The School of Human Inquiry · philosophy, history & belief
Medieval & Early-Modern History
A thousand busy years wrongly called dark, and the restless centuries after that redrew the map.
From Charlemagne to the Black Death — the centuries that built cathedrals, universities, and the modern map.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — After Rome
The successor kingdoms · The church endures · Charlemagne's project
Unit II — The Medieval Order
Lords, vassals, and the manor · The three estates · Monks and their libraries
Unit III — Growth and Crisis
Towns, guilds, and cathedrals · The first universities · The Black Death
Unit IV — Neighbors and Frontiers
Byzantium · Al-Andalus · The Crusades, weighed honestly
Baghdad, Cordoba, and the centuries when the sciences spoke Arabic.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~18 hours
Unit I — An Empire of Learning
Baghdad and the House of Wisdom · The translation movement · Paper changes everything
Unit II — The Sciences
Al-Khwarizmi and algebra · Ibn al-Haytham and optics · Medicine from Ibn Sina · Astronomy and the observatory
Unit III — Culture and Exchange
Cordoba and Cairo · Trade routes and travelers · What Europe borrowed, and forgot to credit
Recovered classics, printed Bibles, and a century of upheaval in art and belief.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~20 hours
Unit I — Rebirth in Italy
Florence's bankers and patrons · Humanism and the recovered classics · Print and its shock
Unit II — Art and Craft
Perspective, worked out · Workshops of the masters · The court and the commission
Unit III — Reformations
Luther's theses · Calvin's Geneva · The Catholic response · The wars of religion
Ships, silver, and smallpox — the two centuries that tied the continents together, at great cost.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~20 hours
Unit I — Setting Out
Navigation and the caravel · Portuguese routes east · Columbus, and what he thought he found
Unit II — Collision
The Aztec and Inca worlds · Conquest and disease · The Columbian exchange
Unit III — A Connected Globe
Silver from Potosí to China · The Atlantic slave trade begins · Missionaries and translations
Unit IV — Empires at Work
The trading companies · Colonial societies compared · Resistance and adaptation
Court poets to castle towns — eight centuries of Japanese history, from Genji to the long peace.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~16 hours
Unit I — The Heian World
Court culture and the Tale of Genji · Land, temples, and the rise of warriors
Unit II — The Age of War
The Kamakura shogunate · The Mongol invasions · Sengoku and the three unifiers
Unit III — The Long Peace
The Tokugawa order · Castle towns and merchant culture · The closed country, reconsidered