HIST 101 Lecture Outline (Spring 2024 – Week 4)

HIST 101
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES

Week 4: Tuesday

The Ancient Greeks: From Arrival to Glory, 2000-479 BCE

 

Videos:

Michael Wood, “In Search of the Trojan War” (BBC, 1985):

Episode 1/6: The Age of Heroes (56:31 min.; start at 15:50 for Troy; at 32:00 for Mycenae; 44:00 for Tiryns; 47:00 for Troy again):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkbUQKyie_w

Episode 2/6: The Legend under Siege (56:51 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc8I2IuVxEw

Episode 3/6: The Singer of Tales (55:15 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64QPz2t5T3A

Episode 4/6: The Women of Troy (59:36 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2lHDUvKPsM

Episode 5/6: The Empire of the Hittites (59:53 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyKIlRqRb58

Episode 6/6: The Fall of Troy (58:24 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBk9j9Slb1Y

 

Readings:

Cultures, pp. 89-108 (The first Greeks; Archaic Greece; colonists, hoplites, and citizenship; masculinity; poetry; Sparta)

c.  2000-1500 BCE     Minoan civilization flourishes on the island of Crete and on the nearby island of Santorini. The Minoan language had a written script (“Linear A“), which was scratched onto clay tablets, but has not yet been deciphered. Archaeological finds show that the Minoans had a rich culture based on farming, fishing, and on trade with the Near East and Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and Greece. Minoan Crete was ruled from five or six palaces, all near the sea, of which the biggest was at Knossos. These palaces were not fortified, implying that there was no internal warfare, and that the Minoans trusted their fleet to defend them against foreign attack. The palaces and great houses were lavishly decorated with frescoes depicting daily life, court life, ritual activities, and the scenes of nature and the sea.

c. 1450-1200 BCE     Decline and fall of Minoan civilization, probably beginning with an earthquake, followed by invasion by the Mycenaean Greeks

c.1600-1200 BCE     First known Greek-speaking culture: the Mycenaeans, whose script (known as Linear B, used primarily for supply lists for royal armies) has been discovered to be an early form of Greek.  There were multiple palaces in Mycenaean Greece, presumably representing multiple kings, including at Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, Thebes, and Athens. The mountainous topography of mainland Greece led to the development of multiple small kingdoms (later, city-states) rather than a unified kingdom. The Mycenaeans, unlike the Minoans, were militaristic; their royal palaces were fortified, and their art includes images of armor, hunting and warfare (Mycenaean dagger excavated by Heinrich Schliemann at Tiryns), but also images of the natural world (perhaps influenced by Minoan art). No Mycenaean temples or prayers have been found, but private houses had domestic shrines.  Around 1250 BCE Mycenaean palaces were re-fortified.

The Trojan War and its aftermath that were the subjects of Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey (written c. 750 BCE), may reflect Mycenaean attempts to seize part of Asia Minor, but the poems are not a surviving oral history from Mycenaean times. More likely they reflect  conditions during the Dark Age that followed.

c. 1200-750 BCE    Dark Age in Greece perhaps beginning with destruction by the Sea Peoples, was part of the widespread late Bronze Age collapse all around the eastern Mediterranean c. 1200 BCE. During the Dark Age, Greece lost c. 90% of its population, and writing (Linear B) disappeared. Most of the surviving population moved from the upland plateaus to the coastal towns.

c. 750-500 BCE    Archaic Period: rise of the Greek city-states (poleis), including the establishment of networks of small colonies, each tied to an individual polis, first in the Aegean, then in the Black Sea, and eventually more broadly in the Mediterranean.  The rise of Greek sea power and the spread of  Greek colonies overseas was made possible by the disruption of Phoenician maritime dominance in the eastern Mediterranean, caused by the Assyrian destruction of the kingdom of Israel c. 722 BCE, followed by the Neo-Babylonian conquest of the kingdom of Judah c. 587 BCE. The poleis needed standing militias to defend themselves, requiring all free men aged 18-60 to be liable for military call-up. The Greeks perfected fighting by infantry soldiers (hoplites), armed with breastplate, helmet, sword, shield, and spear, in trained units, called phalanxes. The need for men to stay in good physical shape and to train for war led to the rise of pan-Hellenic athletic competitions, such as the Olympic games, and a cult of masculinity that valorized the male body and male homosexuality. In Greece’s militaristic society, girls and women were considered of far less value than men. They were given little education  and were kept secluded at home. (One celebrated female poet, however, Sappho of Lesbos, wrote of female homosexual love and of Aphrodite, goddess of love.)

The most militaristic polis of all was Sparta, although it sought no colonies, and focused on war in order to control its large number of state-owned slaves (helots), who did all the manual work of the Spartans. Babies considered defective were ordered to be left to die in the mountains; boys and girls began physical training at age 7; at age 12 the girls were given a basic education and the boys were sent to military barracks and trained to fight. The boys were required to steal food to teach them self-reliance, and underwent brutal discipline and training. At age 20 they entered the army for a service period of 10 years, after which they were awarded full citizenship.

 

Thursday:

Videos:

British Museum, Curator’s Corner: Killing time with Ajax and Achilles (painted on Greek vases) (10:39 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTJoDdQGI6s

Michael Wood: Art of the Western World – The Classical Ideal (1989, 55:38 min.; start at 3:34):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgWno9NMGks

Readings:

Cultures, pp.108-117 (Miletus and the birth of philosophy; Athens and democracy; the Persian Wars)

Sources, pp. 47-62 (Hesiod, Works and Days; Homer, The Iliad; Herodotus, The Persian Wars and Histories; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War)

Miletus, founded in the Mycenaean period, after the Dark Age revived to become a commercial and cultural hub with numerous colonies, especially around the Black Sea. Miletus produced a very distinctive style of pottery  (see also here), and a high-quality coinage displaying a lion, and it was the birthplace of Western philosophy – home of the 6th-cent. philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, who investigated whether there was a rational pattern, or set of universal truths, to the natural world, that humans can learn. They also asked  what was the origin of all things (water? ether? air?), and sought to understand the process(es) by which the physical world changes. They pioneered the concept of submitting ideas to critical inspection by others.

Athens took its name from Athena, goddess of wisdom. Its Acropolis (city high-point) was first settled c. 3000 BCE, and it was a major Mycenaean city. After the Dark Age, between c. 700 and 650 BCE the aristocracy of Athens conquered the surrounding territory (Attica), which led to conflict between the now-expanded number of ordinary Athenians and the wealthy elites. In 594 BCE the city council appointed the aristocrat Solon to resolve this: he made all adult male citizens members of the Assembly (which elected officials), loosened the qualifications for holding office; allowed foreign merchants and craftsmen who settled in Athens with their families to become citizens; and cancelled the debts of poor farmers who had fallen into debt-slavery. Solon’s efforts failed, and the tyrant Pisitratos seized power c. 560 BCE, and held power for 3 periods until his death in 527 BCE, trying to resolve the city’s problems (including unfair distribution of offices, high taxes, and backlog of court cases); he also had archival copies made of the Iliad and Odyssey. His two sons (Hippias and Hipparchus) succeeded him, but in 510 BCE Hipparchus was murdered (a pair of statues commemorating the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, was set up in the Agora [marketplace]), and Hippias was expelled. After a couple of tumultuous years, Cleisthenes, who had been exiled by a rival for helping to force out Hippias, was recalled by the Athenians and re-organized the city’s government as the first western democracy. Citizens (free men of some means, comprising only 5%-10% of the city’s population) were organized by neighborhood (deme) and met in a general assembly (ekklesia). The assembly considered legislation, judged trials, and set policies. Day-to-day governance and yearly magistrate selection were handled by a council (boule) chosen by lot and serving for a single day. Army commanders (strategoi) were elected for one year, but could then be re-elected.

 

494-479 BCE     The Persian Wars

Persia controlled the Ionian coast (the west coast of Anatolia), and the Ionian cities, including Miletus, formed a league to break away from Persian overlordship. Sparta (which had no overseas colonies) refused to send an army overseas to help the Ionians, but  in 499 BCE Athens did, and sacked the Persian city of Sardis. In 490 BCE the Persian emperor Darius sent a large Persian army to attack Athens. The ensuing battle of Marathon (26 miles N. of Athens) was a huge victory for Athens (thanks to the tactical leadership of Miltiades), and the Persian army withdrew. Between 490 and 480 BCE the Athenians, expecting the Persians to return in force, built a fleet of 200  triremes (warships with 3 tiers of oars and bronze-sheathed prows). In 480 BCE Darius’s son Xerxes launched a massive attack on Greece by land. The Greek city-states, including Sparta, banded together to resist them. At the coastal pass of Thermopylae, a tiny Spartan rearguard under their king Leonidas held back the entire Persian army for 3 days before they were overcome and killed, but allied Greek victories at Salamis (480: naval battle) and Plataea (479: land battle) forced the Persians to withdraw once more.

HesiodWorks and Days (c. 735-700 BCE): Describes the “golden age” of humans who were made of gold and lived like gods; then the “silver age” of lesser humans, who flouted the gods’ wishes, and so were exterminated; then the third race of men, made of bronze, who lived like savages. Then came a race of demi-gods, who fought like heroes, including at Troy. Finally came the present (5th) race of men, who live lives of toil and misery in an age of iron.

Homer, The Iliad (c. 750 BCE):  Clash between Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and Achilles, the Greek hero, over possession of a girl taken as booty during the Trojan War. Achilles sulks in his tent and refuses to fight, until his friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan prince, Hector. Then Achilles (who was invulnerable to wounds except on his heel) went out to fight Hector, killed him, and dragged Hector’s body around the walls of Troy behind his chariot, by the heels, to dishonor him.

Herodotus of Hallicarnassus (484-423 BCE), The Persian Wars and Histories: In The Persian Wars, Herodotos identifies the custom of abducting high-status women as a major cause of warfare between the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Persians. He says that the Greeks considered it wrong to abduct a woman, but believed that only women who did not resist were abducted. In Histories, he describes the kinds of evidence he uses, including linguistic evidence, religious rituals and images, and interviewing religious authorities (such as the priestesses at Dodona),

Thucydides of Athens (460-400 BCE), The Peloponnesian War:  Thucydides recognized immediately the historical significance of the war as the ultimate face-off between Athens and Sparta, and he wrote about it while it was occurring. He also did extensive research through oral interviews and documentary records to analyze what happened and why. Although he invented dramatic scenes and dialogue to depict what he considered to be the genuine points of view of his subjects, he did not (unlike Herodotos) depict events as the result of intervention by the gods. In his introduction, Thucydides also examines evidence for the early history of the Greeks – for example, he sees early Greek history as one in which tribes were constantly migrating, there were no alliances before the Trojan War, and violence was endemic, requiring men of the past to carry arms as a matter of course in everyday life. In his depiction of Pericles’ funeral oration for the war dead, he first describes how the Athenians buried their fallen soldiers, with a common coffin for the dead of each tribe, an empty bier for those whose bodies were not found, the burial of the coffins in the public cemetery in the suburbs, and then a public eulogy. In the eulogy, he has Pericles describe the basic principals by which the Athenians live, beginning with their democratic form of government, which is designed to serve the interests of the many, not the few. He sees Athens as a model for all Greece to follow, and sees honor as the chief prize of life.

 

The Gokstad Ship

This is a copy made 25 October 2022 of a website that was taking more than half an hour to load. There was no archived version available via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. I was unable to copy the wallpaper from the original site. The original website is:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopedia_romana/britannia/anglo-saxon/maldon/gokstad.html

 

Return to Long Serpent

Gokstad Ship

 

“Right away the mast was rigged with its sea-shawl; sail-ropes were tightened, timbers drummed and stiff winds kept the wave-crosser skimming ahead; as she heaved forward, her foamy neck was fleet and buoyant, a lapped-prow loping over currents, until finally the Geats caught sight of coastline and familiar cliffs. The keel reared up, wind lifted it home, it hit on the land.”

Beowulf (lines 1905-1910), describing the hero’s return from Denmark to southern Sweden

The finest and best preserved Viking longship is the Gokstad, which was built about AD 900 and excavated almost a thousand years later from an eponymous farm on the Sandefjord south of Oslo. Like all such ships, the keel was laid first and secured to the stem posts fore and aft by way of curved transition pieces (Old Norse lot). The first plank (the garboard strake) was bored with an auger and joined to the keel (which was shaped to fit) by iron rivets clinched to a rove (washer) in what is called clinker construction. The next strake or plank was secured in the same way, each overlapping one another and fastened by rivets. Marking the transition from the bottom of the ship to the waterline, a heavier strake (ON meginhufr) ran along each side. Notched floor timbers then were lashed to cleats cut out of the strakes and fitted to the sides by treenails (wooden pegs). Above these ribs, crossbeams (ON bitis) braced by curved knees provided lateral support for the upper strakes. A deck of loose pine boards, which could be removed to access cargo or bale out the bilge, rested on top. Without additional beams above the deck to serve as thwarts, the crew would have sat on their sea chests when rowing. A heavy keelson secured to the ribs supported a pine mast and yard from which hung a woolen sail. The ship was made waterproof by a caulking of twisted lamb wool or cow hair saturated with pine tar and fitted in a groove between the clinched boards. Such construction permitted an exceptionally strong and flexible ship, one that was seaworthy enough to be propelled by a large sail on the open ocean but with a draft shallow enough to allow it to be shelved on a beach or navigated by oar far upstream.

Measuring seventeen feet at the beam, the Gokstad was a wide and stable ship, made more so by riding low in the water. It measures only about six feet from the keel to the gunwale (the uppermost edge of the ship), with a freeboard (from the waterline to the gunwale) only half that distance—and the oarports half that distance again. The deck, in other words, was virtually at the waterline and the oarports themselves only a foot and a half above it. And yet, with sixteen strakes on a side, the Gokstad was twice as high as the Ladby ship, which was buried about the same time. Indeed, that ship has such a shallow freeboard that an extra eighth strake is presumed to have existed to allow sufficient room for the rowers, who also lacked thwarts on which to sit.

The Gokstad ship has sixteen oars to a side, with the oarports (which could be covered in bad weather by a disk of wood that pivoted into place) cut at the third strake (on the Oseberg ship, they are positioned at the first). This permitted a higher freeboard and so offered a height advantage over the enemy, certainly more so than if the oars had been secured by oar locks on the gunwale, as they would be on a smaller boat. The remnants of thirty-two overlapping shields, alternately painted yellow and black, were fixed to each side (which implies that the crew was doubled, one resting while the others rowed). Securely tied, they hung from a batten on the uppermost or sheer strake (and not slotted behind a rail on the outside of the ship, as with Skuldelev 5).

The Gokstad ship had served as a burial chamber for a local chieftain. Among the grave goods, there were oars and spars, tubs and kegs for food and water, kitchen utensils, wooden furniture (including six beds and a sledge decorated with brass nails), a gaming board and horn pieces, intricately wrought bronze fittings for a belt, and even remnants of a woolen sail cloth sewn with red stripes. (Sails often was interwoven to give a checkered or striped pattern, e.g., The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason (CI), St. Olaf’s Saga (CXXIII), or the striped sails depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry). Scattered around the hull were the skeletons of a dozen horses and eight dogs, as well as two goshawks and two peacocks, which must have seemed exotic indeed. On board, there also were three small boats of different sizes, all of which had been deliberately broken up. The absence of any jewelry, gold or silver, or weapons argue that these more precious artifacts had been robbed fifty to a hundred years later during the rule, and possible at the instigation, of Harold Bluetooth, who as the Danish king may have sought to delegitimize the authority and legacy of earlier ruling dynasties.

Certainly, the few skeletal remains (only four leg bones, an upper arm bone and shoulder blade, and fragments of the skull) suggest that the barrow was deliberately desecrated. When it was reopened in 2007 and the skeleton re-examined, it was found to be that of a tall, powerfully-built warrior forty to fifty years old who, from the cutting strikes to both his legs (unprotected by shield or chain mail), likely died violently in battle. Originally, they were identified as belonging to Olaf Geirstad-Alf (Elf of Geirstad), a chieftain of the Ynglings and the older half-brother of Halfdan the Black. But Olaf died half a century before the burial mound was erected and the man’s identity is not known.

Preserved under a barrow of anaerobic blue clay, only the tall prow and stern posts, a portion of the mast, and upper two strakes that had protruded above the impermeable layer of clay were lost to rot. Excavated from its mound in two large pieces, the Gokstad ship was so well preserved that initially it was exhibited without any restoration. This picture was taken in 1880, one of only two that record the excavation (the other from the stern), the mast partner that supported the mast and the frame of the burial chamber behind it readily visible.

This photograph is from the frontispiece of A Short Guide for the use of visitors to the Viking-ship from Gokstad (1898) when the ship still was kept (as it had been since its discovery almost twenty years before) in the garden of the University of Christiana. (Oslo then still was named after the Danish King Christian IV, who had rebuilt the city after a disastrous fire in the seventeenth century, and would not regain its former name until 1925). The following year, the Viking Ship Museum itself opened and the Oseberg ship was put on display. In 1932, the hall for the Gokstad ship was completed and, after nearly fifty years in its temporary shed, it, too, was exhibited, having been extensively restored over the previous three years, its parts disassemble, steamed, and bent back into shape. What could not be restored or was missing (such as the upper two strakes) was replaced.

In this picture, taken from the port side of the ship, the steering oar is almost hidden by the hull. But four overlapping shields can be seen hanging from the gunwale, effectively covering the oarports. In combat, the mounted shields would have provided extra protection and in a heavy sea, some shelter from the waves. But there also was a risk of their being washed overboard, and Brøgger dismisses the notion that they ever did hang from the shield rack except when the ship was in port.

In April, 1893, the Viking, an exact replica of the Gokstad ship (save for the decorations on the bow and stern posts and a protective tent amidships, for which there is no evidence), sailed with a crew of only twelve men across the Atlantic from Bergen, Norway to Newfoundland. Averaging ten or eleven knots, it made landfall after a stormy crossing in only twenty-eight days (one period so rough that the sail had to be reefed) and then went on to New York City. After a journey along the Hudson river, through a very narrow Erie Canal, and onto the Great Lakes, the ship arrived at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, which was commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to America—a reminder (perhaps insensitively, given the theme) that Leif Ericson had reached North American half a millennium earlier. (He had been sent to Greenland by Olaf Tryggvason to preach Christianity there and “on the same journey he discovered Wineland the Good,” The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, XCVI). The ship then went down the Mississippi to New Orleans and returned to Chicago the next year, where it remained moored in a lagoon at Jackson Park until 1920, when it was moved to Lincoln Park. There, the deteriorating ship continued to languish until 1994, when it was transported to West Chicago and stored. Two years later, the newly christened Raven finally was moved to Good Templar Park in Geneva, just outside of Chicago, where it still is in need of better accommodation.

The Gokstad is about seventy-six feet long, its keel appreciatively longer than either the Oseberg ship or Skuldelev 5. Crumlin-Pedersen has calculated the cubic feet of oak that would have been required to build such a ship. Taking the average of his figures, one seventy-four feet long, the approximate size of the Gokstad, would have required 1,907 cubic feet of wood or 22,884 board feet, i.e., a board one foot square and one inch thick. A mature oak several hundred years old with a straight, knot-free trunk three feet in diameter and eighteen feet long yields about 1,526 board feet. Fifteen such trees, therefore, would have been required just for the planking, which, given the length of the hull, had to be constructed from more than one piece of wood, joined by scarf joints riveted together. Allowing an average of four planks for each strake, approximately 128 would have been required to construct the ship or, if only smaller trees were available and a single log was split lengthwise and each half hewed to a plank, half that number of trees. The keel, itself, is fifty-six feet long and shaped from a single piece of oak. It would have required a straight tree even longer than that, of which there cannot have been many in the oak forests of southern Norway—or not even that many forests, it would seem, when one reads in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that 350 ships were rowed up the Thames and London attacked in AD 851. The replica launched in 1893 required that the wood for the keel be imported from Canada. By the nineteenth century, there simply were no longer any mature trees of that size in Norway.

Scans conducted by the Museum of Cultural History in 2019 revealed that, during the previous five years, the ship, which is in the Viking Ship Museum (Oslo), has been slowly collapsing under its own weight, the bow and stern shifting toward the ship’s center, the strakes at midship bowing outward, and the underside sagging on its supports. The beam on which the keel rests and vertical iron supports were not distributing the weight of the ship evenly which, together with fluctuations in temperature and humidity, as well as floor vibrations, threaten its structural stability. Indeed, cracks are beginning to appear in the ancient wood. Eventually, the Gokstad and Oseberg ships will be relocated to The New Museum of the Viking Age, which is scheduled to open in 2024–2025. In preparation for the move, the Gokstad ship was raised one millimeter off its supports and found to weigh 9301.3 pounds.

Although the Gokstad has been characterized as a longship (Danish langskip), properly it is not. Rather, ships from the tenth and eleventh centuries that have a length of fifty feet or more, and a length at least six times their width were true longships. Aside from the dragon ships of the sagas, those from the Viking Age include the recovered Ladby ship, Skuldelev 2 (a smallest type, with twenty-six oars) and Skuldelev 5, Rosekilde 6 (the longest), and Hedeby 1, among a few others. Although the Gokstad ship does have thirty-two oars and certainly is long enough, its beam is much wider than that of a true longship (a ratio of length to breath of 4.7).

The massive rudder or steering oar affixed to the right side of a ship’s stern provides the origin of the word “starboard,” from the Old English stéor (steer) and bord (board). Inexplicably, in the popular Vikings television series, the longship recreated for the show has its steering oar on the port (left) side.

Using ground-penetrating radar, archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research discovered a Viking ship buried in a field at Gjellestad, about fifty miles southeast of Oslo. The burial mound itself had been plowed away over the centuries, leaving the lower part of the ship less than two feet below the surface. First located in October 2018, there initially were no plans for excavation. But a nearby drainage ditch had made the ground soggy and damp, prompting the growth of fungus that threatened to further rot the oak hull. Mold also was introduced when initial work was done to determine the condition and age of the ship (c. AD 733). Recovery began in June 2020 and the keel and lower most ribs uncovered a year later. Allow in poor condition, the Gjellestad Ship is the first modern excavation in more than a century, since the Osberg ship was discovered in 1904. Prior to that there had been only two others, the Tune ship in 1867 and the Gokstad ship in 1880.

References: “Dendrochronological Dating of the Viking Age Ship Burials at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, Norway” (1993) by Niels Bonde and Arne Emil Christensen, Antiquity67, 575-583; “Skjelettet fra Gokstadskipet ny vurdering av et gammelt funn” (2008) by Per Holck, Michael Quarterly5(4), 292-304 (in Norwegian, English abstract); “The Skeleton from the Gokstad Ship: New Evaluation of an Old Find” (2009) by Per Holck, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 42(1), 40-49; “Revisiting the Gokstad” (2014) by Jason Urbanus, Archaeology, 67(4), 34-38; “Viking Collection Deteriorating” (September 2, 2019), Museum of Cultural History (Oslo); “Gokstadskipet slår sprekker og må støttes opp for å unngå kollaps” (May 6, 2019) by Arnfinn Mauren. AftenpostenVikingeskibs Museet: The Gokstad Boat website; “Prehistoric Naval Architecture of the North of Europe: The Gokstad Ship” (1892) by George H. Boehmer, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, pp. 618-628; Museum of Cultural History (Oslo) website; The Viking Ships: Their Ancestry and Evolution (1971) by A. W. Brøgger and Haakon Shetelig; Beowulf (2000) translated by Seamus Heaney; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway (The Saga of Ólaf Tryggvason) (1964) translated by Lee M. Hollander; “‘Viking’, a Gokstad Ship Replica from 1893” (1986) by Arne Emil Christensen, in Sailing into the Past, edited by Ole Crumlin-Pedersen and Max Vinner; “The Gjellestad Ship” (2018/2020), Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research press releases.

Return to Top of Page

 

HIST 204 Lecture Outline (Spring 2022 – Week 11)

HIST 204
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES

LITERATURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND SCULPTURE, c. 1000-1300

Tuesday:

 

Videos:

Reynard the Fox (13:04 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B9fciNTNkE

Villard de Honnecourt’s notebook (facsimile; 2:43 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki3dubfqDSI

Michael Wood, The art of the Western World: The Early Renaissance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXJBrBndmhk

The medieval parish churches of Norwich (4:48 min.):
https://norwichmedievalchurches.org/virtual-churches/

Music:

Beginning of El Cantar de mio Cid (Old Castilian, 12th cent.), introduced and sung by Emiliano Valdeolivas (2007, 2:35 min.; begin at 1:20 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_3eKC9exb0&feature=related

Here is Emiliano Valdeolivas’ full recording of El Cantar de mio Cid (1:16:21):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el7V9-IRGnM

(also, the first song only: La canción del destierro, 4:40 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9at2jKeUVLg

Beatritz, countess of Diá, female troubadour who wrote in Occitane (the language of S. France) c. 1175:
“A chantar m’er de so q”ieu no voldria” (8:24 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zah4VWPiNE&feature=relmfu
“Estat ai en greu cossirier” (6:11 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poq0otTzmCM&feature=relmfu

Bernart de Ventadorn (1125-1195), “Can l’herba fresch” (9:41 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j4uFTdfTn8

Literary genres that flourished between 1000 and 1300 included:

Epic poetry: vernacular chansons de gestes (“songs of great deeds”) such as The Song of Roland (French) and The Song of My Cid (Spanish; unique MS dated 1207) celebrated great heroes, military brotherhood, and feudal loyalty
Lyric poetry: male and female troubadours celebrated courtly love and sang of the longings and tribulations of lovers
Romance: prose tales of courtly heroism mixed with fantasy, such as the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table, and celebrating the knight’s love for his lady over his loyalty to his lord
Allegory: didactic prose or verse tales, in which abstract concepts are represented by personifications such as Charity, Jealousy, or Love. Example: The Romance of the Rose, by William de Lorris (d. c. 1145), continued by Jean de Meun (d. 1305).
Fabliaux: urban-centered short, crude, satyrical poems that mocked conventional authority and morality.
Fables: brief allegories of medieval society that mock authority and chivalric ideals, using animals as the characters (e.g., Renard the FoxNoble the Lion, etc.).
“Mystery” (guild) plays: plays based on religious themes, produced beginning in the 13th cent. by urban trade and craft guilds (“mysteries,” from Latin ministeria).

Architectural styles, 1000-1300:

Romanesque (c. 1000-1150): heavy, solid buildings emphasizing grandeur, unity, and stability, and featuring small windows, barrel vaults, and round arches, supported externally by wall buttresses

Examples:
Gothic (beginning c. 1150): airy, soaring buildings emphasizing height and light, and featuring huge windows, cross-ribbed vaults and pointed archesbraced externally by flying buttresses

Examples:
See also examples of stained glass windows:

 

Thursday:

Music:

Richard “the Lionheart,” king of England: “Ja Nus Hons Pris” (with Old French and English lyrics, 6:16 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yvucNpRQxc

Thibaut, count of Champagne, “Dame, ensinc est qu’il m’en covient aler” (5:02 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPT6TAe2Z7E&feature=related

Guillaume IX, duke of Aquitaine, “Ferai un vers pos mi sonelh” (6:26 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhlCtF7JJ6Q&feature=related

 

Videos:

Making medieval manuscripts (Getty Museum; 6:19 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuNfdHNTv9o

How parchment is made (BBC2; 4:03 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-SpLPFaRd0

Making Manuscripts: Quills (British Library, 2:49 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocnhYzKLeHU

How to make a quill pen (English Heritage; 2:58 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1wyYh97LDk

“Quem quaeritis?” Early English Drama, part 1 (5:32 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJmSaIBklTI&list=PLNvE9IKGfp-F1oKBabPAhKAo-nVnHla4h

Lincoln Mystery Plays 2016 (1:10 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g57CL2AKzo8

 

The 12th century saw a rise of vernacular literature, both courtly and popular. French vernacular poets of the 12th century include:

  • Thibaut IV, count of Champagne: love poetry and songs
  • Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian romances
  • Rutebeuf: poems and songs of daily life

Professional scribes copied texts onto parchment leaves, which were bound into books. Students and scholars often rented or borrowed books to copy themselves. Students took lecture notes and scholars drafted texts on wax tablets — all in Latin — and made a clean copy later on parchment.

Click here to see:

Religious plays in Latin and vernacular languages were performed in open spaces and in large churches to celebrate certain holy days, such as Christmas, Easter, and the new feast of Corpus Christi (click here to see a 15th-century painting by Jean Fouquet of the play of the martyrdom of St. Apollonia including a detail of the stands and of hell-mouth) (similar detail in color).

HIST 204 Lecture Outline (Spring 2022 – Week 10)

HIST 204
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES

 

SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES

Tuesday:

Music:

Student drinking and love songs, from the Carmina burana (11th-early 13th cent.):

Bacche bene venies (3:27 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBWsnxe1l9w&feature=relmfu

Tempus est iocundum (3:59 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPDCsi1mbhE&feature=related

In taberna quando sumus (3:59 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9dvU9TP8Y0

Gaudeamus igitur (3:59 min., with Latin and English lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUKfU2AOBY

Gaudeamus igitur, sung by Kundala, of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (1:58 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czIfEhsQoho

Gaudeamus igitur, sung at an Indonesian university (2018, 2:40 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18oPEvpIJh4

Gaudeamus igitur, sung by the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute Male Choir, 2009 (2:05 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sR8dPYDQ6U

 

 

Seven Liberal Arts:

Trivium = grammar, logic, rhetoric
Quadrivium = arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music

11th cent.: Rise of urban schools; decline of monastic schools
end of 11th-12th cent.: Introduction to West of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis (compiled mid 6th cent.; includes concept that “the will of the prince has the force of law”), and of Aristotle’s works (translated into Latin)

Major scholarly controversies:

debate over “universals” (“realists” held that universals were real; “nominalists” held that universals had no reality and were only names; “conceptualists” held that universals were real as concepts)

relationship between reason and revelation

Peter Abelard (1079-1142):

Sic et Non (Yes and No): How to reconcile conflicting texts?
Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes): Abelard’s affair with his student Heloise

Gratian, Decretum (Mainz, 1472): codification of canon law

Accursius of Bologna, Glossa Ordinaria (mid 1200s): codification of commentaries on Corpus Juris Civilis

Late 12th-13th cent.: Rise of universities (see map; most important: Bologna for law; Salerno for medicine; Paris for philosophy and theology)

Books were so valuable that they might be chained to library shelves, as here in Hereford Cathedral’s library

Attempts to reconcile reason with revelation:

  • Ibn Rushd (known in the West as Averroes, 1126-1198): attempted to reconcile Aristotle with Islam
  • Moses Maimonides (1135-1204): Guide for the Perplexed (see here in an autograph draft MS), attempted to reconcile Aristotle with the Hebrew Bible
  • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica: attempted to reconcile reason with Christianity

 

Thursday:

Videos:

Chris Day, “History of Oxford University” (lecture, 1:04:37 hrs; show 3:55 – 27:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uol4V1Wa8B0

How parchment is made (BBC, 4:03 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-SpLPFaRd0

Making manuscripts (Getty Museum, 6:19 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuNfdHNTv9o

A wax tablet from Roman Egypt with Greek homework on it (British Library, 2:31 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ9wA9TEs88

 

Readings:

Gies and Gies, pp. 154-165 (Chap. 11)

Pierre Abelard (1079-1142), Sic et Non (Yes and No), c. 1120, and Historia
calamitatum
 (The Story of My Misfortunes): excerpts (see both websites below)
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1120abelard.asp
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/211abel.html

Gregory IX: Statutes for the University of Paris, 1231
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/UParis-stats1231.asp

Jacques de Vitry: Student life at the University of Paris, 13th century
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/vitry1.asp

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-75), Summa theologica: Justification for the Inquisition
http://people.uwm.edu/carlin/st-thomas-aquinass-justification-for-the-inquisition/

 

HIST 101 Lecture Outline (Spring 2022 – Week 8)

HIST 101
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES

 

Week 8:

The Rise of Christianity in a Roman World, 40 BCE – 300 CE

 

Videos:

From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians, Part 1 of 2 (Frontline PBS, 1998, 1:49:42 hrs; start at 4:30 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN8FM1NCOSk

 

Readings:

Cultures, pp. 223-243 (The vitality of Roman religion; the Jesus mystery; a crisis in tradition; ministry and movement; what happened to his disciples?)

Roman religion:

The deification of Roman rulers began with the Senate’s deification of Julius Caesar after his assassination in 44 BCE, and Augustus’s dedication (in 29 BCE) of a temple in his honor at the east end of the Forum, on the site of Caesar’s funeral pyre. During the following 300 years, almost half of the state temples were dedicated to deified emperors. Among them was the Pantheon, built by Hadrian in honor of “all gods,” including deified emperors (exteriorinterior in 18Cinterior today).

The Roman state religion adopted new gods and new religious practices from other cultures, including the “mystery” or salvation religions that worshiped Cybele, the “Great Mother” (Magna Mater), from Asia Minor (Anatolia); Isis, from Egypt; Mithras, possibly from Persia; and Sol Invictus (the  “Unconquered Sun”), possibly from Syria. Some of the  new cults (veneration of individual deities or sacred persons, such as the cult of Isis, or the cult of Mithras) also produced spiritual or ethical texts, not merely collections of rote prayers or rituals.

The origins of Christianity

The main source for the life of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BCE to c. 30 CE) and the activities of his earliest followers is the New Testament, which contains 27 books, all written in Greek between 50 and 140 CE:

50-58  CE    7 authentic Epistles (letters) of Paul
68-95           4 Gospels, traditionally attributed to Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John
70-100         12 later Epistles, traditionally attributed to Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and John
80-85           Acts of the Apostles, traditionally attributed to Luke
92-96           Revelation (or Apocalypse), traditionally attributed to John
120-140       2 final Epistles, traditionally attributed to John and Peter

Jesus and his close circle of followers lived their lives as observant Jews in a Judaea that was ruled in part by a dynasty of Hellenized Jewish puppet-kings (the Herodians), but controlled by Rome. The Herodian kings, who were detested by the people, associated themselves with the hereditary Temple priests and their political allies, an aristocratic party or sect called the Sadducees, who supported Temple ritual and the literal reading of scripture. Their main political opponents were a party or sect called the Pharisees, who were commoners, supporters of rabbinical law and “oral Torah” commentaries, and believed in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and the coming of the Messiah, who would restore the freedom of the Jewish people.  A third sect, the Essenes, lived in isolated groups, led ascetic lives, and believed that the apocalyptic end of the world was imminent.

Judaea was a political tinderbox, and the Romans were edgy. An itinerant Jewish preacher, John the Baptist, prophesied the coming of the Messiah, urged people to repent, and performed baptisms as a sign of spiritual rebirth. After John was arrested and executed by one of the Herodian kings c. 27 CE, his followers turned to Jesus of Nazareth, who began a public ministry of preaching and miraculous healings, assisted by a group of twelve companions called his Apostles or Disciples. In his teaching and preaching, which emphasized love over ritual observance, Jesus antagonized both the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and he embraced the designation of messiah, the earthly savior foretold in the Hebrew Bible, and also claimed the title of “son of God.” This alarmed both many Jews and the harsh Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate. The Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy; Pilate had him crucified (c. 27-30 CE) as a dangerous criminal who had claimed to be the “king of the Jews.”

Jesus’s companions and followers fled into hiding, but three days later began to proclaim his resurrection from the dead, and his apostles, led by Peter, who had been designated to lead by Jesus before his crucifixion, began to preach Jesus’s message. They were joined sometime later by Saul, who had been a zealous persecutor of the Jesus movement.  Saul was a Jew and Roman citizen from Tarsus in Anatolia who had studied in Jerusalem with the famous Rabbi Gamaliel. Sent by the high priest to Damascus to track down followers of Jesus, Saul had a dramatic vision of Jesus (whom he had never seen in person), and thereafter became a passionate apostle and missionary, changing his  name to Paul, and helping to broaden the apostles’ evangelism to include gentiles as well as Jews. Seven letters (“epistles“) written in Greek by Paul between 50 and 58 CE to various Christian communities, are the earliest-written portions of the New Testament. Both Peter and Paul were executed in Rome in the 60s CE. (In 2006 archaeologists tentatively identified a tomb in the 4th-century Roman church of San Paolo fuori le mura as Paul’s tomb.)

 

Thursday:

Videos:

From Jesus to Christ: part 2 of 2 (Frontline PBS, 1998, 1:51:24 hrs):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXqFvfCaFwY

 

Readings:

Cultures, pp. 243-253 (Christianities everywhere; Romans in pursuit; philosophical foundations: Stoicism and Neoplatonism)

Sources, pp. 106-118 (Josephus, The Jewish War; Pliny the Younger, Letters; Celsus, “Against the Christians,” and Origen, “Against Celsus;” the Nicene Creed; Minucius Felix, refutations of charge that Christians are cannibals; the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas; St. Augustine of Hippo, on the Gospel of John)

Before the Great Revolt (66-73 CE), and after:

By the 50s CE Paul was writing, in Greek, to Christian communities in Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor (Anatolia). Nero’s persecution of the Christians in Rome in 64 CE indicates that by then the Romans no longer considered the Christians to be Jews, who were exempt from worshiping the Roman state gods. After the Great Revolt of the Jews in Judaea against the Roman empire, the divide grew between the followers of Jesus and the Jews. The four Gospels, all written in Greek after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (Mark, c. 70-73; Matthew and Luke, c. 80-90; John, c. 90-95), reflect this widening divide in their increasingly harsh  references to the Jews. For example, in Matthew (3.7-9), John the Baptist addresses the Sadducees and Pharisees as “You brood of vipers!” and in John (8.42-44), Jesus says to the Jewish leaders: “You are from your father the devil.”

Stoicism and Neoplatonism:

The philosophies of Stoicism and Neoplatonism flourished in the Roman empire, and were influential in many of the “mystery” religions and in  early Christianity. Stoicism emphasized the importance of self-discipline, service to the community, and calm acceptance of one’s fate. Neoplatonism, deriving from the teachings of Plato and his students, saw everything in the material world as imperfect versions that emanated from the ideal versions in the heavens. Influential Neoplatonists included the Delphic priest and historian Plutarch (46-120 CE), whose works included a collection of essays on ethical matters (Moralia); and the early Christian theologian Origen (185-254 CE) and his younger, pagan contemporary Plotinus (204-270 CE), who saw souls as migrating out to the physical world from a divine center, and then returning to it, purified.

 

Primary sources:

Josephus (37-c. 100 CE), The Jewish War (c. 75 CE):  Josephus was a senior Jewish officer at the beginning of the Great Revolt, but surrendered in 67 to  the Roman general, Vespasian, who the next year became emperor. Josephus then served as a translator for Vespasian’s son Titus (who led the Roman forces in Judaea after his father’s return to Rome), and later wrote a book about it all. Here he describes the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the famine within the city, the burning of the Temple, the fall of the city to the Romans, and the huge number of residents and refugees killed there.

Pliny the Younger (61-112 CE), Letters: Writes to Tacitus to describe his uncle’s death during the eruption of Vesuvius (which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii: some dead); writes to Trajan to describe his  handling of trials of Christians, and to report what he has learned about the Christian faith and its spread. (This is the first known pagan discussion of Christianity.)

Celsus (2nd cent. CE), Against the Christians:  The Greek philosopher Celsus’s arguments survive because the Christian theologian Origen (c. 184-c. 253) quoted them (in Against Celsus) in order to refute them. Celsus’s accusations included: Jesus and his followers used sorcery; Jesus invented the story of his birth to a virgin; Jesus’s mother was denounced by her husband for her adultery; Jesus learned sorcery while working as a servant in Egypt, and then returned to Judaea and proclaimed himself a god; unlike other mystery cults, which invite only those of just and upright and unpolluted life to enter and participate, the Christians invite sinners to join them; Jesus claimed to be the son of God, but his god did nothing to save Jesus from crucifixion, whereas the Greco-Roman gods would surely punish anyone who insulted them.

The Nicene Creed: Two versions (original and later). The original version was issued in 325 CE by the Council of Nicaea to refute the widespread Arian heresy (promoted by a priest called Arius) that the Trinity was hierarchical, and not co-equal, consubstantial, and co-eternal. It was later updated to reflect doctrinal decisions on further issues.

Minucius Felix (2nd cent. CE), Octavius: Denies the charge by pagans that Christians sacrifice babies, and says that the Romans themselves kill unwanted infants, commit abortion, sacrifice humans to their gods, eat sacrificial animals which themselves had eaten humans, and even prescribe the drinking of human blood as a treatment for epilepsy. Also denies the pagan charge that Christians engage in incestuous orgies, and says that they are virtuous when it comes to sex, and valorize celibacy, and that it is the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, and the Romans themselves who commit incest, as do their gods.

Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (text of c. late 1st to early 2nd cent. CE, from manuscript fragments 0f 130-250 CE in Greek):  A non-canonical gospel,  which survives in full in an Egyptian manuscript written in Coptic c. 340 CE. It consists of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, and says that his disciple Thomas wrote them down. Although almost two-thirds of these sayings are also in the canonical gospels (MarkMatthewLuke, and John), the Gospel of Thomas was condemned as unorthodox and apocryphal by a number of early Christian theologians, including Origen.

St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), sermon on the first epistle of John and the importance of love:  Augustine was a celebrated preacher as well as the early church’s greatest theologian. Here Augustine says that, while no one can always be praising God aloud, everyone can praise God constantly by living a life of charity, piety, chastity, and sobriety, but that the most important thing is to live in love.

HIST 204 Lecture Outline (Spring 2022 – Week 4)

HIST 204
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES

Conquests, Crusades, and Persecutions

TUESDAY

Music from medieval Spain:

Song of the Reconquista: Folquet de Marselha, Hueimais no-y conosc razo (De ahora en adelante no conozco razón)
(composed after Alfonso VIII of Castile’s defeat by al-Mansur at Alarcos in 1195; 9:58 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rALJfRSGPGw&feature=related

Cantigas de Santa Maria, X, “Rosa das Rosas” (from 13th cent. Castile, in Galician-Portuguese, 4:46 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgjZxQLiv7k&feature=related

Jewish music for the Sabbath:

Rabbi Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (1092-1167), “Ki eshmera Shabbat” (Hebrew, 3:31 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=0xd3N1zdaNU

Música Arábigo-Andaluza
, 13th cent. (3:49 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pXWjWe48IE&feature=related

 

Music of the Crusades:

Crucem sanctam subiit (Templar antiphon? mid 12th cent., 8:14 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6k6WFy3YYc

Thibaut, count of Champagne (1201-53), Seigneurs, sachiez qui or ne s’en ira (3:44 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-gTUUgZCQo&feature=related

Chevalier mult estez quariz (2:23 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbhcOMljgE

Trailer for French TV series “Thibaud ou les Croisades” (1968; 0:30 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q22FxOdEYLc&feature=related

 

European Conquests:

 

1002 Death of Al-Mansur and disintegration of of Al-Andalus (Muslim caliphate of Cordova) leads to:

c. 1050-1250 Gradual Reconquista (reconquest) of much of Iberia by Christian armies (Granada, the last Muslim stronghold, falls in 1492)
1085 Toledo conquered by Christian kingdom of Castile; becomes center for Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholarly exchange
1130s-40s Merger of Christian kingdoms of Aragon and Barcelona; capture of Lisbon by Crusaders of 2nd Crusade, and establishment of independent Christian kingdom of Portugal
1212-1264 Pope Innocent III proclaims a Crusade against Muslims in Spain; S. half of Portugal and Spain (except territory around Granada) and Balearic Islands conquered by Christians
1047-1090s Robert Guiscard (d. 1085, after rescuing Pope Gregory VII from Henry IV in 1084) and his brother Roger, sons of a Norman baron, conquer S. Italy and Sicily, and establish Norman kingdom there, with capital at Palermo, which becomes center of Muslim, Jewish, Greek, and Latin scholarly exchange.
c. 1125-c. 1350 German eastward expansion into Slavic lands

 

The First Crusade:

1071 Seljuk Turks smash Byzantine army at Manzikert, and conquer Palestine (including Jerusalem) from Fatimid caliphate of Egypt
1095 Pope Urban II receives appeal for help from Byzantine emperor; at church council at Clermont in Nov. 1095 he calls for Christian reconquest of the Holy Land (First Crusade)
1095-6 Peasants’ Crusade (or “Paupers’” or “People’s” Crusade), led by Peter the Hermit and Walter sans Avoirslaughters Jews in the Rhineland.  Many turn back or are killed in the Balkans; one group (led by Walter) reaches Constantinople, but most are killed near Nicaea by the Turks
1096-9 First Crusade, led by Norman and French barons and knights, conquers Syro-Palestine, including Jerusalem, and divides it up into four Crusader States: kingdom of Jerusalem, principality of Antioch, county of Tripoli, and county of Edessa (click here for a plan of Jerusalem, c. 1140s)

Online readings:

Robert the Monk, Historia Hierosolymitana (c. 1120): Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont, 1095

Map of the First Crusade, 1095-99

Ekkehard of Aurach, Hierosolymita (early 1100s): The first Crusaders

Fulk of Chartres: The Capture of Jerusalem in 1099, and the Latins in the East
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/fulk2.asp
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/fulk3.asp

 

Thursday:

THE LATER CRUSADES; THE INQUISITION

 

THE LATER CRUSADES:

1147-8 Fall of county of Edessa to Muslims (1144) leads to 2nd Crusade:

1170s-80s Re-unification of Muslim state in Egypt under Saladin (d. 1193)
1187 Saladin crushes Crusader army at Hattin and re-conquers much of Crusader States, including Jerusalem, leading to:
1189-93 Third Crusade, led by King Richard I (“the Lionheart”) of England, Philip II (“Augustus”) of France, and Emperor Frederick I (“Barbarossa”) of Germany:

1201-4 Fourth Crusade, preached by Pope Innocent III and led by lesser princes (including Baldwin, Count of Flanders):

1209-29 Albigensian Crusade, preached by Pope Innocent III against Cathars (rather successful; also extended French royal authority into S. France; > Inquisition)
1212 Crusade against Muslims in Spain, preached by Pope Innocent III (successful); “Children’s Crusade” (hopeless)
1217-21 Fifth Crusade: in Egypt (failure)
1229 Emperor Frederick II purchases possession of Jerusalem (it falls again to Muslims in 1244)
1248, 1270 Two Crusades (to Egypt and Tunis) led by King Louis IX (St. Louis) of France — both failures. King Louis is captured and held to ransom in the first, and dies of illness in the second.
1291 Fall of last Crusader stronghold (Acre)

Online readings:

Annales Herbipolenses, 1147: A hostile view of the 2nd Crusade, by an anonymous annalist of Würzburg

De expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum: Eyewitness account of the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, 1187

Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (Itinerary of the Travels and Deeds of King Richard): Richard the Lionheart makes peace with Saladin, 1192

THE INQUISITION:

12th cent. Rediscovery in the West of codification of Roman law (produced in Constantinople under Emperor Justinian in mid 500s) leads to rapid development of civil (secular) and canon (ecclesiastical) law, and election of canon lawyers to high church office, including the papacy.
1215 Pope Innocent III (a canon lawyer) convenes the 4th Lateran Council, the most important church council held in medieval Europe. It passes a series of canons (church laws), one of which (Canon 21) requires that all Christians shall make confession and take Communion at least once a year, at Easter, on pain of excommunication. This provides a legal basis for the Inquisition, which is established in the 1220s to identify and eliminate all heresies and heretics.

Online readings:

The development of the Inquisition:

Decree of the Council of Toulouse (1229)

Gregory IX sends Domincan friars as Inquisitors to France (1233)

Bernard Gui, Inquisitor’s Manual (c. 1307-23):
the heresies of the Waldensians or Poor Men of Lyon
the Cathars or Albigensians

Bernard Gui, Inquisitor’s Manual (c. 1307-23):

inquisitorial technique
(Notice the very sophisticated legal and interrogation skills displayed here by Bishop Gui in this text.)

HIST 398 Discussion Materials (Fall 2021 – Week 15)

HIST 398
SYLLABUS
WEEKLY DISCUSSION MATERIALS
BATTLE AND INJURY, DEATH AND BURIAL; THE LATE MEDIEVAL CASTLE

Tuesday:

Video:
“The Battle of Towton [1461]” [50 min.; watch 1:00-5:00; 7:00-11:24; 20:00- 26:30 (military surgery); 31:00-37:00 (weapons and injuries); 43:22-45:00 (wound sequencing)]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvvhtIx2DRc

Readings:

Paterson, “Military Surgery”

Mark Brennand, review of Blood Red Roses: The
Archaeology of a
 Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton AD 1461
https://web.archive.org/web/20090818193403/http://www.assemblage.group.shef.ac.uk/issue6/Roses_web.html

Battle injuries: skeletons from the Battle of Towton, 1461
https://web.archive.org/web/20210415114429/http://www.the-exiles.org/Article%20Towton.htm

The Towton Mass Grave Project
https://web.archive.org/web/20110927065749/http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/archsci/depart/resgrp/towton/

Brief account of the Battle of Towton (March 29, 1461):
https://web.archive.org/web/20080117131809/http://www.wars-of-the-roses.com/content/battles/towton.htm

 

Images:

Interactive map of the battlefield at Towton (N. Yorkshire):
https://web.archive.org/web/20110806075927/http://www.r3.org/archives/ricardian_britain/towton/caption/towtonmap.html

Photographs of Towton battlefield and surrounding area:
http://www.r3.org/richard-iii/ricardian-travel/yorkshire-north-eastern/towton/

Rolled up mail shirt found near the site of the battle of Kungslena, Sweden (1208)

Battle scenes from the Maciejowski Bible (Paris, c. 1234-44):

http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/images/maciejowski/leaf10/otm10va&b.gif

http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/images/maciejowski/leaf11/otm11ra&b.gif

http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/images/maciejowski/leaf23/otm23va&b.gif

Skeletons from the battle of Visby on the island of Gotland, Sweden (July 1361):
Brief website on battle and skeletons
Skulls: with mail coif,  with projectiles, with coif and smashed face
Coat of plates from one of the graves

The battle of Towton, Palm Sunday (March 29th), 1461:
Detail of mass burial
Sketch of mass burials

Soldier with poleaxe (detail of stained glass window):
https://web.archive.org/web/20070706095901/http://www.wars-of-the-roses.com/images/images2/wars_of_the_roses.jpg

Medicine and surgery:

The four humors

Urine wheel, 14th cent. (parchment quick-reference text, meant to fold up and hang at the physician’s belt)

Uroscopy: physician examining a urine flask and physician or apothecary examining a customer’s urine flask (both 14th cent.),
parodied as monkey examining urine flask (Cambrai, BM, 87), and similar (Bodleian, MS 264)

Drawing teeth, early 14th cent.

Writings of John of Arderne, 1370s (in later manuscripts)

Medieval arrowheads (Museum of London)

“Wound man” (German, late 15th cent.,Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm 597 )

Public dissection of cadaver, 15th cent.

Herbal, c. 1480-1500

Anatomical sculpture, ivory, c. 1500 (6-7 inches high)

 

Thursday:

 

Week 15 mini-paper due by 4:59 PM:
You have been injured during a siege. Describe your injuries and their treatment.

Readings:

Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, Chapter 2 (pp. 27-58) (available online through the UWM Libraries: see link in “Required Readings” in syllabus)

Pounds, The Medieval Castle, Chapter 10 (pp. 249-260, 269-75), and Chapter 12 (pp. 295-300)

Gies and Gies, Life, Chap. 12 (pp. 218-224)

 

Soul saved by angel at moment of death

Hearse and effigy of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d. 1439)

Corpse of Richard II in hearse

Mock funeral procession with animals (Gorleston Psalter)

Details from other late medieval castles and palaces:

Penshurst Place, Kent (1341 and later): aerial view, hall interiordais end of hall
Caerphilly Castle, Glamorgan (begun 1268; hall remodeled 1320s): exterior of hall (on right); interior
Great Hall at Penshurst Place, Kent (late 14th cent.)
Great Hall, Durham Castle, 14th cent.
Well-house with donkey treadmill, Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight
14th-century Great Hall;  Buffet in 14th-century Great Hall  at Dirleton Castle, East Lothian, Scotland
Kitchen, Windsor Castle, Berkshire (late 15th cent.; painted in 1818); aerial photo of fire damage at Windsor Castle in 1992; painting (1999) of restored kitchen after fire
Cotehele House (aerial photo), late 15th cent.

Oxford Colleges: aerial photograph
Great Hall, Christ Church College (early 16th cent.)

 

HIST 398 Discussion Materials (Fall 2021 – Week 13)

HIST 398
SYLLABUS
WEEKLY DISCUSSION MATERIALS

 

THE CASTLE AT WAR

Tuesday:

 

Oral presentations in class, 2-3 min. each
(see end of syllabus for topic)

No script or mini-paper due.

Readings:

Gies and Gies, Life, Chap. 10 (pp. 186-205)

Macaulay, pp. 64-78

Letter from Alexander de Balliol to Edward I concerning spies:
https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/2021/08/22/letter-to-king-edward-i-concerning-spies-1301/

Order by Edward II to the constable of Portchester Castle to search for
spies, 10 March 1326:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/medieval-castles/medieval-castles-source-3/

The Lanercost Chronicle: Robert Bruce besieges Carlisle, 1316
http://members.iinet.net.au/~rmine/carlisle.html

 

Thursday:

Thanksgiving Day

(no class)

Letter from Alexander de Balliol to King Edward I concerning spies (21 Sept. 1301)

September 21, 1301: Letter from Alexander de Bailioel [of Cavers] to King Edward [I].

He has heard from the king’s letters that Sir John de Soulys has gone towards Galloway with a great company of Scots. The writer had and still has his spies among them, and will inform the keepers of the march as soon as he hears the Scots are coming. The king has told him that if he provided spies they should remain under his control, and he will do his best for the king. The king must not take it amiss that the writer has not given him news more quickly, for he would hate to send the king anything other than certain news. As to what the king has told him concerning Sir Walter de Borudoun, who is staying at Chastel Terres [Carstairs], the writer will be ready whenever Sir Walter commands him. The writer and his fellow keepers of the march are threatened by a possible Scottish raid to destroy the writer’s lands and to seize and defend the forest, so that they have arranged to gather next Sunday [24 Sept.] at a place on the march to inspect their forces. Asks for the king’s orders, as to one who is ready to obey.

[Letter dated at:] Cavers [Roxburghshire]

[Language:] French

[The National Archives:] SC 1/15/2

[Source: Taken verbatim from De Re Militari website,  https://deremilitari.org/2016/10/warfare-between-england-and-scotland-1299-1301-according-to-documents-from-the-english-government/ (accessed 22 August 2021).]