The international conference "1525: Peasant Revolts in Europe" , organized by the UB Chair of Renaissance Studies in Molins de Rei, will be held from 6 to 8 October. The conference commemorates the 500th anniversary of the German Peasants' Revolt, one of the most important social movements of early modern Europe, and offers a comparative analysis of the main rural revolts that took place in Europe between 1450 and 1550. The aim is to understand the causes and impacts of these mobilizations at a time of profound political, economic and social transformations.The conference, led by Àngel Casals (University of Barcelona) and Antoni Furió (Universitat de València), is organized in collaboration with the Institute for Catalan Studies, the Universitat de València, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the European project CHANGECODE (COST) and the City Council of Molins de Rei, sponsor of the Chair.
The programme includes 20 lectures and roundtables with internationally renowned experts. Samuel Cohn (University of Glasgow) will open the sessions with a reflection on what defines a peasant revolt in late medieval and early modern Europe. This will be followed by presentations on specific cases that have become the subject of historiographical debate: the War of the Remenses in Catalonia (Rosa Lluch, UB), the Irmandiña revolts in Galicia (Carlos Barros, University of Santiago de Compostela), the Revolt of the Brotherhoods and Union in the Kingdom of Valencia (Antoni Furió, UV), and popular participation in the War of the Communities of Castile (Hipólito Rafael Oliva, University of Seville). Sessions will also be devoted to lesser-known but equally significant revolts, such as the Slovene peasant revolt in 1515 (Darko Darovec, IRRIS Institute), the uprisings in Mallorca (Antoni Mas, University of the Balearic Islands), the Dózsa rebellion in Hungary (Andrei Hozjan, University of Maribor), the peasant revolts in France (Vicent Challet, Paul-Valéry University Montpellier) and the Dacke War in Sweden (Mats Hallenberg, Stockholm University).
The conference aims to place these revolts in a common, transnational perspective. The experts will analyse the shared factors - fiscal pressure, changes in feudal relations, the emergence of a new political culture - and will discuss how these uprisings contributed to redefining the relationship between power and rural communities. The closing talk will be given by Àngel Casals, who will examine the Catalan scenario after the Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe in 1486, as an example of the transformation of relations between peasants and lords in the European context.
The UB Chair of Renaissance Studies in Molins de Rei, created in 2023 with the support of Molins de Rei Town Council, aims to promote research into and dissemination of this historical period, as well as to enhancce the projection of the Museu del Renaixement as an academic and cultural space. With this conference, the Chair consolidates its international mission and becomes a meeting point for leading specialists in the social and political history of modern Europe.
