Medieval History MEH – 2024-2025

The course is particularly addressed to students of the programme MEH (Master of Art in European History) or any other Master degree student who wish to acquire 6 CFU in Medieval History during the academic year 2024-2025.
PLEASE NOTE: The course is taught in English.
The Middle Ages were for Europe years marked by great changes in power structures, in relations between Church and secular powers, in culture, in society, in forms of production and exchange. The course aims to offer students an introduction to the knowledge of such a fascinating and complex reality in its various aspects: political, institutional, economic, social, religious. Topics such as the importance of historical research in the present time and the implications of prejudices about the Middle Ages in contemporary society will also be addressed. With the aim of proposing an initial approach to the methods of historical research, written and unwritten sources relating to various aspects of medieval history will be presented and commented on during the lessons.
During the course, the main themes and problems of European medieval history from the 5th to the 15th century will be addressed. After introducing the concept of Middle Ages and the fundamental characters of this historical period, the following will be tackled in succession: the Late Antiquity and the end of the Western Roman Empire, the Latin-Germanic synthesis, the Eastern Roman Empire, the birth and development of Islam, the Carolingian Empire and its crisis, the economic expansion of the 9th-13th centuries, the Church reform of the 11th century, the Crusades and the medieval Mediterranean, the Italian communes, Empire and papacy in the 12th-14th centuries, the main European monarchies, the late medieval crisis, the development of city lordships and regional states, the end of the Middle Ages between Humanism and geographical discoveries.

1. Ch. Wickham, Medieval Europe. Form the Breakup of the Western Roman Empire to the Reformation, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2016
2. Knowledge of ONE of the following volumes:
   • P. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2003.
   • J. Haldon, The Empire That Would Not Die: The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640–740, Harvard University Press, Boston 2016.
   • A. Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, University of California Press, Berkeley 2018.
   • H. Kennedy, Caliphate: The History of an Idea, Basic Books, New York 2016.
   • L. Roach, Empires of the Normans: Conquerors of Europe, Pegasus Books, New York 2022.
   • Ch. Wickham, Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2018.
   • A People’s Church: Medieval Italy and Christianity, 1050–1300, ed. by A. Paravicini Bagliani – N. Senoçak, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2023.
   • J.-C. Maire Vigueur, The Forgotten Story. Rome in the Communal Period, Viella, Roma 2016.
   • D. Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor, Pimlico, London 2002.
   • A. Barbero, Dante, Profile Books, London 2021.
   • M. Bailey, After the Black Death: Economy, Society, and the Law in Fourteenth-century England, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2021.