Written by Philip Daileader
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

In his new course on The Early Middle Ages—which traces a journey from Scandinavia across northern and central Europe to the farthest reaches of the Byzantine and Islamic empires—Professor Philip Daileader shares this new understanding of a world, no matter how far away and strange it may seem, that is "recognizably becoming our own."

"In countless ways, seemingly obscure events and developments from the ‘Dark Ages’ impinge on the lives of people today.

"This is true in the realm of religion, because our period saw the triumph of Christianity over paganism. … This is true in the realm of language, because every word that we speak and write—indeed, the handwriting that we use each and every day—is a product of the historical forces that we will study. … And this is true in the realm of family life, because many practices that existed in 300—such as polygyny, marriage within the kin group, and infanticide—are illegal today and were vanishing or completely gone by the year 1000."

24 Lectures
30 minutes / lecture

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
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