Simon Ditchfield is a reader in the Department of History at the University of York. His research interests relate to perceptions and uses of the past in previous societies, but particularly within the context of urban and religious culture in the Italian peninsula from c. 1300-1800. He is editor of the Journal of Early Modern History and advisory editor of the Catholic Historical Review.
Ditchfield is currently writing a major survey volume about the making of Roman Catholicism as a world religion (1500-1700) for the Oxford History of the Christian Church series to be published by Oxford University Press. His other interests include: politics and procedures of canonization; hagiography; history writing; history of scholarship; conditions of enquiry in Early Modern Europe (particularly relating to humanism, magic and science); and the history of travel.
This lecture, which is free and open to the public, is the opening event of the 2014 Rome Seminar.
