The Making of Europe

Name: The Making of Europe
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An Introduction to the Historical Thought of Christopher Dawson

Created byAlexander Rosenthal Pubul

Last updated 2/2021

English

What you'll learn

We will survey the historical thought of Christopher Dawson using his classic text "The Making of Europe".
Learning The Importance of Classical Intellectual Tradition and its Relation to Christianity
Learning About the Rise of the Roman Catholic Church to a Position of Cultural and Political Influence
Learning About the Roman Empire and its Legacy

Course content

1 section • 5 lectures • 4h 39m total length

The Roman Empire1:19:36
Here we introduce the great British Catholic historian Christopher Dawson´s life and work and then begin our study of his classic text The Making of Europe. We begin with the first chapter on the Roman Empire as laying the political and legal foundations of Europe.
The Catholic Church49:18
Having covered some of the features of the Roman empire, we now turn to the most active and influential spiritual force in European culture during the Middle Ages - the Roman Catholic Church.
The Making of Europe -the Classical Tradition1:03:31
We now turn to the intellectual roots of Europe in the classical tradition with its Greek foundations, taken up (and modified) by both the Roman empire and the Catholic Church. The chapter deals also with the complex relationship between classical tradition and Christianity as they move from tension and conflict to an effort at synthesis.
The Barbarians30:02
We now look at the barbarians - the primarily Germanic tribes who eventually are pivotal in forming the national cultures who compose Europe.
The Barbarian Invasions57:29
In this section we discuss the barbarian invasions that bring an end to the Western Roman empire, the processes of internal transformation in the Empire going on even before these invasions, and the beginning of a Roman-Germanic fusion of cultures through the mediation of the Catholic Church.

Requirements

Description

"...these ages which have not unjustly been called dark, are the most interesting of all, since they contain the germ of a thousand years of cultural development...". Christopher Dawson, The Formation of Christendom.

The great British Catholic historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) belongs with Arnold Toynbee among the most significant "metahistorians" of the 20th century. In an era of crisis for Western civilization, when Europe was being torn apart by extreme nationalism and the modern totalitarian ideologies, Dawson called forcefully for understanding and reinvigorating of the spiritual, moral, and intellectual foundations of Europe´s unity as a civilization. Dawson is attentive to all aspects of history including the political, economic, artistic, and geographical. But in a time of growing secularization, Dawson is particularly notable for highlighting the central importance of religion for an understanding of the human culture complex. His classic text The Making of Europe takes the unusual focus of "the dark ages" (i.e. the early middle ages) as a formative period for European civilization. Dawson had a profound interest in epochs of "cultural fusion" which are on full display in this early medieval era. There is on the one hand the process of fusion between the classical Greco-Roman tradition and Christianity; and there is a gradual integration of the Roman and Germanic cultures, as well as others such as the Slavic and Celtic. In this course, we examine the section of this text called "The Foundations" which deals with the cultural traditions that will interact and determine the subsequent course of Europe during the Middle Ages- the Greco-Roman classical tradition, the Roman imperial tradition, the Roman Catholic Church, and the barbarian invaders. In doing so we hope this survey will shed light on the foundations of Europe, which is, in turn, the historical basis of Western civilization.

Note- the image of Sainte Chapelle for the course comes from Pixabay (ian kelsall) and states it is free for commercial use.

Who this course is for:

Anyone interested in history