The Reformation, the Nortons and Markenfield in Retrospect with Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto - Markenfield Hall

Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto is a renowned Professor of history and author of several popular works on cultural and environmental history. He returns to Markenfield following his successful and engaging presentation of his 2022 publication, Straight:Beyond the Myth of Magellan.

Do Martyrs Matter? A Reformation Retrospect. Markenfields association with Catholic victims of the Reformation state provokes an unnerving thought: why do we venerate martyrs at all? And why, in particular, should those who died in the English Reformation matter, in a land, Church and world in which ecumenism and multiculturalism reign? The lecturer tries to explain, first, why the martyrs, whether or not formally acknowledged as such in the calendar of the Church, gave their lives; secondly, how differences among Christian traditions have come to matter or to seem to matter less over the last two centuries or so; and finally why, nonetheless, remembrance of the martyrs who died at the hands of the English reformers remains precious and, he argues, grows in significance in times that seem hostile to their memory and to their cults.