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Post-Classical (500 CE - 1450 CE)

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Deeds of Emperor Charles the Great

Later in the 9th century, Notker “the Stammerer” of St.-Gall wrote his Gesta Karoli Magni Imperatoris (Deeds of Emperor Charles the Great). He dedicated the work to Charlemagne’s great-grandson Charles the Fat (r.

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Excerpts from the Vita Karoli Magni

Let us investigate the work of Charlemagne’s courtier Einhard, the Vita Karoli Magni, or Life of Charles the Great, which was composed during the reign of Louis the Pious, probably during the long decade from around 817-830.

Teaching

Long Teaching Module: Inca Society

In South America in the centuries before 1500, the Peruvian coast and Andean highlands were home to a series of cultures that cultivated cotton as well as food crops. Of these, the largest empire was created by the Incas, who began as a small militaristic group and conquered surrounding groups.

A series of long, multi-colored strings hanging from another string. The hanging strings have knots at varying places along each string.
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Inca Khipu

Andean peoples, including the Incas, recorded information on khipus (also spelled quipu), collections of colored and knotted cords such as this one.

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Iglesia Colonial de Conchagua

The Iglesia Colonial de Conchagua is one of the oldest churches in El Salvador. It stands in the shadows of the town’s namesake feature, the Conchagua volcano.

Red-brown textile with a looping tendril pattern
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Indian textile fragment, 14th-15th century

This block-printed, cotton textile fragment, found in Old Cairo, Egypt, was made in Gujarat, India. It features a repeated stylized tendril pattern made by stamping red-brown dye on the cloth in vertical sections.

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Fourteenth-Century Chinese Dragon

This Chinese animal figure belongs to the rich collections of the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires. Depicting a dragon, the piece dates back to the fourteenth century.

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The Miracles of Sainte Foy

In 1013, Bernard of Angers visited the relics of Sainte Foy at the abbey of Conques, in southern France. Initially skeptical of the cult which had formed around this little girl martyr, Bernard nonetheless fell under her spell.

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On Diverse Arts (De diversis artibus)

Theophilus’ De diversis artibus is the only complete treatise on art to survive from the High Middle Ages.

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Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia

Bernard of Clairvaux was abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, in Burgundy, France, and a well-known preacher who travelled widely and was involved with many of the most pressing issues of his day, from papal power to the Crusades.