History of Western Thought, 500-1300

SES #: 1 · TOPICS: Introduction (or possibly a rant): what the Middle Ages are not · READINGS: There is no specific reading for this class session. However, everyone should come with a favorite fictional medieval moment well in mind. Possible sources for such things are the movies, fantasy literature, “historical” romance novels, the theater, New Yorker cartoons, etc.

SES #: 2 · TOPICS: Disintegration of the Roman Empire · READINGS: Augustine. The City of God . New York, NY: Modern Library, 2000. ISBN: 9780679783190. (Especially Parts One, Three, and Five)

Dialogues of Gregory I . (In reader)

SES #: 4 · TOPICS: Conversion of the Franks · READINGS: Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks . Translated by Lewis Thorpe. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1976. ISBN: 9780140442953.

Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People . New York, NY: Penguin, 1991. ISBN: 9780140445657.

Correspondence of St. Boniface . (In reader)

SES #: 6 · TOPICS: Persistence of Nordic Paganism · READINGS: Beowulf . Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney. New York, NY: Norton, 2001. ISBN: 9780393975802.

SES #: 7 · TOPICS: The Carolingian Court · READINGS: Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard . Translated by Paul Edward Dutton. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 1998. ISBN: 9781551111346. (Read in particular “The Life of Charlemagne”, “The Charters”, and “The Translation and the Miracles.”)

SES #: 8 · TOPICS: Conflict with Byzantium · READINGS: “Liuprandus of Cremora.” In Embassy to Constantinople . Translated by F. A. Wright. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle Co. , 1993. ISBN: 9780460872355.

SES #: 9 · TOPICS: Crusading: or the Making of a Saint · READINGS: “Joinville.” In The Life of St. Louis . New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1955.

SES #: 10 · TOPICS: Female Saints: Music and the Visionary · READINGS: “Hildegarde of Bingen.” In Secrets of God . Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1996. ISBN: 9781570621642.

SES #: 11 · TOPICS: Love, Logic, and the Politics of the Intellectual life · READINGS: Clanchy, M.T. ed. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise . New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780140448993.

SES #: 12 · TOPICS: The Wider Medieval World · READINGS: Dunn. Ross. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780520243859.