Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Henry IV at Canossa – Henry v. Gregory VII – the Investiture Struggle – medieval ideas of kingship – feudalism – the Benedictine order – monks as intercessors – Cluny – Gregorian reform – the cult of the Virgin – Franciscans and Dominicans – Christianitas – Peter Damian – Humbert of Silva Candida – Gregory VII – Dictatus papae – excommunication – the idea of the crusades – indulgences – the new piety – heretics – Waldensians – Joachim of Fiore – the Antichrist – Cathari, the Albigensian religion and crusade – Innocent III – inquisition – the Fourth Lateran Council and confession – the sacrament of marriage – the Curia and the College of Cardinals – Philip IV v. Boniface VIII – the Great Schism

17. The Spread of Learning and the Rise of Accuracy

Abbot Suger and the innovations at St Denis – God is light – cathedral schools – Paris schools – how they differed from monasteries – Aristotle and the rediscovery of logic – Abelard – the seven liberal arts – trivium and quadrivium – the ban on Aristotle – the ‘double truth’ theory – studium generale – earliest universities – Salerno (medicine) – Bologna (law) – Paris (theology) – Oxford (mathematics, science) – the rise in quantification – measurement, counting, dating, punctuation, musical notation, double-entry book-keeping – the surge in literacy – the invention of printing – italic and roman type – edition sizes – spelling

18. The Arrival of the Secular: Capitalism, Humanism, Individualism

The changing concept of the Renaissance – the role of the Black Death – why the Renaissance began in Italy – schooling in Italy – the crucial role of the abbaco schools – life in Renaissance Florence – the woollen industry, international trade, banking and the origins of capitalism – the marriage of aristocratic and bourgeois values – the change from ecclesiastical to secular patronage in the arts – the improved status of the artist – the rediscovery of classical antiquity and the emphasis on this life – Petrarch and the rediscovery of Plato – the aesthetic aristocracy – pagan values – Erasmus – humanism and the growth of religious tolerance – Vasari – secular art – the humanities in Florence

19. The Explosion of Imagination