History scholars from New York to South Carolina will converge on Sweet Briar College for the Mid-Atlantic Renaissance/Reformation Seminar (MARRS) March 3 and 4 at the Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center. The annual conference — aimed at academic scholars and students from universities and colleges — is a chance for up-and-coming and veteran scholars to showcase their knowledge on the historical era.

MARRS was started in the mid-1980s by a group of scholars who studied the Renaissance and Reformation, the period from approximately 1300 to 1700 that witnessed a rebirth of Italian art, the rise of the Protestant religions, and an expansion of European powers into Africa, Asia and the New World.

Described as “unstuffy and non-hierarchal,” by conference organizer and Sweet Briar history professor Lynn Marie Laufenberg, the event is “open to scholars in any field — history, art history, religion, literature, theater, music, philosophy, history of science — whose research involves the [Renaissance/Reformation] in some capacity.”

The seminar begins at 4:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, with a reception in the Boxwood Room of the conference center. At 6 p.m., Philip Soergel of the University of Maryland history department will lecture in the Wailes Room. His presentation — focusing on the significance of religious omens — is titled “The Meanings of Portents in Late-Reformation Germany.” Friday evening’s events conclude with dinner at 7:30 p.m. at the Elston Conference Center.

Christopher Witcombe.
The program resumes at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, March 4, with a continental breakfast in the Elston Inn lobby. From 9:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the following lectures will be given in the Wailes Room: “Noble Widows and Estate Management during the French Wars of Religion” by Robert Kalas of Mount St. Mary’s University, “Declaring War in Sixteenth-Century France” by Virginia Tech’s Fred Baumgartner and “Print Shop Rivalry in Sixteenth-Century Rome” by Christopher Witcombe of Sweet Briar College.

Witcombe’s lecture is based on a chapter of his new book, “Print Publishing and Murder in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” to be published in September. “It’s a scholarly book that includes the story of a murder that occurred in Rome in October 1577 as a result, it would seem, of rivalry between print shops,” Witcombe, an art history professor, said. “My MARRS talk will be about the murder and the circumstances surrounding it.”

The seminar is open to the public and admission is free. For more information, please contact Lynn Marie Laufenberg at llaufenberg@sbc.edu or 381-6189.


— By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer