Luther in January and other things to ponder

Well, 500 years ago this Jan­u­ary, our friend Mar­tin Luther was wrap­ping up his stay in Rome and gear­ing up for the long walk back home with the news of an appeal denied. We read recently that 1510-11 was a par­tic­u­larly harsh win­ter; maybe that’s why he and his com­pan­ion veered far­ther to the east on the way back, pos­si­bly even pass­ing through Venice, before hit­ting the Alps in March.

While we’ve had to accus­tom our­selves to the sta­tion­ary life once more in the past two months, we have at least had the chance to write more about our expe­ri­ence. A ver­sion of Sarah’s lec­ture at Augs­burg Col­lege and Lenoir-Rhyne Uni­ver­sity, “What Has Erfurt to Do with Rome?” will appear in the spring 2011 issue of Lutheran Forum; you can sub­scribe here if you’re inter­ested (Sarah also is the edi­tor of Lutheran Forum and can assure you it’s a great read at a great price!). Sarah and Andrew both have forth­com­ing arti­cles about aspects of the pil­grim­age… check back here in the next few weeks and we should have more details about when exactly they’ll appear.

Blessed Epiphany sea­son to everyone!