W. Robert Godfrey

And so we're going to be moving, I hope not at a breakneck speed.

That's never a good idea.

But it does mean we're going to have to often paint with a kind of broad brush, going to have to skip some things that would be very valuable to talk about.

But what I'm hoping is that we will be able together to see the big issues of how the Middle Ages moved and that we'll be able to illustrate that with some particulars as we go along.

The Middle Ages is a time of great persons and great stories, Robin Hood, and of great books.

And so we'll be trying to illustrate the broad issues that we're looking at as we go along with some particulars.

And I hope you'll find it both stimulating and useful and interesting.

And if I succeed, it'll be a miracle.

But that's what we're aiming at together.

Now, history is not easy to outline, but outlines are very helpful.

And so I have a rough, not very scholarly outline for what we're going to do together.

The first four lectures are going to be called warming up.

That's a technical historian's phrase, warming up.

We're going to be looking roughly at the period 500 to 1100.

to see how various forces inherited from the ancient world are shaped and directed towards the characteristic form of medieval life and thought and history.

So, warming up, section one, first four lectures, about 500 to about 1100.

And then,

The second part I'm calling the wondrous century, the kind of high point in some ways of the Middle Ages, 1100 to 1200.

And there we'll be able to slow down a little bit, look in a little more detail at some of the really critical things going on there in that remarkable century.

I'll cheat a little bit.