Great Courses: Great Minds of the Medieval World by Dorsey Armstrong

Dr. Dorsey is from Purdue University and has done several Great Courses videos on Medieval History.  In this one she focuses on 12 people who made great intellectual contributions during the middle ages. She groups them into categories.  First she talks about the early church fathers like Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory.  She then talks about other great Catholic philosophers like Bede, Thomas Aquinus, and Bernard of Clairvaux.  She spends several lectures talking about Moslem and Jewish scholars of the middle ages, and then finishes up with people who made contributions who were not religious leaders.  She is very knowledgeable, and has a pleasant presentation style. She covers the subject's lives mostly, but also touches on their main ideas and values.  

You who are my regular readers know that I love this kind of stuff.  When I was in college I studied Latin and Greek, but the time period I was most interested in was the early medieval period.  I had heard about almost all the people she talks about in this series, but it was fun to get more details about their lives, and to be reminded about their accomplishments. There were a couple I hadn't heard about before, particularly some of the people in her last section about late medieval nonreligious leaders. I kept hoping she would mention Peter Cantor, who was the person I did my honors thesis about, but no luck. (He was more like a tear two historical personality.) Listening to the Great Courses classes really does take me back to my college years.  (24 1/2 hour lectures, 2014)