Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

The module will provide an additional element of choice for Part II students, particularly those on the Medieval and Early Modern degree scheme (V190). This module is intended to provide students with an introduction to one of the key institutions of medieval Europe, and to debates that continued to define European history well into the modern period. It will cover western Europe as a whole, and will use a range of primary sources. Students will become acquainted with developments in kingship, legal structures, economics, religion and culture.

This module explores dealings between Western Christendom, Byzantium, and the Islamic world from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. On the one hand, this was a period of violent conflict: Christians and Muslims clashed in Spain and the Middle East, Westerners and Byzantines in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. On the other, it was also a time of ever deeper interaction, of often close political, economic and cultural contact, collaboration, and cooperation. One aim of the module is to outline that complexity, to explore how contemporaries thought and wrote about each other, how they built and conducted relations with those of a different faith or culture. Yet the period also experienced profound change, a deep transformation in attitudes towards war, in how people engaged and interacted with those of a different culture. To outline what changed, and to explore the reasons for such change, will thus form the second aim of this module.