This course, the second part of a three-part introduction to Western Civilization, examines the process of Europe’s formation and self-definition during the Middle Ages and early modern period, up to the French Revolution. The civilization of Europe developed through the transmission of the past and the encounter with the truly new. While Europeans of the Middle Ages continued to draw upon the legacy of Rome and the ancient Mediterranean, contact with the religious empires of Byzantium and Islam profoundly shaped European civilization, and the course of European history was dramatically altered by the discovery of the New World. We will look at how foreign ideas, inventions, materials and even species altered the European landscape and imagination, but we will also examine the internal transformation of social structures and institutions from the feudal era to the beginnings of the modern state. Approaching these material and social changes through the intellectual developments of the era, this class will study the reformulation of Christian thought and practice in the course of the Middle Ages and Reformation, the rise of humanism and civic republicanism in the Renaissance, and the articulation of new notions of science, law, and individual conscience in the early modern era. Our weekly readings in primary texts will help us build our skills as historical interpreters and develop our sensitivity to ideas and modes of expression remote from our own; these will be supplemented by lectures and the chronological overview provided by Kagan, Ozment & Turner’s Western Heritage.
- Manager: Eric Oberle
- Teacher: Lunden Santana