Medieval Lives: Chapter 2
Were medieval people very different from us?
This is the first of two chapters helping students get a sense of their shared humanity with the people of the past – they weren’t an alien life-form. This chapter explores similarities and differences in emotions, in aspects of everyday life and in parents’ relationships with their children. Chapter 3 will explore what mattered to medieval people (e.g. honour, family, loyalty, religion, respect). I’ve started with these topics so that students understand the ideas in people’s minds before studying the actions they took (e.g. in 1066). They’ll better understand the complexity of events if they have already thought about the ideas that were important to contemporaries.
This chapter was revised and simplified in August 2021.
Here are two pages from the classroom resource
Click to enlarge the image
