Meets the following requirements: HY                   

In the Middle Ages religion was the arbiter of truth in ways almost incomprehensible in  modern secular world.  The ways in which truth was arrived at in this period was contested, however, and the growing debate about the role of faith and reason as instruments for arriving at the truth provoked powerful conflicts in philosophy, politics and society.  The main thematic thrust of the course is to explore the fragments of classical philosophical problems and new streams of religious orthodoxy as they collide in a series of intellectual and pragmatic struggles in the period. By using heretics and saints as emblems of the contours of the debate about truth and knowledge, this class explores the early tremors of the clash between faith and reason that would rock the western world, and shape it, between roughly 1000 AD and the beginnings of the renaissance in the fourteenth century.  Students will read primary and secondary literature covering various aspects of the period. There will be a mid-term take home exam and a final project paper dealing with an institution, a person, a religious or philosophical school or movement,or an idea. 

Level:  Introductory/Intermediate.*HY*