Lecture Access

This lecture will be available to view until 2 November 2026

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OVERVIEW

Watch on Demand | Online Lectures


The sixteenth-century papacy seemed unassailable. Rome was the cultural heart of Europe, its popes the patrons of Raphael and Michelangelo, its authority embedded in the sacramental life of millions from Scandinavia to Naples. 

Yet the very magnificence that defined this institution contained the seeds of its crisis. The sale of offices, the commercialisation of indulgences, and the spectacle of popes behaving as Renaissance princes provoked a reckoning that no papal bull could contain.

Martin Luther's challenge, beginning in 1517, unleashed forces that shattered the unity of Western Christendom — sweeping through Germany, Scandinavia, and England, and culminating in the shocking Sack of Rome in 1527. The Church that emerged from the Council of Trent was smaller, stricter, and far more doctrinally defined — but also, in its own way, more formidable.

In the final lecture of the series, Dr Eireann Marshall examines how an institution at the height of its glory was brought to its knees, and how it fought back.


LECTURER

Biography

Eireann is an Honorary Research Associate and Associate Lecturer with The Open University. Raised in the Veneto and educated at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter, she brings a rich international perspective to classical civilisation. With extensive experience as a lecturer and tour leader across Italy, Tunisia, Sicily and beyond including Venice, Pompeii and Ravenna – Eireann is bilingual in English and Italian, and combines scholarly rigour with engaging storytelling. Her lectures for Academy Travel invite listeners to explore the ancient world not just as history but as a living dialogue between past and present – bringing monuments, art and ideas vividly to life.

Dr Eireann Marshall

Classicist & Historian