HIST3082W: World Christianity, 1300-1800 Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries

This course, which requires no prerequisite, examines developments in the history of Christianity from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the end of the eighteenth. We will start our investigation by considering the Latin church with its headquarters in Rome at the height of its power and influence. We will then trace its development through the crises of the fourteenth century and its subsequent transformation during the Reformation and the Confessional era. We will close by considering new challenges facing the church in an age of Enlightenment and Revolution. Though our geographic center of gravity will be in Europe, we will follow the expansion of Christianity into the Asian, African and American worlds and how developments here changed the nature of the church back in Europe. We will study religion as a phenomenon that affects human activity in a broad spectrum of area and activities. Though we will investigate formal matters of belief, significant attention will be given to Christianity as a “lived experience,” how faith affected the everyday life of men and women in the premodern world.

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