Lecturing with Chapter 7

On Tuesday, I lectured about a subject from chapter 6: medieval towns. Here’s how I did the deed:

1. “Those Who Trade and Sell.” I began by talking about how townspeople fit poorly into the Three Orders—were, indeed, excluded from it. That allowed me to present my thesis for the day, namely that towns were both peculiar in medieval culture and essential to it.

2. Early Medieval Collapse (except for al-Andalus & Italy). The usual.

3. Revival c. 1000+. I focused here mostly on why (fewer invasion, agricultural revolution, population growth, etc) and how (old Roman sites, burgs, around monasteries, etc.)

4. The “Communal” movement, c. 1100+. The usual, but I added in some topographical and social material—town walls, tolls, etc.

5. Towns as Typically Medieval. I talked here about (a) how essential towns were in economic, administrative, and cultural terms, and (b) how townspeople also lived with what has become the big three of the course this semester: hierarchy, mutuality, and exclusion. I used guilds as my main example.

6. Towns as Atypical. In addition to not being conceptualized as part of the Three Orders, townspeople were suspect because of their economic practices (usury, just price). They were also different because towns were (a) more mobile societies, (b) societies that had more women than men, and (c) places where the main religious minority in the Middle Ages—Jews—mostly resided.

That’s it. It all wrapped up nicely into the conclusion that towns were both a sort of ”other” in the medieval world and essential to it.

Thursday was a low, low point. Very poor turn-out which always, I think, depresses those who are in attendance—it seems as if they always think, “Ah, the ship is sinking. The rats are leaving. Why I am still here?” But it is midterm time, so I prefer to assume the ship is not sinking and the non-rats will reappear. In any case, my lecture was utterly unremarkable—I walked the class through the history of the papacy from Peter to Alexander VI. Obviously, some broad strokes. I tried to jazz it up, but they seemed utterly bored. I’ll need to try something much more fun next week. Here’s my outline:

Foundations: Peter, Leo I, Gregory I

Papal-Carolingian Alliance 750-850

Tough Times 850-1050

Gregorian Reform 1050-1100

The Papacy Ascendant 1100-1215

--power through canon law

--power through bureaucracy

--power through territory

--power through councils

Powerful but less Pastoral, 1250-1305

Worse Still to Come (scandalously brief preview of Avignon, Schism, Conciliar Movement, Renaissance Popes)

I've thought this was a useful survey in the past, especially as I inflect it with an interpretation explicitly midway between nineteenth-century Protestant invective and Catholic defense. But today was not its day. Ah, well . . . such are the trials of mid-semester.