{"id":300,"date":"2019-10-21T12:21:37","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T16:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fcurta\/?page_id=300"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:55:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:55:45","slug":"medieval-france","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fcurta\/medieval-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Medieval France"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Medieval France<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Time and Location<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 3:00-4:55 and Thursday 4:05-4:55<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Flint Hall 111<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Description<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Middle Ages were a formative period in the history of France. Irrespective of whether people in the 10th or 11th centuries thought of their land(s) as France, France existed, as did the political obligations to the French king. There has been a recent scholarly effort to dismantle the idea that France existed as such at an early date. Some have dismissed the idea as the product of the 19th-century nationalism, others have focused on regions of France, in an attempt to show how different various parts of the future France were in relation to each other. However, France was clearly a political concept (at the very least) during the reign of Louis VII. Louis’s title nonetheless still made reference to the Franks, for he was a\u00a0rex Francorum<\/em>. Suger, who wrote a biography of the king’s father, called the country\u00a0regnum Franciae<\/em>, the kingdom of France. Territory, not ethnicity was what mattered in the 12th century. A clear distinction between the French and the other peoples of Europe came with the Second Crusade, in which there was an opportunity to meet Germans in large numbers, who, though still perceived as\u00a0Franci<\/em>, were not French. With Breton, Basque, and Flemish pushed to the peripheries, a sense of linguistic commonality (if not yet uniformity) is expressed in the literary explosion of the 12th century. To look back from that century means therefore to understand how the basic elements of Frankish history became French. To look forward for another century or so, is to see how France began to be built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

This course is designed as a chronological and topical introduction to the history of\u00a0medieval France, from the abandonment of the Roman province of Gaul to the beginning of the Hundred Years War. Since this is a\u00a0\u00a0survey, it is impossible to cover everything. Instead, the course will offer a selection of representative topics from a much larger possible list. We will examine some of the key political, economic, and social developments that had historical significance, the growth of the Church and its relation to the State, and the growth of urban culture in medieval France.\u00a0Anyone with enough curiosity and desire to learn is welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Textbooks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n