TTC - The Early Middle Ages

The Teaching Company

The Early Middle Ages (Course No. 8267)

Prof. Philip Daileader

The College of William and Mary

Ph.D., Harvard University 





Course Lecture Titles



Part I  	



   1. Long Shadows and the Dark Ages

   2. Diocletian and the Crises of the Third Century

   3. Constantine the Great - Christian Emperor

   4. Pagans and Christians in the Fourth Century

   5. Athletes of God

   6. Augustine, Part One

   7. Augustine, Part Two

   8. Barbarians at the Gate

   9. Franks and Goths

  10. Arthur’s England

  11. Justinian and the Byzantine Empire

  12. The House of Islam



Part II



  13. Rise of the Carolingians

  14. Charlemagne

  15. Carolingian Christianity

  16. The Carolingian Renaissance

  17. Fury of the Northmen

  18. Collapse of the Carolingian Empire

  19. The Birth of France and Germany

  20. England in the Age of Alfred

  21. Al-Andalus - Islamic Spain

  22. Carolingian Europe-Gateway to the Middle Ages

  23. Family Life — How Then Became Now

  24. Long Shadows and the Dark Ages Revisited



We often call them the "Dark Ages," the era which spanned the decline and fall of Rome’s western empire and lingered for centuries, a time when the Ancient World was ending and Europe had seemingly vanished into ignorance and shadow, its literacy and urban life declining, its isolation from the rest of the world increasing.



It was a time of decline, with the empire fighting to defend itself against an endless onslaught of attacks from all directions: the Vikings from the North, the Huns and other Barbarians from the East, the Muslim empire from the south.



It was a time of death and disease, with outbreaks of plague ripping through populations both urban and rural.



It was a time of fear, when religious persecution ebbed and flowed with the whims of those in power.



And as Rome's power and population diminished, so, too, did its ability to handle the administrative burdens of an overextended empire. Fewer records were kept, leaving an often-empty legacy to historians attempting to understand the age.



But modern archaeology has begun to unearth an increasing number of clues to this once-lost era. And as historians have joined them to sift through those clues—including evidence of a vast arc of Viking trade reaching from Scandinavia to Asia—new light has begun to fall across those once "dark" ages and their fascinating personalities and events.