This week's content briefly outlined how religion has changed throughout the periods we covered in our class and how it will continue to change and shape our world in the centuries covered by HIST122.
Description
Course Description:
This course is a survey of the history and culture of the Western Civilization from the ancient civilizations of
the Near East, through the rise of the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, to the beginnings of
Europe's Early Modern period. Emphasis is placed on the examination of the major political, social, economic and religious developments of European history.
Course Scope:
Western Civilization before the Thirty Years’ War covers the history of the Western world from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here, we will follow the path of society as it walks the road from ancient polytheistic religions to the monotheistic religions that dominate the modern world. We will watch societies transform from tribal communities on the fringes of “civilization” to dominant, organized kingdoms. Although we will watch empires rise and fall, we will also notice intellectual, political and societal patterns that withstand the test of time to impact us even now.
Objectives
After completing this course, you will be able to:
Analyze where, how, and why Ancient and Medieval civilizations developed.
Explain the rise and spread of major world religions.
Identify significant people and events in Western civilization.
Explain the issues between Church and State, both a politically and socially.
Recognize the rise of European states including political, social, and religious similarities and
differences
Outline
Week 1: Mesopotamia and the First Civilizations
Learning Objectives
Define what makes a civilization and how humanity created them.
Comprehend the development of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and elsewhere in the
eastern Mediterranean.
Compare and contrast civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Week 2: Ancient Greece
Learning Objectives
Comprehend how the Greek polis developed and why it became the defining element of Greek
civilization.
Describe how the Persian Wars led to the Golden Age of Athens and how the city was eventually defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.
Describe the rise of philosophy through the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Explain how Alexander the Great was able to conquer his empire and why that empire fragmented after his death.
Week 3: Ancient Rome
Learning Objectives
Comprehend how the Roman Republic rose to prominence first in Italy and then in the Mediterranean.
Examine the structure of the Roman Republic, how it reached its height after the Punic Wars, and then how it crumbled by 44 BCE.
Describe the reforms of Augustus and how they transformed Rome into an empire.
Explain how the Pax Romana drove cultural development in the first and second centuries CE.
Evaluate why and how Christianity would grow from a small Jewish sect into a major world religion.
Comprehend how Roman society declined in the third and fourth centuries until it finally fell in the fifth century.
Define how cultural mixing between Romans and Germans would lead to a new culture in the West.
Week 4: Islam, Byzantium and Early Europe
Learning Objectives
Compare developments in the West to the maintaining of Roman models in the Byzantine East.
Describe how Islam was founded, how it spread so rapidly and how it melded politics and religion by the eleventh century.
Evaluate how the Byzantine Empire first flourished and then began to slowly disintegrate.
Explain how Roman and German cultural ideals fused and melded into a new paradigm.
Compare how the various Germanic kingdoms in Europe and the British Isles developed.
Explain how the Carolingians overthrew the Merovingians and forged a new Western empire.
Describe how the reign of Charlemagne established political stability and encouraged cultural
flowering.
Comprehend what brought the Carolingian Empire to an end and how the feudal system replaced it.
Week 5: The Catholic Church and the Crusades
Learning Objectives
Describe how the Church engaged in a reform program and asserted itself over the developing
monarchies of the time..
Explain how the crusading movement began, developed, and changed over two hundred years.
Compare how the various medieval kingdoms developed their own institutions and interacted with their people and each other.
Describe the intellectual and artistic endeavors of the era.
Explain how the Church expanded its power and influence throughout the thirteenth century.
Week 6: The Renaissance
Learning Objectives
Analyze how the "Calamitous Fourteenth Century" brought about the end of medieval society.
Comprehend the development of Renaissance humanism and how it gave rise to the cultural explosion of the Renaissance
Describe how political institutions reacted to the crises of the fourteenth century and the Renaissance.
Week 7: Expansion, Reformation and Religious Warfare
Learning Objectives
Recognize the forces behind the Age of Exploration and how it transformed Europe
Explain how the career of Martin Luther created the religious revolution known as the Protestant
Reformation.
Describe how and why the Reformation fragmented and gained strength in certain areas of Europe.
Examine how the Catholic Church responded to the Protestant Reformation.
Analyze how the various states of Europe responded to the religious crises.
Comprehend the causes and effects of the religious wars of the later fifteenth century.
Explain how secular and scientific worldviews were born out of this period of turmoil.
Inexplicable, Terrible, and Capricious: A History of Scurvy, the Mysterious Disease that Haunted the Age of Exploration
The Columbian Exchange
Navigating the Age of Exploration
Who Won the Reformation?
