PPGH-UFF’s Medieval History sector, created in 1988, is organized around three chronological areas related to the Medieval West: the Early Middle Ages (fifth-tenth centuries); the High Middle Ages (eleventh-thirteenth centuries); and the Late Middle Ages (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries). By the medieval west is understood Brittany, Germany, the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula, and Gaul. The chronological areas work with the following themes, referring to the Program’s lines of research:

The studies carried out in these chronological areas are organized around the Program’s lines of research, based on the following themes:

Early Middle Ages (fifth-tenth centuries):

Economy and Society: social and economic structures in the Early Middle Ages (fifth-tenth centuries); social structure, lordly agrarian economy, artisanship, trade, and transformation of the Christian and Muslim Mediterranean world.

Power and Society: structures of power and politics in the Early Middle Ages, structures of power and political in the Early Middle Ages, formation of Romano-Germanic kingdoms, the creation and fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and Visigoth Hispania;

Culture and Society: the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, theoretical questions and the historiographical debate; the construction of Al-Andalus; structuration of the Church and the ecclesiastic hierarchy; religiosities and culture in the Early Middle Ages, Christian conversion, Christianity, and paganism.

High Middle Ages (eleventh-thirteenth centuries):

Economy and Society: socio-economic structures in the High Middle Ages (eleventh-thirteenth centuries), lordship, and feudalism, agrarian economics, urban economics, social structures in the countryside  and in the city, and the large transformations in the Christian and Muslim Mediterranean;

Power and Society: structures of power and politics in the High Middle Ages, the Holy Roman-Germanic Empire and the Papacy, the question of investitures, the political project of Cluny;

Culture and Society: Feudalism, theoretical questions and historiographic debate; religiosities and culture in the High Middle Ages, monastic renovation and religious reform in the twelfth century, heresies, social and scholastic tri-functionality.

Late Middle Ages (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries):

Economy and Society: socio-economic structures in the Late Middle Ages, transformations of the rural and urban world; the large centers of Christian and Muslim maritime trade;

Power and Society: structures of power and politics in the Late Middle Ages, the constitution of monarchies, the destinies of the Empire and the Papacy, the communal movement, urban republics;

Culture and Society: the crisis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, theoretical questions and the historiographic debate; religiosities and culture in the Late Middle Ages, Franciscanism and the mendicant movement, heresies, the political imagination, mysticism and humanism at the end of the Middle Ages.