Francis & Dominic: The Rise of the Mendicant Orders

Week 9: Francis and Dominic - Poverty and City Life: Tutorial Discussion Post
By: Carley

Hello Tutorial 11 it’s Carley here.

On this blog post I will be discussing the reform of the Church, St. Francis and the Franciscan followers.

During the 12^th and 13^th centuries the Church underwent many changes and orders were introduced. The Gregorian reform is what separated the Church from feudalism in an attempt to adapt to the outside world. From this change, equality of working life and prayer created a balance between living and the spiritual life.

From the readings of St. Francis I saw his life somewhat reflected the life of Christ; living in poverty and preaching the good word of the Lord to the people of Italy. St Francis wanted to experience the life of Jesus to show his devotion to Christianity. He wanted to show the people of Assisi that they should not possess a desire for wealth and gold but encouraged them to live the life of Christ and devote their life to peace and religion.

What really interests me about St. Francis is his love and involvement with animals and nature. His affection and glorification of the created universe plays an important part of Francis’ doctrine by appealing to the people on a deeper level.

The Basilica of St Francis

The Basilica of St Francis

I have attached 3 pictures of St. Francis’ Basilica in Assisi from when I visited four years ago. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited and it captures the essence of St. Francis. Overlooking the magnificent beauty of the Tuscan fields.

Questions for the week:

From Celano’s stories, how do you understand Francis’ relationship with the natural world?

Do you think that the impression of St. Francis shaped how the Church is today?

Do you think begging, poverty and preaching made for a humble life?

The Basilica of St Francis

*** Lecture Recording Problems ***

Hi everyone

There have been some problems with the lecture recordings for Week 7. Please note the following message from Clare. If anyone is writing their essay topic on Week 7 and missed the lecture please let me know asap as I may be able to meet with you to go over the material.

'Unfortunately the audio of the week 7 lectures have not been recorded. The slides are available, however, on both MULO and Blackboard. I am very sorry for the inconvenience, but sometimes technology does fail. I know that some of you have clashes and need to rely on the recordings. I would urge, however, those of you who can attend the lectures to do so, because that is the only absolutely guaranteed way that you have of hearing the material'


Any questions or concerns at all please just let me know.

All the best,

Diana

Early Crusading

Week 8: Early Crusading - Tutorial Discussion Post


Hi everyone!

Remember that this week we will not be having lectures or tutorials due to the ANZAC day public holiday. However, you are all expected to comment on this blog post and your comments this week will form your participation mark for the week.

A couple of quick notes before I get into the topic for this week.

1) You may have noticed that I have set up a poll on the right-hand bar of the blog on the library tutorial. I would be extremely grateful if you could take a second to vote on how useful (or not) you found the library tutorial I ran in Week 6. This will help me improve my lesson in future years and will also provide myself and Clare with valuable feedback on the usefulness of the library tutorial in general.

2) Week 9 presenters - remember that your blog post is due (emailed to me) by 12pm, Thursday April 26th
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Right! On to the Crusades!

I know that we have already had a lecture on the First Crusade but we have yet to have an opportunity to discuss it. Now is the time! Our readings for this week, you'll have noticed, consist of a number of accounts of Pope Urban II's speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in which he put out the call for the First Crusade. Our secondary source is an article by Christopher Tyerman on the development of the Crusading ideal and how it was intertwined with European society at the time. Christopher Tyerman is a leading historian of the Crusades and later this term we will be introduced to the work of another expert, Jonathan Riley-Smith.

I'd like everyone to focus this week on the tutorial discussion questions in the reader when considering their comments as I think the questions are quite comprehensive. I've added a couple of questions about the primary source to also help get folks thinking about the complex issue of crusading.

Christians and Muslims in battle during the Crusades

Questions:

1) Discuss the accounts of Urban's speech. In what ways do they differ?
2) What reasons can you give for these variations?
3) According to Urban, who are the enemies of Christendom? How are they characterized? (ie. by ethnicity, religion, etc.) Does Urban seem to have any understanding of Islam?
4) Why should Christians go on crusade? What benefits will they receive according to Urban?
5) What goal does Urban set for the crusaders? What is their mission to the Holy Land meant to achieve?
6) Where is the Holy Land?

7) Tyerman locates the origin of the crusades in a particular 'symbiosis of interests and values'. What does he mean by this?
8) Tyerman argues that although crusading emerges out of a distinctive tradition in the Latin West, it also contained unique and novel features. What are these features?
9) What does Tyerman mean when he says that ' crusading was not a monolithic movement'?
10) Tyerman says that the effect of the crusades on Europe and Europeans tended to be of 3 sorts, what were they?

*** As always your posts can reflect on these questions or on any other aspects of the readings you found interesting or challenging ***

Pope Urban II calling the First Crusade

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Finally I'd just like to draw everyone's attention here to a wonderful exhibit of medieval Persian manuscripts that is currently on at the State Library of Victoria. In our course we only briefly encounter the medieval Islamic world and for anyone interested in understanding more about the culture of the Middle East in this period I highly recommend going to this exhibit. It's absolutely beautiful!

http://exhibitions.slv.vic.gov.au/love-and-devotion

From the State Library Exhibit 'Love and Devotion'

From the State Library Exhibit 'Love and Devotion'

Eve, Mary Magdalene, or the Virgin Mary.........Medieval Women and Gender Roles

Week 7: Relics and Devotional Life / Medieval Men and Women - Tutorial Discussion Post
By: Shannon and Carolyn


Hi guys!

It’s Shannon and Carolyn here. This week we will be leading some discussion in the tutorial about the place of women in medieval society. We will focus in particular on the themes of the readings for this week that broach the influence of the Bible and Christian literature on society’s view of women and the greater domestic role of women and what their day to day lives would have been like. We are very excited to talk to you about this topic as we think it serves as a fascinating comparison between the medieval world and our lives today.

So in the first reading we observed that medieval women were theologically mythicised by the Bible and writers who idealised qualities of women like obedience and virginity. Did they have unrealistic standards or what?

Women had the lowest social standing in medieval society, they had basically no economic or political rights and their lives were tied to their marital status and their domestic roles. They were used as peace offerings between quarrelling families for social status and honour. Basically, men were the ones who worked, brought in the food for the family and the women’s purpose was to look after the house and children. They were considered stupid and vain and men worked to ensure that they were constantly occupied because it was thought that if they had enough time for freedom of thought they were so weak they were sure to become corrupted by impure thoughts. The emphasis is very clearly placed upon a woman’s portrayal in the Bible to ensure they remain pure, and marriage was essential in order for women to fulfil their duties to God or risk being an outcast. Interesting fact: Men were, on average, 10 years older than their wives (because men needed to reach the ‘perfect age’ and women had to be wed young in order to avoid perversion)

A few questions we would like you to consider about this topic are:

1. What impression did you get of the role of women from the excerpts in the first reading? How much have these expectations changed in our society today?
2. How difficult do you think it would be to live similarly to medieval women? Would you be happy to just put up with having to live like that?
3. What is your impression of the cult of Mary? Do you think it had any realistic impact on the lives of women?
4. Do you think that the practises around marriage and childrearing were fair? How do you think they could have been improved? Would society have survived as well if women had been given a say or would it have been more successful?
5. In what ways were women shown to be families’ and husbands’ ‘property’?

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions and seeing you in our tutorial!

Thanks,
Shannon and Carolyn.

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(a couple of images added by Diana)

Christine de Pisan

Medieval lovers hunting