In this week in the course, you will be studying the late Middle Ages, the period of time
which saw first a flowering of medieval culture and then its decline in the fourteenth
century.  The main reason for the decline was the impact of the Black, or bubonic,
Plague, which first reached Europe in 1347 and which then re-occurred periodically for
the remainder of the fourteenth century, with later outbreaks as late as the eighteenth
century.  The immediate impact of the plague in Europe was the destruction of
anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the population.  The destruction varied dramatically from
city to city, with some cities, such as Marseilles, almost completely depopulated and
others remaining untouched.  It was largely the cities that were affected by the plague
because of the close concentration of population in one area.

Another important effect of the plague was on the church.  The fact of the matter was
that many members of the church (priests, monks and nuns) were called into service in
plague infested areas to nurse the sick, administer church sacraments, bury the dead. 
As a result, church members died in far higher proportions than regular inhabitants of
an area.  This had a dramatic effect on the intellectual and cultural level of the church
and fundamentally weakened it as an institution.  

Thomas Aquinas, actually St. Thomas Aquinas, was probably the most important
intellectual figure of the Middle Ages.  His lasting import was his attempt to unify faith
and reason.  Before Aquinas, the church had looked with great disdain upon the
achievements of the ancient Greek rational philosophers, indeed on any philosopher. 
From the church's point-of-view what was necessary was faith in God for spiritual
salvation, and any tinkering with pagan philosophy was considered quite anti-Christian. 
Aquinas dramatically reversed the church position.  Aquinas showed that through the
use of the rational mind, through the use of rational philosophy, man could approach an
understanding of God.  In other words, faith was not the only avenue towards
understanding God (After all, the rational mind and philosophy were part of God's
creation too, asserted Aquinas.).  Aquinas' work led to the church's grudging
acceptance of scientific and philosophical pursuits.  

This week's assignment is a one-page paper based on your reading of Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, and you are only reading selected tales not the entire
volume--although you are free to read all of the Tales.  You will be reading the work
as a historian, looking for historical evidence, evidence to understand the age in which
the work was written, and you will not be reading the Canterbury Tales as a piece of
great literature, which they are.  Before writing the paper, you should review the style
rules for history papers in the course.  Your paper should include an introduction,
paragraphs (each of which deals with a specific point you are trying to make) and
quoted evidence from the text to support your analysis.  The question is:  citing specific
evidence from Chaucer how religious was medieval society?  As you write your paper,
please do not write a paper using a structure as, for example, in the Knight's Tale ..., in
the Miller's Tale ..., in the prologue ..., etc.  You should write the paper around specific
points that you are trying to make.  For example, you might say that medieval society
was religious because a large portion of the population was employed by the church,
the conversation of people was filled with church terminology and attendance at church
on Sunday was mandatory.  And so your paper should group around specific points you
want to make to prove your interpretation of the religious nature of medieval society.