Europe in the High Middle Ages

Western Europe from the middle of the eleventh to the beginning of the fifteenth century, the period of the flowering and decline of medieval culture and society. Topics include the economic revolution of the twelfth century, the growth of towns and development of urban culture, the reform of the church, the challenge of heresy and the emergence of popular religion, the consolidation of knighthood and the creation of an ideal of chivalry, Scholasticism and vernacular literature, Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture, and the social and cultural crisis of the fourteenth century.