work in the created world, casting light upon the genesis of the field of natural theology itself. Tuesday 13 May: Lecture 2 - JourneysThe medieval tradition of religious mobility was transformed and challenged by the Reformations. While Protestantism firmly repudiated that idea that arduous journeys could assist believers in the task of securing a place in paradise, the early modern period saw the revival and transformation of pilgrimage as a spiritual practice. This lecture considers the physical and virtual pathways to heaven that people of all confessions pursued, from the quotidian act of walking in the landscape and long-distance travel to other lands to mystical inner peregrinations that took place in the realm of the mind. The final part investigates the moral and social fears provoked by the restless itinerancy of poor, underprivileged, and marginal people who were perpetually on the move. Thursday 15 May: Lecture 3 - MigrationsReligiously motivated migration was a major consequence of the conflicts and ruptures wrought by the Reformations. This lecture analyses the movements of devout people who went into exile and sought refuge from persecution and discrimination by crossing borders and seas. It investigates the conscientious dilemmas linked with mobility, the emotional experience of physical dislocation from one’s homeland, and the mixture of compassion and prejudice with which displaced people were regarded in this period. The voluntary migrations of religious minorities and of those whose evangelical convictions incited them to undertake missionary enterprises are juxtaposed with the coerced movements associated with the processes of deportation, transportation, and enslavement.Monday 19 May: Lecture 4 - ConversionsThe Reformation era was an age of religious conversion. The powerful ideas and feelings that it unleashed inspired many to move from nominal and lukewarm commitment to intense zeal. Such translations of the soul were formative experiences for self-conscious believers. The schism within Christendom also compelled people to make difficult personal decisions in the interests of their spiritual health: could they find salvation in the ecclesiastical institution to which they belonged or should they abandon it as a limb of Satan? Apostates and side-changers were widely regarded with distrust and suspicion. In search of certainty, some underwent multiple metamorphoses and serial conversions between Christian denominations, but also to other faiths entirely. These interior alterations often coincided with translations in space. Individuals with mobile identities often led mobile lives.Tuesday 20 May: Lecture 5 - CommotionsThe fifth lecture explores the turbulence stirred up by the imposition and spread of religious change. One of the vernacular terms contemporaries used to describe such disturbances was ‘hurly burlies’. Others worried that the world was being turned upside down. From outbreaks of iconoclastic violence and sectarian riots to large scale rebellions, such ‘commotions’ were key elements of the confessional conflicts and wars that engulfed post-Reformation Europe. The antagonisms and passions that underpinned them are another dimension of the flux and instability that characterised societies divided by faith. Simultaneously, this lecture investigates evolving perceptions of the emotional and corporeal experiences of those transported by the Holy Spirit, which were increasingly diagnosed as forms of religious ‘enthusiasm’.Thursday 22 May: Lecture 6 - MovementsThe concluding instalment of this series draws together the threads woven through the previous ones by examining the religious movements that drove the successive phases of Reformation itself. It provides a snapshot of three moments in early modern Christian history in which individuals driven by strong convictions coalesced into groups intent upon achieving radical social and spiritual goals. It progresses from the Anabaptist kingdom of Munster of 1534-5 to the explosion of sects in Civil War Britain, before turning to Methodism as the epitome of eighteenth-century evangelical heart religion. By teasing out further links between motion and emotion, it hopes to open a window into when religious movements emerge and why people unite to transform the present and reshape the future. For any questions, please contact GiffordLectures@ed.ac.uk. May 12 2025 - May 22 2025 2024/2025: Professor Alexandra Walsham - Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History The University of Edinburgh are delighted to host Professor Alexandra Walsham as this year's Gifford Lectures speaker. Informatics Forum 10 Crichton Street Edinburgh EH8 9AB Google Maps Book your free tickets here
May 12 2025 - May 22 2025 2024/2025: Professor Alexandra Walsham - Religious Movements: Motion and Emotion in Early Modern Christian History The University of Edinburgh are delighted to host Professor Alexandra Walsham as this year's Gifford Lectures speaker.
