Between the 4th and 15th centuries AD medieval Europe saw great variety in religious practices: hermits living in the desert and forests, popes in Rome, monks and nuns in monasteries, new religious orders such as the Knights Templar and mendicants, heretics such as Cathars and Waldensians, inquisitions directed against heretics, not to mention pagans and everyday peasants whose religious practices are emerging more and more from the shadows. Through examining selected key developments in the history of the western European Christian church during the Middle Ages, this unit will also study those religious groups with whom western European Christians came into contact (pagans, Jews, Muslims, Eastern Christians). 

The unit enables students to engage in deep study of one of the key institutions of the European Middle Ages - the western Christian church - and also to gain familiarity with the wide range of primary sources produced by the western Christian church which teach us about medieval society more broadly (e.g. everyday life, cultural history, political history). The unit addresses cultural themes relevant both to European medieval history and to other areas of history -the relationship between popular religion and institutional religion, the tensions between orthodoxy and unorthodoxy in religious practice, and the ways in which different ideologies interact and influence each other.