Lecture Courses

The Story of Ancient & Medieval Christendom

The Story of Ancient & Medieval Christendom

In this course, students will study Christian history from the post-apostolic age to the middle decades of the 1400s. Through these centuries, the body of Christ went from a small persecuted band of disciples to a nearly worldwide organisation gathering in councils to determine the future of its faithfulness to its head.

The course’s vision of the church will not be restricted to the Mediterranean and western Europe but will present Christianity in mediaeval Africa and Asia as well with a geographical sweep from Iceland in the North to Ethiopia in the South, from Ireland in the West to China in the East.

Professor Hoskin believes that law and its outworking is one major thread running from God’s self-revelation in Scripture until today, in canon law, in liturgy, in ethics, in the many ways God’s people have sought to live out their faithfulness through the ages–even in theology and private devotion.

This course closes in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople, the failure of East-West reconciliation, and the structural seeds of Reform already being sown with the failure of the Conciliar Movement.

Once purchased, you will receive lifetime digital access to the complete set of video recordings via a link in your confirmation email. 

Description

Included Lectures:

  • The Apostolic Fathers and the Second Century
  • Persecution and Martyrdom in the Early Church
  • Christianity in Alexandria: Clement and Origen
  • Constantine and the Transformation of Ancient Rome
  • The Council of Nicaea, Athanasius, and Ephrem the Syrian
  • The Council of Constantinople (381) and the Cappadocian Fathers
  • Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo
  • The Monastic Movement up to the Year 600
  • How Christianity Survived the “Fall of the Roman Empire”
  • Ecumenical Councils, 431-681
  • Gregory the Great and Missionary Monks
  • The Age of Charlemagne and the Second Council of Nicaea
  • The Eleventh Century: Eucharist and Reform
  • The Rise of the Papacy
  • Gratian’s Decretum, Pope Innocent III, and the Rise of Universities
  • Francis, Dominic, and the Friars
  • The Flowering of Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century
  • John Wycliffe and the Later Middle Ages
  • Gregory Palamas and Byzantine Christianity
  • Councils, Schisms, and the End of the Middle Ages