Course Catalog > Arts & Culture > Liberal Arts

The Early Middle Ages: From the Fall of Rome to the First Crusade (500-1100)

Were the early Middle Ages a "dark age" for Europe which lacked any intellectual or social progress? As pieces of the old Roman Empire struggled to survive in an era of barbarian invasions and migrations, what did new monarchs such as Charlemagne the Great and the Holy Roman Emperors of the German lands do to establish successor states to the Roman Empire? How did the Anglo-Saxons build a post-Roman culture in Great Britain after the Roman legions went away? Meanwhile in the east, how did the Byzantine Empire retain and even expanded its territory with its glittering, rich but mysterious court and a network of global diplomacy that reached out as far as China? This series of lectures will show how bookish Christian monks and inquisitive Islamic scholars not only preserved classical knowledge, but expanded it and created new kinds of philosophy. Despite the ravages of invasions from Vikings, Bulgars, Slavs, plagues and superstitions, and the rise of Islam, we will trace how kings and queens, lords, knights, bishops and peasants of this feudal era gave rise to the prototypes of the modern European states that we know today.

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