War and Conquest in Medieval Europe

Catalog description

This seminar will focus on conquest in the medieval period. We will seek to understand the medieval mentality of warfare in order to think about how war was understood and justified: what constitutes acceptable violence and military intervention? War, however, cannot be separated from its goals. We will thus go beyond the battlefield to look at how conquest of territories was cemented with the establishment and enforcement of new orders. Themes will include knighthood, ideas of just war, laws of war, territorial control and colonization. The course will also include two fabulous field trips to visit Penn’s manuscript collection and the arms and armor collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.