In 1546, as Luther lay dying, he made one last attack on the Pope: ‘Living I was your plague, Dead I will be your death, O Pope!’

In this special, illustrated lecture, Professor Lyndal Roper explores anti-papalism and anti-monasticism in Lutheran art. These images were so extreme that they cannot be considered propagandistic: they would hardly have converted adherents of the old church. They were not meant literally, and they are full of riotous invention as well as bitter attack. Why were such images produced; and what can they tell us about Lutheran visual culture? More broadly, how can historians contribute to the study of visual culture?

Lyndal Roper is a Fellow and Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, a New Statesman, Spectator, History Today, Guardian and Sunday Times Book of the Year.