The illuminated psalm book of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell is a priceless treasure, containing beautiful calligraphy and extremely fine illustrations. Packed with scenes from the Bible and from everyday life - plus all manner of creatures, including bizarr...
Founded in 1230, Scotland’s Pluscarden Abbey still pulses with the prayers and spiritual pursuits of Benedictine monks. Abbot Hugh Gilbert describes their work in reassuringly human terms, framing the Christian battle against Satanic evil as an in...
During the Middle Ages, most of Europe's inhabitants were illiterate and lived in the shadow of the wealthy; knowledge of peasant culture is therefore limited. This program addresses the historical lack of firsthand written materials, viewing serfs ...
Why was Islamic philosophy, once the epitome of Arab learning, eventually rejected by Muslims? And why, after assimilating it, did Europeans distance themselves from its formulators? This program seeks to understand the religious climate of the late...
This program illustrates life from the perspective of the medieval merchant: urban, financially sophisticated, and revolving around trade and travel. Demonstrating how the growth of European cities prefaced the end of feudal society and the founding...
Although rooted in religious misogyny and crude anatomical knowledge, the sexual mores of the medieval era were surprisingly complex. This program explores the attitudes and behaviors of a sexual culture that was by turns romantic, transactional, an...
This program covers the social and economic organization of Europe in the Middle Ages: life in a medieval farming hamlet; the role of the feudal lord, whose role was to defend its inhabitants in return for a share of the produce and other tribute; t...
Medieval science wasn’t nonsense: it could conceive of a spherical Earth, for example. But the medieval scholar discerned both natural and supernatural forces at work in the cosmos, reading an eclipse as a sign from God as well as the result of pl...
Writing in the late 1200s, the Spanish nobleman Ramon Lull listed various duties which no knight could ignore. They included fidelity to the monarch, defense of the Christian faith—and, only slightly lower on the list, maintaining order among the ...