Sixth lecture for GNED 1202 (Texts and Ideas). It is a required general education course for all first-year students at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. My version of the course is structured as a kind of Intro to Western Civilization style course.

1. Lecture 6
MEDIEVAL
INTRO TO WESTERN HUMANITIES

2. http://explorethemed.com/FallRome.asp?c=1

3. Confessions
Augustine
On blackboard in class

4. Hagia Sophia, Constantinople (Istanbul) [532 CE]

5. Hagia Sophia, interior

6. Icon depicting Emperor Constantine (center)
and the Fathers of the First Council of
Nicaea (325) holding the Nicaean Creed of
381
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all
things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, begotten of the Father, Light of Light,
very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one
substance with the Father; By whom all things were
made. …

7. Court of Justinian,
apse mosaic, San Vitale, Ravenna, c. 547

11. in and Child Enthroned,
ikon, Hosios Loukas, Greece, c. 1020.

12. Hagia Sophia, 13th century

15. Example of typical medieval-era village

16. http://www.pulsarmedia.eu/data/media/920/Monastery_of_Agia_Triada_Meteora_Greece.jpg

17. Saint Simon Stylite
Saint Anthony the Great + Saint Paul the
Hermit meeting in the desert

18. Day in the life in a monastery:
2:00am – rise
2:10-3:30am – Matins (prayer)
3:30-5:00am – private reading
5am-5:45am – Lauds (prayer)
5:45-8:15am – private reading + short breakfast
8:15-2:30pm – work + short prayer breaks
2:30-3:15pm – dinner
3:15-4:15pm – reading
4:15-4:45pm – Vespers (prayer)
4:45-5:15pm – Compline (prayer)
5:15-6:00pm – prepare for sleep

19. High Middle Ages
Monastery

20. Reconstruction monastery
St. Gall Switzerland

32. A medieval king
investing a bishop with
the symbols of office

36. Medieval World View
At the center of medieval belief was the image of a perfect God and a
wretched and sinful human being.
God had given Adam and Eve freedom to choose; rebellious and
presumptuous, they had used their freedom to disobey God. In
doing so, they made evil an intrinsic part of the human personality.
With God’s grace they could overthrow their sinful nature and gain
salvation; without grace they were utterly damned.

37. Pope Innocent III, On the Misery of the Human Condition, c. 1200
What man does is depraved and illicit, is shameful and
improper and vain. Man was formed of dust, slime, and
ashes. He will become fuel for the eternal fires, food for
worms, a mass of rottenness.
Almost the whole life of mortals is full of moral sin, so that
one can scarcely find anyone who does not go astray … In
life man produces only dung and vomit; in death only
rottenness and stench.
… there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, there shall
be groaning, wailing, shrieking and flailing of arms and
screaming, screeching, and shouting; there shall be fear and
trembling, toil and trouble, holocaust and dreadful stench,
and everywhere darkness and anguish; there shall be
asperity, cruelty, calamity, poverty, distress, and utter
wretchedness; they will feel an oblivion of loneliness; there
shall be bitterness, terror and thirst …

38. Perverse men are thus sent down to Hell.
They are tortured, burned in flames. And they tremble at the demons and groan perpetually
Last Judgment, Sainte-Foy, Conques. c. 1130.

40. poachers
And not so deadly sins
Bad musicians
Satan
pride
greed
gluttony
lust sloth slander envy
The Deadly Sins

45. Plato (427-347) – various dialogues
Aristotle (384-322)
– most of his writings lost
(we have just “notes”)
– works on
logic, metaphysics, politics, ethics, aesthetics,
poetics, biology, science, rhetoric, physics
Harun al-Rashid (763-809)
– Caliph of Baghdad establishes the Bayt al-Hikma (House of
Wisdom, i.e., library), the key intellectual centre of the Islamic
Golden Age
– begins massive translation effort of Greek, Persian, and Indian
texts (including Aristotle).
– world’s greatest library until its destruction by Mongols in 1258
– Byzantine re-translations of classic Greek originals.

46. Ibn Sina (980-1037), also known as Avicenna
(Persian), wrote commentaries on Aristotle
Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), also known as
Averroes (Iberian ), wrote commentaries on
Aristotle and on Avicenna
Translations of Avicenna into Latin in
Muslim Spain circa 1150 and then
distributed into Spain and France
Translations of Averroes into Latin in
Muslim Spain circa 1200
Translations of Greek texts into Latin from contact with
Byzantine scholars

48. A student’s day at University of Paris
4am – rise
5am – 6am –lecture
6-8am – mass + breakfast
8-10am – lectures
11-12pm – disputations
12-1pm – lunch
1-3pm – study with tutors
3-5pm – lectures
6pm – supper
7-9 – study with tutors
9pm – bed

60. Arena Chapel, Padua, 1305-6

61. Leafless tree is
traditional symbol of
death; it sits on barren
ridge that plunges
towards dead Christ
John the Evangelist
Mary is also along the arms echoes that of
diagonal, reinforcing angels; his sight is
the emptiness of the down the diagonal
landscape
Christ is at the bottom
of a stark diagonal
First artist since antiquity to
show figures from behind; makes
scene more realistic
Giotto, The Lamentation [1305-6, Arena Chapel, Padua], about 8’ x 8’

64. The donor of the
Chapel, Enrico Scrovegni

67. Medieval Synthesis
Christianity
Knight/Elite-Oriented
Scholasticism Power
(provided intellectual
justification for
Christianity and power
of kings and knights)
Feudal economic relations
(serfs/peasants obligated to work the
land of the king/lord/knight)

68. Breakdown of Medieval Synthesis (1350 – 1450)
Famine (1310 – 1330)
(Some 15-25% of European population dies)
Plague (1347-49)
(Some 30-70% of European population dies)
Western Schism (1378-1417)
(split within the Catholic Church due to political reasons so
that there were simultaneous Popes in Rome and Avignon)
Military Revolution
(military power beginning to chang from horse knights to mass infantry)
Trade
(contact with Islamic, Chinese, Byzantine, and Mongol cultures)

69. In the year of the Lord 1348 there was a very great pestilence in the
city and district of Florence. It was of such a fury and so tempestuous
that in houses in which it took hold previously healthy servants who
took care of the ill died of the same illness. Almost non of the ill
survived past the fourth day. Neither physicians nor medicines were
effective. Whether because these illnesses were previously unknown
or because physicians had not previously studied them, there seemed
to be no cure. There was such a fear that no one seemed to know
what to do. When it took hold in a house it often happened that no one
remained who had not died. And it was not just that men and women
died, but even sentient animals died. Dogs, cats, chickens, oxen,
donkeys, sheep showed the same symptoms and died of the same
disease. And almost none, or very few, who showed these symptoms,
were cured. … This pestilence began in March and ended in
September 1348.
Marchione di Coppo Stefani , Florentine Chronicle

70. In October 1347, twelve Genoese trading ships put into the
harbor at Messina in Sicily. The ships had come from the
Black Sea where the Genoese had several important trading
posts.
The ships contained rather strange cargo: dead or dying
sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an
egg located in their groins and armpits. These swellings
oozed blood and pus. Those who suffered did so with
extreme pain and were usually dead within a few days.

72. “In 1348, two thirds of the population was afflicted, and almost all died;
in 1361 half contracted the disease, and very few survived; in 1371 only
one-tenth became sick, and many survived; in 1382, only one twentieth
became sick, and almost all survived.”
Papal Physician Raymundus Chalmelli
The traditional figure for the number of
deaths caused by the Black Death in
Europe in 1348 is one third of the
population.
In recent years, however, examinations of
places where there is actual data shows
mortality rates in the 50%-80% of the
population.

74. Of one hundred and forty Dominican friars
at the monastery at Montpellier, only one
man survived.

77. “By the year ad 1348, human iniquity and every manner
of sin so expanded over the earth that its fetor and noise
reached the just ears of the Almighty. Then His just wrath
fell …”.
Dies Irae
Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets' warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!
Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth,
when from heaven the Judge descendeth,
on whose sentence all dependeth.
Ah! that day of tears and mourning!
From the dust of earth returning
man for judgment must prepare him;
Spare, O God, in mercy spare him!

80. “I do not deny that we deserve these things and even
worse; but our ancestors also deserved them … why is
it that the violence of [God's] vengeance lies so
extraordinarily upon our times? … We have sinned as
much as anyone, but we alone are being punished.”
Nor, for all their number, were their obsequies honored by either tears
or lights or crowds of mourners rather, it was come to this, that a dead
man was then of no more account than a dead goat would be to-day.
Boccaccio, The Decameron

81. Europe didn’t regain its
year 1300 population
level until about 1800.

82. Serfs
Landowners (nobility/knights/royalty)
How would the loss of 30 to
70% of the population affect Skilled labour (in urban areas)
these elements of medieval
society?

83. A Tale from the Decameron
By John William Waterhouse
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375) wrote his Decameron between 1349-1352. It Each day has a new theme assigned to it except for days 1 and 9: misfortunes that
concerns a group of seven young women and three young men who fled from plague- bring a person to a state of unexpected happiness; people who have achieved an
ridden Florence for a villa outside of the city walls. To pass the time, each member of object they greatly desired, or recovered a thing previously lost; love stories that ended
the party tells one story for every one of the ten nights spent at the villa (10 people unhappily; love that survived disaster; those who have avoided danger; tricks women
telling ten stories = 100 stories). have played on their husbands; tricks both men and women play on each other; those
who have given very generously whether for love or another endeavour.