The Christian Middle Ages

4 units

This course examines the ways in which the European Middle Ages can appropriately be characterized as Christian and explores how notions of what it meant to be Christian shifted over the thousand years of the Middle Ages. The assigned readings mix important recent monographs with some classic treatments of the topic, allowing students to measure developments in scholarship over the last generation and trace the roots of current debates. Brief extracts from primary sources will be used to illustrate the range of medieval documents and ground our discussion of their modern interpretations.