Medieval Christianity: Understanding Faith, Mysticism, and Worship during the Middle Ages

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This brilliantly taught course will ignite your imagination and inspire your faith.

Throughout history, we have created images to understand our relationships with other Christians, the wider world, and God. For medieval men and women, those images came from Christendom. Christianity was the air they breathed: Christian ideas, devotions, and beliefs shaped their perspectives and mindsets.

Can we unearth their worldview today? Medieval Christianity: Imagination, Images, and Ideas transports you to the fascinating world of the men and women who came before us. With award-winning professor Christopher M. Bellitto as your guide, you’ll explore history and legends, heroes and threats, triumphs and disasters, literature and devotions.

Many associate the Middle Ages with clichés of naïve, gullible peasants. You will discover, though, that medieval Christians lived in a world of religious wonder to make sense of their earthly lives. Prof. Bellitto’s remarkable lectures will imbue you with a similar sense of wonder.

As you move through the course, you will enrich your spirituality by seeing your own world with new eyes. As Andrew Greeley says in The Catholic Imagination, we transcend our daily lives by making connections between the here-and-now and religious beliefs. Imagination, in short, sanctifies the ordinary and helps us achieve mindfulness.

In this state of mindfulness, you will view life as medieval men and women did: a marvelous journey that draws you closer to God.

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