Current Research Projects

The Reformation and the Nobility – A Study of the Impact of the Reformation on the Danish Nobility
From c. 1525 to the 1560s

PhD student Rasmus Skovgaard Jakobsen holds an MA in History and Religious Studies. On 1 February 2014 he embarked upon the research project: ‘The Reformation and the Nobility – A Study of the Impact of the Reformation on the Danish Nobility. From c. 1520 to 1570. The PhD project involves collaboration between the History Department of Aarhus University and the Danish Research Centre for Manorial Studies at the Gammel Estrup Manor House Museum.

The project is a study of the Reformation’s influence on Danish elite culture in the early 16th century, focusing particularly on the first generation of a selection of noble families to be affected by the Reformation. To investigate how these families were culturally, religiously and socially influenced by the Reformation, the project  will combine analyses of the selected families’ manor houses, the churches of which they were patrons, and estate and private archives, with analyses of a social historical, religious historical and cultural historical nature. By means of such a study, the project will reveal how the Lutheran Reformation transformed the very context of the nobility, and what impact it made on them. The project will thereby increase our understanding of the Reformation and its influence on Danish culture, placing the Danish nobility in a new, historic context.