Syllabus
Based on attendance and a successful presentation of the term paper.
1) Introduction - Death, religion and society in the Middle Ages. Sources and approaches.
2) The theology of death in the Middle Ages and the evolvement of Church law on death. Good and bad death.
3) Death and burial in Early Medieval Europe, archaeological and historical evidence
4) Death and burial in the non-Christian world
5) Death and burial in Christian Europe - differences of social status and gender
6) Burials of the elite
7) Saints and relics
8) Crisis and death. Mass graves and battlefields
9) Irregular burials
10) The topography of death of different social classes 11-13) Presentations of students
Annotation
Course description
The aim of this course is to give an insight to approaches to death by diverse social classes in the Middle Ages, starting from the age of Childeric I to the end of the Late Middle Ages. The course primarily focuses on Christian practice, but examines also the contemporary other religions and beliefs, examining historical and archaeological evidence. The course aims to introduce the interdisciplinary methods for interpreting death and burial, with special regards on the different methodology applied to different eras and social classes, and the evolution of good and bad death during these times. By examples, we will explore contradictions in theory and practice, thus between the church and popular belief. Special themes to be discussed are the issues of gender, social class, religion and the manifestation of these in burials, including irregular graves.
Learning outcomes:
The main objective of this course is to accustom students to interdisciplinary historical analysis, on a complex and diversified topic such as death and society in medieval Europe, in the form of guided (critical) reading of contemporary secondary literature. Students will be required to reflect and assess on the readings in class, discussing not only the topic itself, but methodology, argumentation and sources. In the second half of the term, students will be required to make a presentation on a topic from selected themes and hand it in as a term paper by the end of the course.