Reformation Centenary Broadsheet

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through things that time has left behind. This week Neil is looking at the co-existence of faiths - peaceful or otherwise - across the globe around 400 years ago. So far he has looked at objects from India and Central America, Iran and Indonesia that embody the political consequences of belief. Today he is back in Europe, with a document that marks an anniversary and that is designed to raise morale. It's a woodblock print, a broadsheet, commissioned in Saxony in 1617 to mark a hundred years of the Protestant Reformation and anti-Catholic sentiment. Neil describes the broadsheet and the uncertain Protestant world that produced it. Was this the first time that an anniversary was commemorated in this way, with a kind of souvenir? The broadcaster and journalist Ian Hislop considers the broadsheet as an early equivalent to the tabloid press while the religious historian Karen Armstrong describes the reforming motivation that the broadsheet celebrates.

Producer: Anthony Denselow