HIST 2053 - Medieval Europe: Crusades to the Black Death

This course explores the lives and experiences of three key social orders in western Europe during the Middle Ages: the aristocracy, the church, and the peasantry. We also consider the lives of women, both as members of the three orders and generally. We begin the course in the early Middle Ages with Charlemagne and his successors, and the upheaval caused by Vikings and other invaders. We shall then consider the expansion of European power in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (including the Crusades), and the flourishing of European civilisation and culture, trade and urban life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At the end of the course, we discuss the crisis of medieval civilisation that was brought about by conflicts within the Church, the great struggle between France and England, and the Black Death.