Overview
Overview
The institutional church never had the kind of control over the populace of medieval Europe that modern people think it did. This module explores the multiplicity of types of belief and practice amongst those who lived in accordance with the church’s teaching—monks and nuns, wandering preachers, pious families—and the varieties of resistance among those who did not—Jews, Muslims, and heretics, social revolutionaries, sexual nonconformists, practitioners of the occult, student wastrels. We will discuss the kinds of sources that tell us about these groups, including saints’ lives, chronicles, Inquisition registers, letters, and poetry. People in the Middle Ages were no more credulous than we are today, but they had different sources of information.
This module will help students appreciate how people in the past operated much as people do today, but in a very different world with a different set of assumptions. Continuous emphasis will be placed on the geographical and cultural diversity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, and the decentralized and multivocal nature of medieval religion.
Time, Date, and Place
This lecture-only module comprises of one lecture per week over one term, commencing the week beginning 22 September 2025. Lectures take place on the Trinity Campus
Course Fees
€85 full rate, €60 concession rate. The concession rate is available to all those retired, over 65s and those on a government pension/payment plan and the unwaged, including second and third level students.
Apply
Enrolments for this course will open in mid-August at: www.histories-humanities.tcd.ie/shortcourses
You may apply online or by telephone as follows:
Online: Register and pay by credit/debit card online after enrolments open at: www.histories-humanities.tcd.ie/shortcourses
By telephone: Text ‘APPLY FOR COURSE’ to +353 (0)87 2572015 and you will receive a call back to confirm your registration. The phone will be busy during the application period so responses may be delayed. Please do not call to enroll for this course.
Get in Touch
Telephone Number
+353 (0)1 896 8589 or TEXT 087 257 2015hhextra@tcd.ie