The High Middle Ages

At the dawn of the last millennium in the year 1000, Europe was one of the world's more stagnant regions - an economically undeveloped, intellectually derivative, and geopolitically passive backwater, with illiteracy, starvation, and disease the norm for almost everyone. Yet only three centuries later, all of this had changed. A newly invigorated cluster of European societies had revived city life, spawned new spiritual and intellectual movements and educational institutions, and had begun, for reasons both sacred and profane, to expand at the expense of neighbors who traditionally had expanded at Europe's expense. This series of 24 lectures, filled with memorable detail, examines how and why Europeans achieved this stunning turnaround. By its conclusion, you will be able to describe and analyze the social, intellectual, religious, and political transformations that set into motion this midsummer epoch of the medieval world - an epoch you will come to know very well through Professor Daileader's vivid descriptions and examinations of its people, including the warrior aristocracy of knights, castellans, counts, and dukes; free and unfree peasants; and townspeople, both artisans and merchants; its vibrant stirrings of religion and intellect, including monastic life and charismatic figures like Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas; the lives of those outside the religious mainstream, especially heretics and Jews; and its major political developments and events, including the First Crusade, the Norman Conquest of England, and the granting of the Magna Carta.

All Lectures:
1. Why the Middle Ages?
2. Demography and the Commercial Revolution
3. Those Who Fought - The Nobles
4. The Chivalric Code
5. Feudalism
6. Those Who Worked - The Peasants
7. Those Who Worked - The Townspeople
8. Women in Medieval Society
9. Those Who Prayed - The Monks
10. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement
11. Heretics and Heresy
12. The Medieval Inquisitions
13. Jews and Christians
14. The Origins of Scholasticism
15. Aquinas and the Problem of Aristotle
16. The First Universities
17. The People's Crusade
18. The Conquest of Jerusalem
19. The Norman Conquest
20. Philip II of France
21. Magna Carta
22. Empire versus Papacy
23. Emperor Frederick II
24. Looking Back, Looking Forward