HIST 301
Approaching the Past: Three Historians of the Dark Ages
Last Offered Spring 2009
Division II
This course is not offered in the current catalog

This History 301 seminar investigates the nature of History through the three most important historical writers of the so-called European Dark Ages: Gregory of Tours (d. 594), a Gallo-Roman aristocrat and bishop who chronicled the bloody feuds of the early Frankish kings and queens; the Venerable Bede (d. 735), a Benedictine monk who famously narrated the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England from paganism to Christianity; and Einhard (d. 840), the biographer of the great emperor Charlemagne. For each of these early medieval authors, we will seek to understand not only how he conceived of and wrote about the past, but also how modern historians have tried to use his surviving writings as evidence to construct their own historical arguments and narratives. In this way, our examination of three historians of the Dark Ages will become an exploration into historical methodology, historiography, epistemology, and the limits of historical knowledge.