Yale University - A Journey through Western Christianity: from Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200 - 1650)
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A Journey through Western Christianity: from Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200 - 1650) at Coursera Overview
Duration | 46 hours |
Total fee | Free |
Mode of learning | Online |
Difficulty level | Beginner |
Official Website | Explore Free Course  |
Credential | Certificate |
A Journey through Western Christianity: from Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200 - 1650) at Coursera Highlights
- Shareable Certificate Earn a Certificate upon completion
- 100% online Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.
- Flexible deadlines Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.
- Beginner Level
- Approx. 46 hours to complete
- English Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian
A Journey through Western Christianity: from Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200 - 1650) at Coursera Course details
- This course follows the extraordinary development of Western Christianity from its early persecution under the Roman Empire in the third century to its global expansion with the Jesuits of the early modern world. We explore the dynamic and diverse character of a religion with an enormous cast characters. We will meet men and women who tell stories of faith as well as of violence, suppression, and division. Along the way, we encounter Perpetua and her martyrdom in Carthage; the struggles of Augustine the bishop in North Africa; the zeal of Celtic monks and missionaries; the viciousness of the Crusades; the visions of Brigit of Sweden; and the fracturing of Christianity by Martin Luther's protest. We hear the voices of great theologians as well as of those branded heretics by the Church, a powerful reminder that the growth of Christianity is a story with many narratives of competing visions of reform and ideals, powerful critiques of corruption and venality, and exclusion of the vanquished. The troubled history of Christian engagement with Jews and Muslims is found in pogroms and expulsions, but also in the astonishing ways in which the culture of the West was transformed by Jewish and Islamic learning.
- We shall explore the stunning beauty of the Book of Kells, exquisitely prepared by monks as the Vikings terrorized the coast of England. We will experience the blue light of the windows of Chartres, and ponder the opening questions of Thomas Aquinas' great Summa. We will read from the Gutenberg Bible of the fifteenth century, which heralded the revolution brought by the printing press. We will travel from Calvin's Geneva to Elizabeth's England to Trent, where a Catholic Council met to inaugurate a modern, missionary Catholic church. We will walk through the great Escorial of Philip II of Spain, hear the poetry of John of the Cross, and follow the Jesuits to Brazil and China.
- Christianity in the West was forged in the fires of conflict and tumult, and it brought forth both creativity and violence. It echoed with calls for God's world to be transformed, it inspired the most sublime art and architecture, yet it also revealed the power of the union of cross and sword to destroy. The course is a journey through the formation of the West as one strand of Christianity, as one chapter in a global story. It is a journey that has shaped our world.
A Journey through Western Christianity: from Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200 - 1650) at Coursera Curriculum
Welcome to A Journey through Western Christianity: from Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200 - 1650)
Course Introduction
Course Description
Precourse Survey
Meet Your Instructional Team
Bonus course resources
The Great Church (180 - 313)
Diversity in the Year 200: Dura Europos (c. 240), with Dr. Lisa Brody [Yale University Art Gallery]
The Conversion of Constantine
The Arian-Nicene Controversy
The Nature of Christ
The Rise of Rome
The Creed of Nicaea
Conversion of Constantine
Yale University Art Gallery?Dura-Europos: Excavating Antiquity
From Persecution to Empire
Augustine and the North African Church
Alexandria
North African Christianity
Martyrdom and Persecution
The Martyrdom of Perpetua (with Max & Nazanin)
Augustine
Islamic Invasion of North Africa
Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas
Augustine on Donatists
A timeline of the Great Persecution
See the Coptic necropolis el Bagawat (Egypt), one of the earliest Christian cemeteries
Augustine and North African Church
Monastic Lives: Desert Fathers to Celtic Christianity
Desert Monasticism
Saint Catherine?s (with Max)
Saint Benedict
Irish Monasticism
The Viking Age (with Nazanin)
Venerable Bede, Saint Cuthbert, and Northumbria
Alcuin and the Carolingian Renaissance
Life of St. Anthony
Benedict Rule
Explore the Gutenberg Bible and its history
Browse the Book of Kells medieval manuscript
View the Lindisfarne Gospels' early medieval illuminations
Monastic Lives, Desert Fathers to Celtic Christianity
Reformers and Crusaders
The Medieval World (Yale University Art Gallery)
Feudalism
Christian Reform
Bernard of Clairvaux (with Max)
Divided Christianity
Crusades
Innocent III
Cathar Heresy (with Nazanin)
Fulcher of Chartres, Speech of Urban II
The Capture of Jerusalem (1244)
Christian Attacks on Jews
Henry IV's letter to Gregory VII
The Romance of the Rose
Hagia Sophia's Christian mosaics
Reformers and Crusaders
Learning and Light
Mendicant Orders
Saint Clare of Assisi (with Nazanin)
Rise of Universities
Abelard & Heloise (with Max)
Thomas Aquinas
Cathedrals and Theology of Light
Mysticism
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae
Meister Eckhart, ?The Attractive Power of God?
Julian of Norwich
The stained glass windows of Chartres
The Flowers of Saint Francis
Peter Lombard?s The Sentences
Aquinas?s hymn, Pange Lingua
Learning and Light
Three Religions: Christians, Jews & Muslims in Medieval Spain
Jews and Muslims in Iberia
Convivencia
The Alhambra of Granada (with Nazanin)
Maimonides and Averroes
Inquisition and Expulsion
Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Discussion
Moses Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed, Introductory Letter
A Christian/Muslim Debate (12th century)
Muslim and Christian Piety in the 13th Century
Gregory X: Letter on Jews, (1271-76) - Against the Blood Libel
The Murdered Chorister
Chant from the Mozarabic tradition
David Nirenberg?s Communities of Violence
Arabic's influence on the Spanish language
The works of Averroes
Images of the Alhambra
Documents related to the Spanish Inquisition
Three Religions: Christians, Jews & Muslims in Medieval Spain
Medieval Devotion
The Isenheim Altar
Introduction
Sacraments
Saints & Relics
Joan of Arc (with Nazanin)
Pilgrimages
Rome and the Papacy
Avignon Papacy (with Max)
Heresy and Dissent
Seven Sacraments
Tales of Relics
Tales of the Devil
Art of Dying, (Ars Moriendi)
Requiem Mass for the Dead
Relics, and what they meant for medieval Christians
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Book of Hours
Medieval Devotion
Luther's Reformation
The Early Modern World (Yale University Art Gallery)
Young Luther
Break with Rome
Katharina von Bora (Nazanin)
Opponents & Opposition
Theology
Luther and the Jews (Max)
Reformation Church
Discussion
Martin Luther, ?Freedom of a Christian?
Luther?s 95 Theses
A Mighty Fortress
Protestant print propaganda
Luther?s original German Mass
Luther's Reformation
Fragmenting Reformation
Radical Visions
Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster (Max)
Zwingli
John Calvin: Life
Calvinism
English Reformation
Foxe's Book of Martyrs (with Nazanin)
Fragmenting Reformation: Discussion
Hans Schlaffer, A Brief Introduction for the Leading of Truly Christian Life
Preface to the Psalter - John Calvin
England, Thirty-Nine Articles
The Martyrs' Mirror
Foxe?s Book of Martyrs
Huldrych Zwingli?s reforming principles
Professor Gordon?s books on Calvin and Calvin?s Institutes of the Christian Religion
Fragmenting Reformation
Catholic Reform
Erasmus and his Legacy
Pre-Trent Catholic Reform
The Council of Trent
Catholic vs. Counter Reformation (Max and Nazanin)
Catholic Bibles
Teresa of Avila & Spanish Mysticism
El Escorial (Nazanin)
The Council of Trent?s Decree on Justification (1547)
Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle: Preface
Erasmus?s Novum Instrumentum
The Complutensian Polyglot Bible
El Greco and other works from leading Catholic Baroque artists
Peruse the poetry of Saint John of the Cross
Carlos Eire?s Reformations
Catholic Reform
Jesuits and Missions
The Founding of the Jesuits
Ignatius of Loyola (Nazanin)
Francis Xavier
Mateo Ricci & China
Brazil
Closing words from Bruce, Nazanin, and Max
Francis Xavier to Ignatius Loyola on Missions
Francis Xavier, Letter from Japan, 1552
Memorial for Matteo Ricci
Japanese depiction of the arrival of the Portuguese
A timeline of the colonization of Brazil
Moxos Ensemble
An early modern Jesuit?s account of the martyrdom of his fellow missionaries
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci,
Post Course Survey
Jesuits and Missions
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Student Forum
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