An award-winning, widely recognized expert on pre-modern history, Professor Thomas F. Madden concludes this two-part series on the medieval world. In this course, we will see the error of the commonly held assumption that the “Dark Ages” was a time of superstition, ignorance, and violence. Rather than a time of darkness, the Middle Ages saw extraordinary innovation, invention, and cultural vitality. It was the Middle Ages that gave us universities, vernacular literature, and the extraordinary beauty of Gothic architecture.
To study the medieval world, then, is not only to study a time that has passed away. It is to study the birth of a new culture that would mature into the modern West. Whether we know it or not, the world we live in today is itself the product of the Middle Ages—not “Dark,” but remarkably bright.
Lecture 1 The Legacy of Rome and the Coming of the Germans
Lecture 2 Christianity Triumphant
Lecture 3 Monks and Monasteries
Lecture 4 Villas, Manors, and the Feudal System
Lecture 5 The Carolingian Renaissance
Lecture 6 Daily Life and the Family
Lecture 7 Gothic Architecture
Lecture 8 The Rise of Universities
Lecture 9 The Commercial Revolution and the Rise of Towns
Lecture 10 The Rise of Parliamentary Systems
Lecture 11 Courtly Literature and the Rise of Vernacular
Lecture 12 Heresy and Inquisition
Lecture 13 The Coming of the Friars
Lecture 14 The Black Death and Its Legacy