Early Context
This religious practice had many positive effects on communities, such as improvements in civil engineering and stimulating local economies.
What is pilgrimage?
This tragic and devastating event turned out to have some positive impacts on the society of the Latin West, such as an increase in wages paid to field workers and an increase in technology.
What is the Black Plague?
This secular genre of music was written in the vernacular, or the language of the people.
What is Folk Music?
What is the Roman Empire?
This vibrantly colored manuscript, illuminated by a monk named Eadfrith, uses linear patterns and animal motifs to create a route for spiritual meditation.
What is the Lindisfarne Gospels?
This city was the capital of the Roman Empire until Emperor Constantine relocated the capital to the easter border, causing the Roman Empire to disintegrate.
What is Rome?
This time period is named for the way its architecture loosely resembles that of the ancient Roman Empire.
What is the Romanesque Period?
This sacred genre of music is characterized by monophonic texture, meaning that everyone sings the same line together at the same time.
What is Gregorian Chant?
This structure of Romanesque architecture was adopted from the Roman Empire and was the foundational element of other structures such as barrel vaults and arcades.
What is the rounded arch?
The mosaic apse in this church depicts Jesus as the main character while also paying tribute to several saints in the church's history.
What is Santa Prassede?
This term is used to describe how the common people in the Latin West were not able to read and write.
What is illiterate?
Though very different from our modern day version, this new development of education allowed people of all social classes to gather together and learn from traveling teachers, giving them a path out of the station they were born into.
What are public universities?
This sacred genre of music incorporated multiple vocal parts happening simultaneously and occasionally included an instrument to play a drone.
What is Organum?
This structure of Gothic architecture was adopted from Islamic architecture in Spain and was the foundational element of other structures such as groin vaults and slender columns.
What is the pointed arch?
What is Saint Matthew (from the Ebbo Gospels)?
This time period, the earliest period in the Middle Ages, got its name from the fact that there used to be very little known about what was happening during these years.
What is the Dark Ages?
This event, largely due to conflicts of territory, resulted in clear borders and an established national identify for England and France.
What is the Hundred Years War?
These people were the earliest singer-songwriters in Europe, writing French songs about love and adventure.
Who are troubadours?
Ottonian artists aimed to employ this technique by using images to represent deeper abstract ideas.
What is symbolism?
This series of relief sculptures depicts stories from the Old and New Testaments in the Bible in an unrealistic style.
What are the Bronze Doors (of St. Michael's at Hildesheim)?
This time period, only lasting a very short time, was named after an emperor who looked up to Emperors Constantine and Charlemagne.
What is the Ottonian Period?
This way of thinking developed during the Late Middle Ages, as the general population began to think for themselves and pursue goals that would promote their own well-being.
What is individualism?
Sacred music was entirely a cappella during the Middle Ages with the exception of this part, which would often be played by an instrument because it was so difficult and boring to sing one note for several minutes at a time.
What is a drone?
This technique, employed by late Gothic artists, used light and shadow to make objects appear three-dimensional with realistic form.
What is chiaroscuro?
What is Madonna Enthroned? (aka Ognissanti Madonna)