Introduction
This course attempts to answer the
question posed in the Broadway musical, Camelot. What do the simple
folk do? The mythical King Arthur is portrayed as ruling in the
fifth century which is approximately the time that the Middle Ages
are said to have begun.
The so-called Dark Ages are generally
thought to span the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and
the beginning of William the Conqueror's reign in England. The
period from 1066 through the beginning of the Renaissance represents
the remainder of the Middle Ages.
The term “Dark Ages” refers
specifically to the supposed deterioration of intellectual, cultural
and economic life in Western Europe. In much of the rest of the then
known world intellectual and economic life was thriving. And more
recent historical and archaeological scholarship has shown that the
European Dark Ages weren't quite so dark after all.
This course features documentary films
presented by historians Robert Bartlett, Helen Castor, Stephen Baxter
and Michael Wood. Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Peter
Ginn and Tom Pinfold participate in the re-creation of a medieval
castle where they live and work as if they were living in the 13th
century.
Schedule:
February 1
Overview
What were the historical forces that led to the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages? We'll take a Crash Course look at some of them.
Too Much Too Young: The Children of the Middle Ages
Medievalist Dr Stephen Baxter takes a fresh look at the Middle Ages through the eyes of children. At a time when half the population was under eighteen he argues that, although they had to grow up quickly and take on adult responsibility early, the experience of childhood could also be richly rewarding. Focusing on the three pillars of medieval society - religion, war and work - Baxter reveals how children played a vital role in creating the medieval world.
February 15
Inside the Medieval Mind: Knowledge
To our medieval forebears the world could appear mysterious, even enchanted. Sightings of green men, dog heads and alien beings were commonplace. The world itself was a book written by God. But as the Middle Ages grew to a close, it became a place to be mastered, even exploited.
Medieval Villages and Cities
The Peasant
Terry Jones has been leafing through the history books to find out what the medieval world was really like. What he discovered is a treasure trove of extraordinary stories and characters that challenge the tired traditional stereotypes we all grew up with.
The Worst Jobs in History: The Dark Ages
Tony Robinson illuminates the dark ages by looking at the workaday world of the English peasant.
Life in Medieval Europe
Life in a middle ages village is portrayed in this brief program. From baking bread to identifying witches life in a rural village was quite unlike anything we experience today.
Medieval World
One of a series of lectures by a Purdue professor covering all aspects of medieval life from food, clothing, entertainment and medicine to the Viking invasions.
March 1
In Search of Beowulf
Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages.
Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.
March 8
Domesday
Dr Stephen Baxter, medieval historian at King's College, London, reveals the human and political drama that lies within the parchment of England's earliest surviving public record, the Domesday Book. He also finds out the real reason it was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086.
The Domesday Book is the first great national survey of England, a record of who owned every piece of land and property in the kingdom. It also records the traumatic impact of the Norman conquest on Anglo-Saxon England, the greatest social and political upheaval in the country's history.
Most historians believe that Domesday is a tax book for raising revenue, but Baxter has his own theory. He proves that the Domesday Book could not have been used to collect taxes and he argues that it is about something far more important than money. Its real purpose was to confer revolutionary new powers on the monarchy in Norman England.
March 15th NO CLASS: Spring Break
March 22
Christina: A Medieval Life
Historian Michael Wood presents a portrait of ordinary people living through extraordinary times, tracing the story of a real-life peasant of 14th-century Hertfordshire.
She wasn't a famous person, or of noble blood, yet Christina's story is important in understanding our own roots. In this time of war, famine, floods, climate change and the Black Death are the beginnings of the end of serfdom, the growth of individual freedom and the start of a market economy.
Wood recounts the history of medieval Britain told not from the top of society, but from the bottom. Through the lives of Christina and her fellow villagers, we see how the most volatile century in British history played a crucial role in shaping the character and destiny of a nation, and its people.
March 29
Medieval Lives: A Good Birth
For a medieval woman approaching the moment of labour and birth, there were no antiseptics to ward off infection or anaesthetics to deal with pain. Historian Helen Castor reveals how this was one of the most dangerous moments a medieval woman would ever encounter, with some aristocratic and royal women giving birth as young as 13. Birth took place in an all-female environment and the male world of medicine was little help to a woman in confinement. It was believed that the pains of labour were the penalty for the original sin of humankind - so, to get through them, a pregnant woman needed the help of the saints and the blessing of God himself.
April 5
Medieval Lives: A Good Marriage
Unlike birth and death, which are inescapable facts of life, marriage is rite of passage made by choice and in the Middle Ages it wasn't just a choice made by bride and groom - they were often the last pieces in a puzzle, put together by their parents, with help from their family and friends, according to rules laid down by the Church.
Helen Castor reveals how in the Middle Ages marriage was actually much easier to get into than today - you could get married in a pub or even a hedgerow simply by exchanging words of consent - but from the 12th century onwards the Catholic Church tried to control this conjugal free-for-all. For the Church marriage was a way to contain the troubling issue of sex, but, as the film reveals, it was not easy to impose rules on the most unpredictable human emotions of love and lust.
April 12
Secrets of the Castle: Episode One
Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold turn the clock back as they learn how to build a medieval castle using the tools, techniques and materials available in the 13th century.
Although Britain has some of the finest remaining castles of the medieval period, many of their secrets have been lost in time.
Peter and Tom set to work straight away, learning the skills of the medieval stonemasons to construct a beautiful spiral staircase. After digging stone out of the quarry, they take it to the tracing floor, where every stone is marked out using the most closely guarded knowledge of the medieval castle builders: geometry. Then each step is hand-carved, a three-day task, before being winched into place using the treadmill-powered crane.
Meanwhile, Ruth sets about equipping the simple wattle and daub hovel that is to be their base. She experiments by laying a rush floor, and she commissions clay-cooking pots and an oak grain arc to store their wheat and barley. Medieval saws were incredibly expensive, so the arc is carved with an axe and assembled without nails.
It becomes clear that all the stone, wood, mortar, dyes, food and water required for the castle needed to be sourced from the surrounding landscape - transporting heavy goods in the 13th century was expensive. One of the most important resources on a medieval building site was water, so Peter visits a wood turner to make a pulley, and Tom makes a rope to hoist the bucket from the well. As they enjoy a simple meal of barley and vegetable pottage, they reflect that there are no easy jobs in the medieval age!
April 19
Secrets of the Castle: Episode Two
This time the team are defending the castle. Ruth, Tom and Peter explore the art of medieval combat and the building of the castle's defensive structures.
The 13th century was part of the golden age of castle building. Driven by the legacy of bloody crusades and vicious dynastic struggles, it was an era when castle design and architecture were adapting as quickly as the battle strategies and tactics devised to bring them down.
The team look at the ingenious features medieval castle builders came up with to withstand attack from an ever more formidable array of siege engines.
They also explore the craft behind the weapons they had to resist, from launching medieval missiles with a trebuchet to making, and using, one of the most feared weapons of the age: the crossbow.
Ruth has a go at making cloth armour in the form of a gambeson, while Tom and Peter get to grips with constructing arrow loops, a key defensive feature of the castle walls. Ruth discovers that the job of making nails was largely regarded as women's work.
April 26
Secrets of the Castle: Episode Three
Ruth, Peter and Tom enter the surprisingly colourful world of medieval interior design.
Peter and Tom render and limewash the inside walls of a guard tower, transforming its dark stone walls into a bright space.
Ruth makes medieval paints which were used to decorate walls with ornate patterns. Most of the pigments are from ochre extracted from the earth - burning it creates darker tones. She decorates the castle bedchamber using designs based on those recently discovered at an 11th-century church nearby.
Peter gets to grips with the castle's indoor toilets. An integral feature of medieval castles, the toilets were known as garde-robes, a French word for wardrobe. Clothes would often be kept inside them because it was believed the smell of ammonia from urine kept parasites at bay.
Tom makes tiles - a process that begins with mining clay, before processing and shaping it. The tiles are then fired in a kiln. Four thousand tiles are fired at a time, requiring temperatures of over 1,000 degrees. It's a three-day process - and a tense one. If things don't go to plan, months of work will be wasted.
It's estimated that over 80,000 tiles will be needed for the roofs and floors of Guedelon Castle.
May 3
Secrets of the Castle: Episode Four
The team delves deeper into the secrets of the skilled communities who built medieval castles. The stonemasons working on the castle walls are dependent upon blacksmiths, whose metalwork was magical to the medieval mindset, and upon carpenters employing sophisticated geometry.
Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold discover the ways in which every aspect of construction at Guédelon Castle requires the masons, blacksmiths and carpenters to coordinate their efforts - from making and sharpening tools to processing wood and securing timber scaffolding on the castle walls.
A water mill has been built, complete with sluice gates and a network of waterways to power it. Water mills were hugely important to medieval communities. Producing flour for a loaf of bread required up to two hours of grinding grain by hand. But one mill could produce as much flour as around 40 people grinding by hand, thereby eliminating the daily grind. In England, as early as 1080, there were 5,624 watermills according to the Domesday Book. But there are major teething problems with the Guédelon mill, which Peter and Tom are helping to fix.
A wooden walkway is also being constructed to connect the Chapel Tower with the Great Hall. The team follows every step of the process - from cutting down trees and shaping the wood through to the complex task of measuring up, before finally bringing the cut timbers into place around the stone walls of the tower.
Ruth rewards the team with a pike supper - a medieval delicacy - and Tom uses flour ground at the mill for his very first attempt at making bread.
May 10
Secrets of the Castle: Episode Five
As their time at Guédelon Castle in France draws to an end, the team looks at the castle's place in the wider medieval world.
Thirteenth-century Europe was a busy, developing, connected place, where work, trade, pilgrimages and crusades gave people the opportunity to travel across the continent and beyond.
Peter visits Vezeley Abbey - where Richard the Lionheart set off on the Third Crusade from - to examine first-hand some of the influences that were shaping the stone architecture of the period. Back at Guedelon, he helps build an ornate entrance to the chapel inspired by ideas from distant lands. Ruth looks at pilgrimage, the means by which anyone, regardless of class, age or gender, could travel afar.
Tom works on a new door for the castle kitchen, vital for protecting all the valuable spices kept inside (some worth more than gold), and Ruth makes an exotic treat from eastern luxuries. She also explores the textiles trade, colouring silk with expensive handmade dyes, making gold thread, and bringing them together to create immaculate embroidery, one of the few tradecrafts where women were the boss.
The team comes together to help construct one of the castle's most ambitious projects to date, the spectacular limestone window for the chapel. They stand on top of the tower as the keystone is eased into place - it's the perfect spot to end their medieval adventure.
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