FIRST PAPER
The First Paper should consist of about three pages of actual writing (not including the title page, with your name, the date, the title of your paper, and the assignment question). Copy and paste an image of the artwork you are analyzing after your Conclusion, and follow that with a Works Cited page at the very end. The paper should be double-spaced in Times New Roman, font size 12, in Microsoft Word.
This Assignments General Question and Expectations:
Question: What particular new ideas about the dignity and goodness of the created world in relation to God emerged in High Medieval Catholic Europe? How did these ideas influence other aspects of Catholic culture, spirituality, religious practice, and/or institutional organization, and how do you explain the development of these new kinds of optimism and creative energy during the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries?
Your paper should focus primarily on one main theme: just one aspect of the created world (or at most two) whose dignity and goodness, in relation to God, Catholic writers emphasized in the High Middle Ages. This theme could be the cosmos and the universe; OR this earth (including animals and plants); OR angels; OR human emotions; OR human reason and intellect; OR the human body. Your paper will explain in detail what new kinds of optimistic thinking about this theme were historically significant in the High Middle Ages.
Discuss also the impact of this theme on one or at most two major kinds of Catholic ideas, practices, or institutions in the 11th, 12th, and/or 13th centuries. For example: you could explain how positive, optimistic views about the created world affected and influenced new ideas about, or practices concerning God, Jesus, sin, holiness, relics, saints, wealth, poverty, gender, war and peace, mystical love, sacraments, asceticism and suffering; or influenced the development of new religious orders with new kinds of spirituality, or new lay institutions, new kinds of individuality, social solidarity and love of neighbor, attitudes towards non-Catholics, Papal leadership, episcopal leaderships, educational institutions such as the universities, new kinds of church-state relations, the crusades, peacemaking, marriage and the feudal family, etc.
Finally, consider what historical causes might account for the new optimism in thinking and practice in High Medieval Catholic Europe.
Evidence: Base your paper on the analysis of examples from three primary sources studied in our course that provide information about the same aspect of the created world and show similar kinds of impact. Present these sources in chronological order to show change (and continuities) over time:
-a) the 13th-century document
– Group 2: the first six little sections in Thomas of Celanos Lives of St. Francis; OR
AND
-b) one other High Medieval textual document This second source must provide information about the same aspect of the created world that you found and discussed in the first text and about similar kinds of impact. Francis of Assisi, OR Thomas Aquinas.
AND:
-c) one High Medieval artwork . This could be a building, a painting, a sculpture, a mosaic, a book illustration, etc. Pick an artwork that provides further information on the same theme and the same types of impact.
When you present the information you can gather from each primary source text, you should briefly set out the documents main themes (narrative, arguments, organization), but then spend most of your time quoting, explaining, and analyzing two short passages from each source as evidence proving the points you want to make to answer the Assignment question. For the artwork, describe and explain its overall topic and composition, and then analyze whatever parts of the artwork are relevant to your theme and argument.
must quote and analyze the specific short passage that you worked on with your small group and presented in class. For your second short passage from that primary source, select the best passage that provides further evidence supporting your main points. .
Select three primary sources and quotations/details that provide strong evidence about the central theme you have selected. Reread / study these sources, looking for everything you can learn there about your theme.
Use this background information to help you understand and analyze your three primary sources and your four short passages, draw accurate conclusions, and avoid factual errors. If that background information turns out to be important to your papers argument, include a short parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence that includes it, in this way: …sentence… (Madigan, p. 5). (Scott, Week 1 PowerPoint 2, slide 10). However, do not quote from Madigan or Scott in this paper. Keep your focus on presenting evidence from the three primary sources and especially from the four short passages you quote and analyze in detail and from the artwork.
Name your papers theme (which part of the created world) and the area(s) of High Medieval Catholicism that you are going to argue were impacted by the new ideas about the created world. And
Briefly identify the three primary sources from which your paper will draw its evidence (at least each documents title, authors/artists name, century, historical period; if relevant: language, audience, genre, type of art, etc.).
Organize the paper in chronological order, with at least one paragraph on what can be learned from each primary source. For each text, summarize in a few sentences what the document is about and what it says about your theme. Then accurately quote and analyze each short passage to support your papers main points in response to the Assignment Question.
Before each quotation, introduce it; include whatever your reader needs to understand its content right away. Assume your reader is not an expert and has not read your primary sources, so explain ahead of time any part of the quotation that would be opaque without a hint (for example, who is he or what does it refer to? At what point of the plot does this quotation come? Who is speaking these words?) Do NOT introduce a quotation by saying: The next quotation is: ….. or the like.
After each quotation, include a parenthetical reference to indicate the provenance of these quoted words. Use a short version of the title or authors name, followed by a page number, chapter number, verse number. For example: …quotation… (Tumbler, p. 3). (Aquinas, p. 3).
Use your analysis of each short passages content to provide the foundational evidence supporting and proving the validity of your papers main answer to the Assignments Question (on the theme you selected). Summarize in your own words those aspects of the passages content that are relevant to your theme, but develop an analysis of each quotation that goes beyond a mere rephrasing of the passages basic content. I recommend finding at least two words, phrases, and/or issues in each quoted passage that you can explain in greater depth and use as further evidence for your main points about your theme and its impact. This analysis must support your points about evolving views on the dignity and goodness of the created world in relation to God. What new and interesting things (beyond basic information in the textbook, lectures, etc) can these sources tell us?
End your paper with a short Conclusion paragraph (8-10 lines). Clearly state your papers answer to the Assignment Question, based on evidence provided throughout the papers analysis of the three primary sources. This is the best place to discuss possible historical causes for the new, more optimistic ideas about God and the created world in the High Middle Ages. Do you think the increasing urbanization, literacy, peace, and/or economic prosperity in Europe had a significant impact? Can the new economic prosperity, access to Aristotle, or contacts with other religions help explain what was developing in European Catholicism? Or were changes brought in by charismatic, influential individuals who made new religious choices seem appealing, people who lived their faith according to a radical idealism that made sense given the politics of the age? Etc. Note that there is no one right answer regarding historical causation. Changes happen over time for many reasons. Discuss several possible historical causes for your findings, ones that are supported by your analysis of the three primary sources and that you think might have been important.
After the Conclusion, that is, after the end of your paper, copy and paste an image of the artwork you discussed, with a caption (artists name, title). Then include a Works Cited page that lists a) the three primary sources in alphabetical order by the authors/artists names; and then b) Madigan or Scott if you cite them in the paper; and then, c) if you consulted any websites and drew information from them in your paper, their author and title/URL; and then, if relevant: d) your use of generative AI (though Ive asked everyone NOT to use it for any aspect of this paper brainstorming, writing, or revising, if, for whatever reason, you have chosen to use AI, then you must mention what program you used and for what aspects of the paper.
– This is St. Francis of Assisi doc link
When he saw that Francis despised such things as if they were dung, he was
filled with the greatest admiration and regarded Francis as different from all
others. [from the story of Francis and the Sultan in Syria]- Here is the specific short passage
Some key facts about the historical picture that I included is: St. Francis, mid-13th century. Do you see the stigmata on his hands and feet? On the right, “St. Francis receiving the stigmata,” by the famous early 14th-century artist Giotto.The lines drawn by the artist between the wounds of the crucified Jesus and Francis’s wounds emphasize the mystical union between Francis and Christ, that the stigmata “conformed” him to Christ, were a literal taking on of Jesus’ death by the saint.