The late Middle Ages

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Average Rating
Publisher
Varies, see individual formats and editions
Publication Date
2007.
Language
English

Description

The Late Middle Ages - the two centuries from c. 1300 to c. 1500 - might seem like a distant era, but students of history are still trying to reach a consensus about how it should be interpreted. Was it an era of calamity or rebirth? Was it still clearly medieval or the period in which humanity took its first decisive steps into modernity? These 24 provocative lectures introduce you to the age's major events, personalities, and developments, and arms you with the essentials you need to form your own ideas about this age of extremes - an age that, according to Professor Daileader, "experiences disasters and tragedies of such magnitude that those who survive them cannot remember the like, and doubt that subsequent generations will be capable of believing their descriptions. "You'll look at the Black Death, the carnage of frequent wars, and the religious turmoil we associate with the Middle Ages." But you'll also look at the beginning of the intellectual and cultural movement known as Humanism, which planted the seeds of modernity. Humanism's precepts, which hearkened back to the moral inspiration inherent in classical artistic values, humans have an enormous capacity for goodness, for creativity, even for the achievement of happiness. But these were hardly the only forces that tug modern-day historians in multiple directions. The Middle Ages was also a period when the persisting legacy of knights, serfs, and castles coexisted with the cannons and muskets newly made possible by gunpowder. With so many contradictions, it's no wonder that historians have differed widely on how to judge this era-debating even when it ended and modernity began.

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Contributors
ISBN
9781598033434
9781682764763

Table of Contents

From the Audiobook on CD

pt. 1. lecture 1. Late Middle Ages : rebirth, waning, calamity? --
lecture 2. Philip the Fair versus Boniface VIII --
lecture 3. Fall of the Templars and the Avignon papacy --
lecture 4. The great Papal Schism --
lecture 5. The Hundred Years War, part 1 --
lecture 6. The Hundred Years War, part 2 --
lecture 7. The Black Death, part 1 --
lecture 8. The Black Death, part 2 --
lecture 9. Revolt in town and country --
lecture 10. William Ockham --
lecture 11. John Wycliffe and the Lollards --
lecture 12. John Hus and the Hussite Rebellion.
pt. 2. lecture 13. Witchcraft --
lecture 14. Christine de Pizan and Catherine of Siena --
lecture 15. Gunpowder --
lecture 16. The printing press --
lecture 17. Renaissance humanism, part 1 --
lecture 18. Renaissance humanism, part 2 --
lecture 19. The fall of the Byzantine Empire --
lecture 20. Ferdinand and Isabella --
lecture 21. The Spanish Inquisition --
lecture 22. The age of exploration --
lecture 23. Columbus and the Columbian Exchange --
lecture 24. When did the Middle Ages end?

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