About
Welcome to the Unauthorized! You have come to the right place. This will be the most intelligent, the most engrossing, and the most innovative course on the history of Europe in the Middle Ages on the planet. The only prerequisite is a desire to learn the truth about the “Dark Ages” of Christianity, a.k.a. the Ages of Faith!
Lectures will be posted as videos on Unauthorized.tv (History and Logos Channel). On this blog you will find supporting materials, including study guides for each video, recommended readings, and links to resources for further study.
My goal as your professor is to act as mentor and guide, encouraging you to seek further knowledge on your own. In this course you will receive training in reading the primary sources so that you can tell fact from fantasy, whether in the sources or in the scholarship my academic colleagues produce.
Contrary to Protestant myth, medieval Europe was a highly literate culture, producing a rich and varied compendium of sources both in Latin and in the emerging vernaculars.
Chronicles, breviaries, chivalric poems, biographies of saints, treatises on government, handbooks on husbandry and housekeeping, manorial records, collections of sermons, miracle stories, beast fables, and pilgrimage guides are but a few of the many genres in which medieval authors wrote, leaving a diverse account of the daily lives of many different types and classes of medieval Europeans. In this course, you will hear from them all.
Many of these sources have never been published, particularly those which scholars have considered too “ordinary.” Which is more representative of medieval thinking: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which survives in only one manuscript, or William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis et virtutibus (On the Vices and Virtues), which survives in hundreds?
To the sources in writing, we may add the magnificent art, architecture, and music of the cathedral, cloister, castle, and town, along with the discoveries of archeology. A thousand years of civilization, which modernity collapses under the label “medieval,” as in “I’ma get medieval on your ass.”
There is a reason that the Middle Ages has such a hold on the Western imagination. Our quest is to understand why!
Course topics and themes (for starters!)
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| Matilda Cross Made for Matilda, the abbess of Essen (d. 1101) Essen Cathedral Treasury |
My goal as your professor is to act as mentor and guide, encouraging you to seek further knowledge on your own. In this course you will receive training in reading the primary sources so that you can tell fact from fantasy, whether in the sources or in the scholarship my academic colleagues produce.
Contrary to Protestant myth, medieval Europe was a highly literate culture, producing a rich and varied compendium of sources both in Latin and in the emerging vernaculars.
Chronicles, breviaries, chivalric poems, biographies of saints, treatises on government, handbooks on husbandry and housekeeping, manorial records, collections of sermons, miracle stories, beast fables, and pilgrimage guides are but a few of the many genres in which medieval authors wrote, leaving a diverse account of the daily lives of many different types and classes of medieval Europeans. In this course, you will hear from them all.
Many of these sources have never been published, particularly those which scholars have considered too “ordinary.” Which is more representative of medieval thinking: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which survives in only one manuscript, or William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis et virtutibus (On the Vices and Virtues), which survives in hundreds?
To the sources in writing, we may add the magnificent art, architecture, and music of the cathedral, cloister, castle, and town, along with the discoveries of archeology. A thousand years of civilization, which modernity collapses under the label “medieval,” as in “I’ma get medieval on your ass.”
There is a reason that the Middle Ages has such a hold on the Western imagination. Our quest is to understand why!
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| “In principio” Fécamp Bible London, British Library, Yates Thompson 1, fol. 4v France, third quarter of the 13th century |
- The conversion of Europe
- The development of institutions, including monasteries, cities, universities, governments, and courts
- Chivalry and feudalism
- Devotion, spirituality, and prayer
- Education and the arts
- Animals
- Travel within and outside Europe
- Warfare, including the crusades
- Study specific texts, images, buildings, stories
- Interviews with scholars of medieval history
- Reviews of books on medieval history
- Office hours with chat
Course map
I had 4 semesters of Art & Arch History 1974-76, plus later electives. The 2 profs pretty much regarded the Middle Ages as a peak, if not the peak, of human achievement. Looking forward to this.
ReplyDeleteI'm so excited for this opportunity. Thank you so much for putting this together for us.
ReplyDeleteYour Christian focus is greatly appreciated. The secularization of medieval history has been a travesty. Understanding the West without Christianity is incomprehensible.
ReplyDelete