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Speaker 1: Oh, lessons from the world's top professors, anytime, anyplace, world

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Speaker 1: history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.

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Speaker 1: This is half hour History, Secrets of the Medieval World.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. I'm not a professor, but

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Speaker 1: I do sound like one, and I'm here to bring

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Speaker 1: you into the world of half hour History, where we'll

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Speaker 1: dive into an academic topic that I personally think you're

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Speaker 1: gonna love. And you don't even have to show up

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Speaker 1: for class. These series come right to you to listen

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Speaker 1: to while you're walking, driving, gardening, cooking, practicing falconry like me.

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Speaker 1: I don't do that, but it's cool if you do.

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Speaker 1: In this twelve part series, we're going to dig into

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Speaker 1: the medieval times. No, not the restaurant with jousting tournaments,

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Speaker 1: actors delivering lines and questionable English accents, and crowds gobbling

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Speaker 1: giant turkey legs. The real thing. From the Fall of

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Speaker 1: Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance. We're taking a

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Speaker 1: trip back in time to that era of chivalry, warring popes,

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Speaker 1: and the construction of Notre Dame. Doctor Christopher Bulido is

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Speaker 1: going to lead you on this journey. He's an author

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Speaker 1: and professor who teaches ancient and medieval history at Kane University,

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Speaker 1: my alma mater. That's actually true. In this first episode,

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Speaker 1: Chris will explain the times in medieval times and what

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Speaker 1: it was like to live in the Dark Ages. So

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Speaker 1: light a candle and Chris will take it from here.

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Speaker 1: What we're going to try to do is give a

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Speaker 1: picture about a thousand years of history that's full of

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Speaker 1: cartoon characters, full of conventional wisdom that often is very wrong.

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Speaker 1: And so what we're going to try to do to

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Speaker 1: begin is simply ask ourselves, when we're the Middle Ages,

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Speaker 1: where are they in history? Is that the same thing

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Speaker 1: as the Dark Ages and the Dark Ages? If the

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Speaker 1: Dark Ages were so bad, how did we end up

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Speaker 1: with Gothic cathedrals, with universities, with Francis, with Claire, with

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Speaker 1: a Bernard of claire Vaux. How did we have this

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Speaker 1: flowering of nights and chivalry? How did that happen? If

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Speaker 1: things were so bad? Well, what we're going to find

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Speaker 1: is that medieval Europe was kind of the first original

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Speaker 1: multicultural civilization. And we're going to take about a thousand

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Speaker 1: years from roughly the Fall of Rome about five hundred

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Speaker 1: a d or CE, and I'll talk about those distinctions

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Speaker 1: in a minute to about fifteen hundred, so from the

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Speaker 1: fall of Rome to roughly Columbus who sails the Ocean

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Speaker 1: Blue in fourteen hundred and ninety two, or Martin Luther

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Speaker 1: who posts the ninety five theses in fifteen seventeen. Then

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Speaker 1: one thing that I want to be clear about is

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Speaker 1: that we will have names and dates and places, but

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Speaker 1: I'm far more interested not in names and dates and places,

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Speaker 1: but in movements, in ideas. Can we get a sense

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Speaker 1: of what it is that the Middle Ages was about?

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Speaker 1: What was it like to live in that period? What

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Speaker 1: did these people care about? What were they willing to

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Speaker 1: live and what were they willing to die for? And

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Speaker 1: that tells us about their values. So we're going to

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Speaker 1: begin by looking at what happened after Rome fell, and

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Speaker 1: I believe it really transformed, and we'll talk about that

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Speaker 1: a little bit more on topic two. Then we're going

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Speaker 1: to look at a recovering period during what's called the

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Speaker 1: Carolingian Renaissance around eight hundred under Charlemagne. Then things are

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Speaker 1: going to slow down a little bit more, and then

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Speaker 1: there's going to be this explosion of activity around ten

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Speaker 1: to fifty or eleven hundred, where universities come together, guilds

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Speaker 1: come together. There's a spiritual reawakening called the twelfth century Renaissance,

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Speaker 1: where popes and emperors and kings are fighting for ultimate authority,

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Speaker 1: and everything goes really well until about thirteen hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirteen hundred the bottom falls out. Everything that could go

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Speaker 1: wrong did go wrong. It's like the nineteen thirties Great

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Speaker 1: Depression running for about two hundred years. The papacy is

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Speaker 1: in Avignon, there are three popes, there's the Black Death.

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Speaker 1: The superpowers of England and France are fighting a war

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Speaker 1: called the Hundred Years War. It's just awful. So that's

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Speaker 1: the big kind of canvas. So ask yourself when I

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Speaker 1: think of the Middle Ages, when I think of medieval Europe,

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Speaker 1: what verbs come to mind? What nouns come to mind?

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Speaker 1: What images come to mind? And one of the first

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Speaker 1: things people ask is, well, isn't this phrase going medieval?

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Speaker 1: Which is shown up on YouTube videos and it's shown

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Speaker 1: up on T shirts and movies going Medieval? It has

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Speaker 1: this image of this repressive, monolithic, homogeneous population, a population

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Speaker 1: of superstition and religious fanaticism that was against science and rationality,

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Speaker 1: and of course these are all caricatures, and that's not

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Speaker 1: what this course is about. We do find within that

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Speaker 1: thousand year period, as I've already mentioned, some periods that

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Speaker 1: were better and some periods that were worse. Highs and lows,

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Speaker 1: ebbs and flows. Well, we find that in our own lives.

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Speaker 1: We find that in American history. We shouldn't be surprised

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Speaker 1: at that. And yet we also have this very at

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Speaker 1: the same time that we have this notion that going

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Speaker 1: medieval is bad, we have this very romantic notion of

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Most of us have been to Gothic

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Speaker 1: cathedrals in Europe or Neo Gothic cathedrals in our own communities,

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Speaker 1: and these are churches that were built usually after eighteen fifty.

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Speaker 1: In the United States, there was a neo Medievalist movement

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Speaker 1: from eighteen fifty to about nineteen twenty where people became

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Speaker 1: fascinated with the Middle Ages. And it's because people were

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Speaker 1: traveling to Europe and they were seeing the Church of

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Speaker 1: Notre Dame and gargoyles, and they wanted to bring that

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Speaker 1: back to the United States and replicate it. We should

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Speaker 1: also note that yes, we are talking about Western Europe,

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Speaker 1: which was dominated by Western Latin Christianity, but we're going

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Speaker 1: to take detours to the east. We're going to be

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Speaker 1: going very shortly to Byzantium in the east, to Constantinople

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Speaker 1: or modern day Istanbul. And we must remember that Christianity

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Speaker 1: and Islam we're in contact with each other, and yes,

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Speaker 1: often conflict with each other, from very very early in

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, from just about the time that Muhammad

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Speaker 1: dies in six thirty two, the very beginning of our period.

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Speaker 1: So I want us to look at this medieval period

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Speaker 1: as both Christian and Muslim and Jewish as well, and

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Speaker 1: we're going to see where Judaism comes into play. My

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Speaker 1: goal for you is that after we've done these twelve topics,

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Speaker 1: when somebody says Middle Ages or Medieval Europe, you're going

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Speaker 1: to be able to put that in a place in

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Speaker 1: your head. I know somebody who always asks the question.

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Speaker 1: Something is on the history channel, or you see a

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Speaker 1: piece of art, and she always asks it happens to

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Speaker 1: be my wife. She always says, is this before or

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Speaker 1: after Columbus? And whatever that answer is enables her to

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Speaker 1: put that material in a certain place in her head.

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Speaker 1: And on a map. So I want you to be

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Speaker 1: able to understand the major periods, the major people, the

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Speaker 1: ideas and the events of the Middle Ages, not history

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Speaker 1: as one damned thing after another. This happened, and this happened,

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Speaker 1: and this happened. Though, I do want you to have

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Speaker 1: a sense of the early, the High and the late

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Speaker 1: Medieval period, but more a sense again medieval imagination or

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Speaker 1: medieval culture or medieval civilizations. I want you to understand

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Speaker 1: fundamental vocabulary, fundamental chronology, and fundamental geography. And I want

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Speaker 1: you to have a broader perspective. Yes, as I've said,

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, we're going to see through the eyes

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Speaker 1: of medieval Christianity. But history that is just top down,

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Speaker 1: that's important and women doesn't work for me, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: work for you. A big change in the way that

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Speaker 1: Americans see history occurred in nineteen ninety when PBS aired

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Speaker 1: The Civil War by ken Burns and The Civil War

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Speaker 1: by ken Burns was a documentary that looked at the

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Speaker 1: Civil War. Yes, Grant Lee, Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, but also

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Speaker 1: you and me, the everyday soldier, the letters he wrote

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Speaker 1: to his wife, the letters that the wife wrote back

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Speaker 1: trying to locate her husband's body, perhaps if he was

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Speaker 1: killed in battle. So we're gonna try to marry top

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Speaker 1: down and bottom up history, and so that means we're

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Speaker 1: gonna have Muslim voices, Jewish voices, Byzantine voices, dissenting voices,

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Speaker 1: people who weren't buying into the medieval dominance Christianity. And

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Speaker 1: these folks are known as heretics and wives talk about

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Speaker 1: them later. And when you take all of them and

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Speaker 1: lay them on the table, you see immediately that the

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Speaker 1: Middle Ages was not homogeneous but heterogeneous. That it was,

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Speaker 1: as I said before, multicultural and in its own way.

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Speaker 1: Even though it's only talking about the medieval the Mediterranean

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Speaker 1: basin and medieval Europe, North Africa and the area of

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Speaker 1: the Holy Land, it is global in their context. And

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Speaker 1: so what's the influence that medieval Europe had and continues

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Speaker 1: to have on society. We'll see that as we move along.

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Speaker 1: And I'd also like to provide a roadmap for future study.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about chronology for a few minutes. So I

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier the phrase BC and a D. Now a

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Speaker 1: D is a Christian way of telling time. It stands

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Speaker 1: for the Latin phrase anno domini or the year of

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Speaker 1: our Lord, and that dating wasn't put into place until

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Speaker 1: about five hundred years after Jesus by a man named

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Speaker 1: Dionysius Exiguus and odd name Dennis the Slight or Dennis

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Speaker 1: the Short, who decided to take all of the calendars

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Speaker 1: of the ancient world and make one that made sense

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Speaker 1: for Christians. And so we started with the birth of Jesus.

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Speaker 1: There actually is no year zero, and Dionysius Exiguus was

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Speaker 1: counting a little bit off, so Jesus was actually born

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Speaker 1: six or five or four BC, which sounds strange to

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Speaker 1: our ears because BC stands for before Christ, doesn't it.

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Speaker 1: But it was a mistake. So BC a D. Now

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Speaker 1: that's a very Christian way of counting, And so some

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Speaker 1: folks have substituted CE common Era for a D and

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Speaker 1: b CE before the Common Era for BC. Now, generally

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Speaker 1: I use BC and a D, and I mean nothing

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Speaker 1: by it except that it's the way that I was trained,

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Speaker 1: and it's in my DNA, so I'll try to use

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Speaker 1: one or the other, kind of like saying his or hers.

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Speaker 1: Now right away, when we talk about chronology, we have

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Speaker 1: to talk about this phrase the Dark Ages, where does

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Speaker 1: that phrase come from, Well, actually comes from the end

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Speaker 1: of the medieval period in the fourteenth century, and it

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Speaker 1: comes out of the mouth of a famous Italian humanist

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Speaker 1: by the name of Petrarch. He wasn't the first one

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Speaker 1: to use this phrase Middle Ages, but he was kind

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Speaker 1: of the most important person around and people listen to him.

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Speaker 1: And here's what's going on. Petrarch is living in the

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Speaker 1: thirteen hundreds. He's gone to Avignon in southern France, where

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Speaker 1: he sees a papacy that is full of greed and

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Speaker 1: full of graft, and it's very depressing because the papacy

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Speaker 1: is supposed to be in Rome. He calls it the

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Speaker 1: Babylonian captivity of the church or the Babylonian captivity of

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Speaker 1: the papacy, and it kind of gets him down. And

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Speaker 1: he's a humanist and humanists in the Renaissance who are

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Speaker 1: interested in looking back and recapturing Greco Roman learning and

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Speaker 1: kind of transporting it to a future world where there

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Speaker 1: would be another Golden Age. Right, So if there's a

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Speaker 1: golden age in the past and a golden age to come,

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Speaker 1: we must be stuck in the middle. And an Italian

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Speaker 1: that means medio avo and in Latin it's medium avum

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Speaker 1: and it becomes English as medieval M D E v

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Speaker 1: I L which is, I guess kind of half bad

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Speaker 1: and half good. But it gives you the sense that

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Speaker 1: we're kind of stuck in the Middle Ages, right, Even

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Speaker 1: when people talk about their lives, you know, they talk

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Speaker 1: about that that Middle Age is slump that you go

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Speaker 1: through your forty or your forty five, and you say, geez,

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Speaker 1: is this it? So that's kind of what Petrarc is

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Speaker 1: talking about. And then a little bit later, now Petrarch

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Speaker 1: is kind of on the leading edge of the Italian Renaissance.

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Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about the twelfth century Renaissance

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Speaker 1: in Topic eight and a Carolingian Renaissance soon enough in

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Speaker 1: the year eight hundred. There are many renaissances in history,

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Speaker 1: but the Renaissance that everybody talks about Italians running around

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Speaker 1: and tights Michelangelo da Vinci, which is fourteen hundred, fifteen

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen hundred. Those folks were recovering Greco Roman

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Speaker 1: learning and what they wanted to do is say what

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Speaker 1: we're doing is enlightened, and it's new and it's better.

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Speaker 1: And if you want to do that. What are you

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Speaker 1: going to do? You're going to trash the centuries that

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Speaker 1: came before you. So thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred not

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Speaker 1: a great period of time, but it's only two hundred

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Speaker 1: years of the thousand year period that we call the

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Speaker 1: Middle Ages. And so that kind of depressed period tainted

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Speaker 1: the entire Medieval period, and that's where the phrase the

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Speaker 1: Dark Ages comes from. To the break, we go to Rome.

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Speaker 1: Plus you've heard of Henry the Eighth, but who's Henry

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Speaker 1: the Navigator. Let's look a little bit more closely. Let's

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Speaker 1: break down the early, the High and the late Medieval period.

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Speaker 1: So the Early Medieval period is from about the fall

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Speaker 1: of Rome in the year four seventy six. Yes, that

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Speaker 1: period is dimmer than the Roman Empire, but it wasn't

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Speaker 1: without its bright lights. Right in the middle of that period,

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Speaker 1: from about four seventy six to ten fifty is bang

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Speaker 1: eight hundred, the Carolingian Renaissance. So what Western Latin Christianity

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Speaker 1: is a bit in the duldrums. Islam is exploding in

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Speaker 1: this culture. Then the High Medieval period roughly ten fifty

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Speaker 1: thirteen hundred, and this is the flowering when people go

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Speaker 1: to communities in Europe, a city like Prague, which is

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Speaker 1: a medieval jewel, a city like Sienna, which is a

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Speaker 1: medieval jewel. What they're thinking of when they think of

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages is that period. They're thinking of Gothic

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Speaker 1: and Neo Gothic communities, They're thinking of cathedrals, they're thinking

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Speaker 1: of Notre Dame, and they're thinking of chivalry and knighthood

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Speaker 1: and the romance of Arthurian legends. That's what people have

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Speaker 1: in mind. And then the collapse, as I said before,

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Speaker 1: of the late Medieval period, roughly thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred,

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Speaker 1: about two hundred years, about as long as the United

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Speaker 1: States has been around since seventeen seventy six. And that's

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Speaker 1: the period of the Avenual Papacy, the Great Western Sism,

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Speaker 1: the Hundred Years War, and during the Hundred Years War

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Speaker 1: from about thirteen fifty to fourteen fifty smack dab in

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Speaker 1: the middle of it is about a thirty year civil

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Speaker 1: war in France. Can you imagine the American Civil War

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Speaker 1: being fought not for four years, but thirty years In

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Speaker 1: the midst of World War Two, which was fought not

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Speaker 1: for about ten years but for about a hundred years.

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Speaker 1: It's an absolute mess, economic troubles, peasant revolts, and of

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Speaker 1: course the Black Death. Let's talk about where we are

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Speaker 1: on the map. And to do that, to talk about

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Speaker 1: medieval Europe, we need to talk about the Roman Empire.

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Speaker 1: So now I took a map of the Roman Empire

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Speaker 1: and I laid it down, and I wanted to say,

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Speaker 1: how big was the Roman Empire. Well, if I took

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Speaker 1: a map of the continental United States and laid it

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Speaker 1: on top of the Roman Empire, they'd be roughly the

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Speaker 1: same size. So if you can imagine a map of

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Speaker 1: the United States without the Mediterranean in it, We've got

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Speaker 1: the Mississippi, we've got Salt Lake, but we have nothing

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Speaker 1: like the Mediterranean. Pretty much the shape and size of

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Speaker 1: the continental United States, which is roughly a rectangle, is

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Speaker 1: the shape and size of the Roman Empire. So Rome

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Speaker 1: never got to certain areas that in fact experienced a

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Speaker 1: very vibrant Middle Ages. So Rome never got to Ireland,

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Speaker 1: Rome never got to Scandinavia, so very roughly this would

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Speaker 1: be North America would be Canada. Rome never got quite

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Speaker 1: that far, and Rome never got south of the Sahara,

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Speaker 1: so not into Mexico or Latin America or South America. Now,

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Speaker 1: Islam is a very important player. Almost immediately at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the Middle Ages. Islam is going to take

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Speaker 1: control of what we call the modern Middle East and

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Speaker 1: North Africa north of the Sahara after about six fifty

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Speaker 1: and so if you look again at the Roman Empire,

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Speaker 1: maybe have that map of the United States in mind.

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Speaker 1: What's happening is that Muhammed is born about seventy We're

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Speaker 1: not quite sure, and he dies in the year six

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Speaker 1: thirty two, and from six thirty two to seven thirty two,

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Speaker 1: Islam takes control of the modern Middle East. Okay, so Syria, Lebanon, Israel,

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Speaker 1: West Bank, the Gaza Strip, all of that area there.

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Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia goes as far as Constantinople, but can't beat Constantinople,

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Speaker 1: so comes back down and takes out North Africa. Now,

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Speaker 1: North Africa was the Bible belt of early Christianity, and

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Speaker 1: right there was Alexandria, one of the richest scholarly areas

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Speaker 1: in time, and then goes all the way up to

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Speaker 1: what we today called Morocco, jumps the Straits of Gibraltar,

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Speaker 1: gets into the Iberian Peninsula. That's that box. If you

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Speaker 1: will that's modern day Portugal, and Spain jumps the Pyrenees,

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Speaker 1: goes pretty far into Goal or modern day France, and

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Speaker 1: gets pushed back, and then Islam controls most of Spain

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Speaker 1: for about three hundred years, and the Christians push Islam

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Speaker 1: down from north to south in a movement called the

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Speaker 1: Reconquest until ten eighty five to Ledo falls, And that's

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Speaker 1: a really important moment because Toledo had been an important

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Speaker 1: capital of Islamic Spain and then all the way down

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Speaker 1: until fourteen ninety two. So you can't talk about medieval

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Speaker 1: Europe and not talk about Islam, and particularly Islamic Spain,

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Speaker 1: because that's where there's a lot of inter religious dialogue guests,

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Speaker 1: but also a lot of inter religious conflict. And we'll

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Speaker 1: see how Christians, Jews, and Muslims negotiated all of that,

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Speaker 1: because without that Muslim interaction you never would have had

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Speaker 1: Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, because Thomas Aquinas is

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Speaker 1: reading ancient Greek and Roman texts, primarily Greek texts through

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Speaker 1: Arabic translations back into Latin, because Islam never lost contact

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Speaker 1: with that ancient Greek past, whereas Western Christianity and Western

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Speaker 1: Europe did, in fact lose contact with the Greek and

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Speaker 1: became more Latin. But let's not think that medieval Europe

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Speaker 1: was entirely closed in on itself. In fact, there was

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Speaker 1: quite a lot of contact between West and East, and

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Speaker 1: the place that was kind of the hinge of all

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Speaker 1: of that was Italy. So if you think of the Mediterranean,

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Speaker 1: there's Italy the boot sticking out, basically dividing the Mediterranean

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Speaker 1: from the Western Mediterranean into the Eastern Mediterranean. And Italy

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Speaker 1: doesn't make its money making grain and harvesting huge numbers

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Speaker 1: of vegetables and fruits. Now, Italy makes its money trading.

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Speaker 1: Italy makes its money on the water. Now. The interesting

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Speaker 1: thing is that the best seafarers in the Mediterranean, and

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Speaker 1: the Mediterranean is a very dangerous place. Lots of currents,

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Speaker 1: there's lots of winds, it's very tight are Muslims. So

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Speaker 1: Italians and Muslims from the very beginning are in economic

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Speaker 1: contact with each other, economic partnership with each other to

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Speaker 1: transport goods back and forth, basically on Muslim ships. And

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Speaker 1: those Muslim ships had Muslim sea captains, but they were

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Speaker 1: often backed by Italian money and the people who were

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Speaker 1: coming up with the money tended to be Jewish bankers,

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Speaker 1: so you see a very nice mix of these three

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Speaker 1: fates there. Also in the West, Christians had been going

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Speaker 1: off on pilgrimage to the East to the Holy Land,

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Speaker 1: very often six hundred, seven hundred tails off and then

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Speaker 1: it really picks up again around one and eleven, and

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Speaker 1: that's where the Crusades take place. And while we often

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Speaker 1: look at the Crusades as this awful period of conflict,

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Speaker 1: and we certainly will be looking at it in those terms,

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Speaker 1: it was also a period of exploration and logistics because

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Speaker 1: you had to move the armies from one place to another.

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Speaker 1: So navigation is getting better, and the West Western Christianity

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Speaker 1: is exploring its area, and of course there's a big connection.

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Speaker 1: Even further in the High Medieval period, you have Marco

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Speaker 1: Polo taking the Silk Road past the modern Middle East

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Speaker 1: all the way all the way into China, and Marco

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Speaker 1: Polo is living around twelve fifty to about thirteen twenty five,

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Speaker 1: so part of that real flowering, and so that makes

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Speaker 1: this a fascinating period of cultural exchange, not just Latin

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Speaker 1: West and Greek East, but Latin West, Greek East, and

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Speaker 1: even further to the Far East, through the ancient Near

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Speaker 1: East and the Far East as well. And one of

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Speaker 1: the really interesting people in this period, one of those

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Speaker 1: people whose names you never heard of, but history would

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Speaker 1: have been different without him, is a fellow named Henry

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Speaker 1: the Navigator. He was a king of Portugal. And one

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Speaker 1: of the interesting things about Henry is that even though

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Speaker 1: he established the school for navigation, the West Point and

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Speaker 1: Annapolis wrapped up into one for navigation, he never left Portugal.

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Speaker 1: He allowed other people to leave Portugal. But what he

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Speaker 1: did was he gathered together a school of navigation that

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Speaker 1: drew on Muslim science, Muslim math, Muslim astronomy to create

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Speaker 1: new and better maps. And every single person who sailed

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Speaker 1: from about fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred and that great

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Speaker 1: age of discovery or exploration had gone to Henry the

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Speaker 1: Navigator's school, or had somebody on his ship who had

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Speaker 1: gone there. And it's because of that man that Henry

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Speaker 1: the Navigator began to allow people to push off the

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Speaker 1: coast of West Africa and then off into the into

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Speaker 1: the Atlantic, and then off all the way to North America.

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Speaker 1: And then eventually, of course, Magellan is going to circumnavigate

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Speaker 1: the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific and then

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Speaker 1: all the way back again. Next week on Secrets of

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Speaker 1: the Medieval World, did Rome really fall or did it

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Speaker 1: just sort of implode? Half hour history Secrets of the

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Speaker 1: Medieval World from One Day University is a production of

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Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. If you're enjoying the show,

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Speaker 1: leave a review in your favorite podcast app, and check

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Speaker 1: out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history, pop culture,

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Speaker 1: true crime, and more. School of Humans