On 31st October 1517, a tons of monk and academic who called himself Martin Luther, nailed

or perhaps glued a list of theological points for disputation to the door of the Church

of Vittenburg Castle. It was an act that would spark a massive confrontation with the papacy

and what would subsequently come to be called the Protestant Reformation.

2017, which became known as the Luther Yard, was the 500th anniversary of that occasion,

and in that year there was a series of events and exhibitions to mark the half-millennium.

But the man behind all those celebrations, the man for whom they were all performed,

was a curious mixture of Hutzbar and Anxiety, of masculine, pugilism and melancholic obscenities.

And given that I've just used a Yiddish phrase, we should also note that he was a massive

anti-seemite. So today I'm joined by his story in which has thought deeply about Luther's

character and his legacy to discover how we should mark the lives and achievements of

heroes with flaws.

Professor Lindel Roper is Regis Professor at the University of Oxford and the first woman

to hold the position, and she is an historian of extraordinary wit and sensitivity.

She has written books about the German witchcraft trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, witch

craze, terror and fantasy in Baroque Germany, and Ederpuss and the Devil, witchcraft, religion

and sexuality in early modern Europe. And in 2016 she published a magisterial biography

of the reformer Martin Luther Renegade and Prophet. She recently followed this up with the

intriguingly titled Living I Was Your Plague, Martin Luther's World and Legacy in which

she wrestles with some aspects of Luther's thought and how he's been commemorated, aspects

which he felt from reflection she needed to interrogate further. And that's what I

talked with her about today. I should also note on a personal level that Lindel Roper

...