High Middle Ages
As the last millennium dawned, Europe didn't amount to much. Illiteracy, starvation, and disease were the norm. In fact, Europe in the year 1000 was one of the world's more stagnant regions—an economically undeveloped, intellectually derivative, and geopolitically passive backwater. Three short centuries later, all this had changed dramatically. The flowering of medieval civilization between the years 1000 and 1300 forms the focus of this series by the gifted historian Professor Philip Daileader. He fascinatingly reveals the concepts and mind-sets of the High Middle Ages and the medieval.