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Apr 19, 2024
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H321 From Romanitas to Vikings: The Early Middle Ages3 credit(s)
The first half of a two-semester course sequence that covers the period of history from the later Roman Empire to the demise of the Carolingian Empire. The course is organized around two ideas. The first is the creation of Western civilization out of three distinct traditions: the Greco-Roman, the Judeo-Christian, and the Germanic. Thus, the early Middle Ages were a time of intense change as this amalgam took centuries to develop. The second idea is persistence, for example, of the Latin language and the idea of the Roman Empire. Both ideas reach a temporary synthesis in the guise of Charlemagne, a Frank who is crowned as Emperor of the Romans by the pope. At the same time the Vikings and the Arabs represent significant challenges to Romanitas or Romanness, and accelerate the internal divisions that undermined the Carolingian monasticism, the creation of barbarian kingdom, the development of the early Byzantine Empire, and the growth of a feudal society. These topics are explored in particular by close readings of primary sources.
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