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The Medieval Concept of Time: A Study of Perception
How medieval people experienced time through church bells, canonical hours, the liturgical year and farm work, and why the subject is hard to study.
Life and Learning
Medieval Worldview
How medieval people thought about time, seasons, life stages and fate.
The Medieval Concept of the Four Seasons
How the seasons organized work, feasts and fasts in the medieval year, and how artists showed them in calendar pages and the labors of the months.
The Medieval Concept of the Four Seasons: A Cycle of Nature
How medieval thinkers linked the four seasons to the elements, the humors and the ages of life as part of one ordered picture of the natural world.
The Medieval Concept of the Three Ages of Man: Youth, Adulthood, and Old Age
Medieval writers divided life into stages of three, four, six or seven. This overview explains the main schemes and what each stage was expected to bring.
The Medieval Concept of the Wheel of Fortune: A Symbol of Fate
How the image of Fortune turning her wheel passed from Boethius to poets and artists, and what it taught medieval readers about rise and fall.
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Learning and Science Schools, universities, stars and maps. Food and Drink What people ate and drank, from peasant pottage to noble feasts. Dress, Festivals and Folklore Clothing, holy days, customs and legends. Literature and Legends Poems, sagas and tales told across the Middle Ages. Music and Entertainment Songs, dance, jesters and court amusements. Science and Technology Alchemy, astronomy, ships and the tools that changed work. Women in Medieval Society Work, law, family and religious life for medieval women. Poets and Authors Writers of the medieval world and those who shaped how it is remembered. Medieval Lives Typical lives of a peasant, a knight and a monk. Courtly Love and Ideals Love, chastity and etiquette in noble circles. Elements, Humors and Senses Medieval theories of matter, the body and perception. Universities, Oxford and Cambridge How universities arose and how Oxford and Cambridge took shape. Everyday Life Details Homes, hygiene, childhood, marriage and death in ordinary medieval lives.