Sept. 13-14, Oct. 11-12, Nov. 15-16, 2025
This course surveys the history of Christianity from the sixth through the fifteenth centuries. Known as the Middle Ages, this period witnessed the Christianization of Europe and the development of a distinctive Western Christian culture. A profusion of novel forms of religious life, the emergence of universities, and an array of new styles of art, music, and literature took shape against a backdrop of schism between the Eastern and Western churches, corruption, and religious violence against heretics, Jews, and Muslims. This course will combine discussions of primary source material with secondary readings that situate theological developments and devotional culture alongside demographic and institutional change in this period. Students will be asked to historicize and critically re-examine some of their own values and assumptions that ultimately stem from this period.