Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version

Are you frustrated with the way in which SJWs are trying to “woke-wash” the history of the United States? Just wait till you hear what the Protestant reformers did to the medieval understanding of Scripture! Video with subscription at Unauthorized.tv  (History and Logos Channel) Psalm 109 Dixit Dominus   Psalm 109 Dixit Dominus Choir psalter, Germany, ca. 1380 The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand. Until I make thy enemies thy footstool. The Lord will send forth the scepter of thy power out of Sion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thine is the dominion in the day of thy power, amid the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day-star have I begotten thee. The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent: Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedech. The Lord upon thy right hand hath overthrown kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations; he shall fill the land with the fallen: He shall smite in sunder

Welcome! In this episode , I introduce myself and the argument for our course: training minds in the discipline of history so as to counteract the lies that modernity tells about the West, particularly about the role of Christianity in shaping Western civilization . http://uatv.infogalactic.com  (History and Logos Channel) “Fake news” is not the invention of the internet; it is an invention of language, the ability that human beings have to tell stories about things that have happened in other places, other times. “Fake news” is simply the flip-side of history. — Fencing Bear at Prayer * References “Inherited ideas are a curious thing” Milo Yiannopoulos, Diabolical: How Pope Francis Betrayed Clerical Abuse Victims Like Me—and Why He Has to Go   (Bombardier Books, 2018), with Foreword by Rachel Fulton Brown The Ruin  (Old English poem in the Exeter Book ) Wulfstan II of York (d. 1023), Sermo Lupi ad Anglos    (trans. Dorothy Whitelock) Mark Twain, A Connecticut

I am going to be talking about the problem of sources in the first video for the course, posting this week. Background reading here! Last week I broke my sabbatical seclusion to attend a panel that my colleagues in the Department of History had organized on “Understanding the Trump Phenomenon.” The panelists covered a range of themes: climate change denialism, white nationalism, the global failure of capitalism, the latent illiberalism of American culture, and world-wide yearnings towards totalitarianism—all the usual -isms. And then they opened the floor to questions. Like a good fencer, I got my hand up first and said something about the need to think of American culture in more regional and long-range terms, particularly the differences in conceptions of liberty that  David Hackett Fisher  has shown to be in play, but it was already too late. The room was primed to descend into pessimism and despair, although since we're talking academics here—fellow professors and graduate st

Testing...testing! I know you are eager to get started with our course. The tech is ready, and I am working on lesson plans. Be sure to check out the recommended readings ! Videos start next week on Unauthorized.tv . I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were the

Welcome, Unauthorized Students! Classes starting soon on Unauthorized.tv . Today’s lesson from the Fencing Bear archives: a meditation  on what it means to teach history as a Christian. My departmental colleague Amy Stanley  worries  that I am  using the classroom  as “a place for the conversion of students to Christian religious faith”—as if that were something diabolical! She needn’t worry. I understand the difference between preaching and teaching. Preaching is what my colleagues do! (They do, they know it. That is why they are so mad at me: I have called their bluff.) I, on the other hand, teach. Because that is what Christians do. What does it mean to teach history  as a Christian ? I take my instruction from  Augustine of Hippo , who knew a thing or two about teaching as well as about Christ. First and foremost, Christians  recognize the inadequacy of language for conveying even the simplest thoughts . In Augustine’s words, explaining to his friend Deogratias why teaching

We medievalists all know the drill. Somebody in public life says something disparaging about the Middle Ages, and we all leap in to insist that either a) Europe in the Middle Ages was actually much more advanced/enlightened/sophisticated than the off-hand comment about people believing the world was flat suggests, or  b) yes, absolutely, they’re right, medieval Christians were murderous thugs, barbarians of the first order who knew nothing of tolerance or diversity and probably ate babies for breakfast whenever they could get them. Neither answer ever changes the public conversation one iota because everybody knows that whatever  Charles Homer Haskins  might try to insist about the real Renaissance happening in the twelfth century, there is no getting round the  Albigensian Crusade  and the  massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland  (the former called by the pope, the latter resisted by all the bishops and other leaders of the Church). The more those of us who study the intellec