Renaissances in Medieval Europe

Themes "Christendom" Arts and Scholarship as expression of culture Renaissance and Reform

Lindisfarne Gospels carpet page British Library Turning the Pages

Medieval Europe

• eras:
  • Late Antiquity c. 150-750
  • Early Middle Ages c. 500-1050
  • High Middle Ages c. 1050-1350
  • Late Middle Ages c.1350-1500
• cultural identity and regional kingdoms: maps
  • Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, conversion of Clovis
  • Bede, Ecclesiastical History, conversion of England
  
  
  
• Christendom: religion, politics, and society
  • secular clergy and regular clergy (monasticism)
    
    
  • kings and bishops, emperors and popes
    
    
  • saints, relics, and pilgrimage
    
    
  • out-groups: Jews, heretics, "witches"
  
  
  

Renaissance and Reform

• Early Medieval: Northumbrian, Carolingian, and Ottonian Renaissances
  • court culture: Charles the Bald*
    
    
  • monastic reform: Mont St Michel
    
    
  • literacy and grammar
    
    
  • carved stone crosses: Ruthwell*
    
    
  • Romanesque architecture and monophonic chant: Bari cathedrals; Conques
    
    
• High Medieval: Twelfth Century Renaissance
  • universities and scholasticism: faith and reason; Arabic and Jewish scholarship; Thomas Aquinas
    
    
  • Gothic architecture and polyphony: Notre Dame; Sainte Chapelle; sculpture (Rheims*); Suger and St. Denis interiors
    
    
  • mysticism and monasticism: Bernard of Clairvaux, on Gothic architecture, Cistercian interiors; Hildegard of Bingen
    
    
  • mendicant reform: St. Francis of Assisi
    
    
  • papal reform: Empire and Papacy
    
    
• Late Medieval: The Italian and Northern Renaissances
  • Humanism and classicism: inventing the Middle Ages
    
    
  • architecture: domes
    
    
  • religious perspectives: Raphael's Christ; Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
    
    
  • painting, secularism, and classicism: Raphael's School of Athens; Titian Venus and Adonis
    
    
  • sculpture and humanism: Donatello's David; Michelangelo's Dying Slave
    
    
  • perspective and worldview: Da Vinci 1452-1519, Last Supper
    
    
  • The Reformation

Conclusions

• culture and art
• compare "Christian society" concept to Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim societies