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In the Middle Ages, religious practices and beliefs were deeply integrated into the social, political, and economic fabric of society. This class examines how medieval people interacted with saints (both living and dead) in order to discuss the character and nature of medieval society. It covers the earliest desert saints who shaped ideas of Christian holiness, crusading-era ideas about the power of saintly intervention in worldly conflict, gendered and social structures of medieval life, and ideas about miracles, monasticism, and the power of the “very special dead”. The class extends from the waning of the Roman Empire to the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.