100 early medieval subjects
I cobbled together a list of one hundred individuals who were important to the history of early medieval Europe with many thanks to you, my blog-readers, for many suggestions that expanded my list greatly.
This list is, of course, not exhaustive. My priority was to choose subjects for whom enough English-language materials exist (and are accessible from Laurentian) that my students can write analytic biographies of their chosen individual. With 83 registered, we should have enough wiggle-room on the list to accommodate most of them.
Feel free to suggest more names that I missed. They probably won’t make it into this year’s list but I’m sure I’ll be teaching this course again.
Abd-ar-Rahman I
Adomnan
Aelfric
Aetius
Al Walid I
Alaric
Alboin
Alcuin
Aldhelm
Alfred
Ambrose
Ammianus Marcellinus
Anthony of Egypt
Arius
Asser
Athanasius of Alexandria
Attila
Augustine of Canterbury
Augustine of Hippo
Baldhild / Balthild
Basil I
Bede
Belisarius
Benedict of Nursia
Boethius
Boniface of Mainz
Bridget
Brunhilda of Austrasia
Cassiodorus
Charles Martel
Charles the Bald
Charles the Fat
Charles the Simple
Clovis
Columba
Columbanus
Constantine I
Constantius I
Cuthbert
Cyril
Dhuoda
Donatus Magnus
Eadred
Edwin of Northumbria
Egeria the Pilgrim
Einhard
Ethelberga
Eusebius of Caesarea
Fredegund
Galla Placidia
Genevieve /Genovefa
Gildas
Gregory the Great
Gregory of Tours
Helena
Henry the Fowler
Hilda of Whitby
Hincmar of Rheims
Hrabanus Maurus
Hrotswitha of Gandersheim
Irene
Isidore of Seville
Jerome
John Cassian
John of Damascus
John Scotus Erigena
Judith of Bavaria
Julian
Justinian I
Leo I
Leo III
Liutprand of Lombardy
Louis the German
Louis the Pious
Martin of Tours
Maximus the Great
Methodius
Nicholas I
Nennius
Notker (the Stammerer)
Offa
Patrick
Paul the Deacon
Penda
Pepin the Short
Perpetua
Procopius
Radegund
Roderic the Visigoth
Rurik
Sedulius Scotus
Stilicho
Tariq ibn Ziyad
Theodelinda
Theodora
Theodoric
Theodosius
Totila
Venantius Fortunatus
Wilfrid
Add to those “influences” the worlds that Roger Dean conjured up for album covers by Yes in the mid 1970s. There is one sequence in the movie where the feeling of being plunged into these albums (or perhaps Jon Anderson’s Olias of Sunhillow) is particularly strong.
Nice list! It’s good to see you managed to find a reasonable number of women to include (though medieval sources are, of course, always harder to find for us XX types).
83 students - that’s a pretty big class. Or is that standard for you?
83 is, sad to say, pretty standard for our surveys aimed at students between the first-year intro and our senior seminars. (The latter are capped at 25 so the Catch-22 there is that we each have to offer one of those every year or seminars balloon!)
Getting in a fair number of women was a major concern. As you say, the sources are more difficult to find for medieval women, although that’s changing with the many newer works out over the last few decades.
I also included a few figures from Al-Andalus as well as Byzantium: I really hate it when the survey becomes all Franks and Romans with a few Brits and Germans for variety.
And sm, is that in reference to Avatar? (And can you actually get your students excited about references from the 70s? My western civ students don’t get Jethro Tull allusions which saddens me greatly!)