his201 - last lecture - week 12

Central topics:

Early Medieval History and Historiography

The Heirs of the Roman Empire

The Pirenne Thesis

The High Middle Ages (c. 1050-c.1350)

We look at the cultural revival during and after the investiture controversy as a key element of change in cultural scholasticism. Here again the issues of Church and state were quite important. Inseparable in fact from our studies in architecture, technology, literature. Overtly evident in the investiture controversy, in scholastic circles faith and reason were heavily debated.

So we have come from the Merovingian kings up to Dante's inferno.

We studied key events and characters of the middle ages which reflect the central topics.

This has helped up achieve our aims to look at the broad patterns of Western cultural development. Intellectual, social, artistic and political issues. Historiography. We faced historiographical problems. It's an historiographical challenge for a historian to use the song of Roland to understand the Carolingian kings, for example. How do we use this? Do we use it as a true reflection of the events of the Carolingian war against Spain? It's an historiographical challenge.

These challenges are not separate from the task of doing history.

These issues need to be studied in context. For example, we can loosely use the term 'renaissance' what is far more important for historians to do is to analyse each period on its own merits.

We need to move on from stories of dark ages, heroes and villains. And we need to appreciate the complexity and continuity of a period.

Stories, relationships are not simple in our lives, so why should they be simple in their lives.

And we can't assign the middle ages to the dust bin of medieval history.

A lot did happen during this long thousand years, it wasn't an intellectually stagnant period.

We can't pin point when the period began, and when it ended, and such we have to be careful with the labels with put on it and be careful about such connotations they have.

The exam:

16th june, 10 am.

It will consist of 6 questions: 3 must be answered. And answers will be in prose.

How relevant is this to the question?

Topics:
Medieval historiography - includes some of the issues listed above. What it is to study the early middle ages, what they might have been. Look at Gibbon, Ranke, Rophs, Pirenne, Paskins, Neats, Cantor.

Frankish Gaul - in particular, Clovis, Gregory of Tours,

Monasticism - Benedict, Gregory the Great - This sort of leads into the investiture controversy - Henry the 4th

Scholasticism - John of Saulsbury, Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, technology, architecture and literature. The description of the Abbey of St Denis. Dante's paradise, connections between scholastic literature and scholastic architecture.



The monasteries were the cradle of early European civilization.

Yes or no??

No, this statement is far too simplistic we need to consider many other issues, aspects, etc