Realizing that I have referenced "Christendom" and "Europe" interchangeably for a bit, I figured I needed to correct any misunderstandings. So in this "half" episode, I walk through what Christendom was the main factors that brought it down: the Renaissance, the Reformation, growing nationalism, economic disruptions, and the discovery of the New World.

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Beginning in the early Fourteenth Century, the Papacy went through a period of protracted exile from Rome. The Popes changed the seat of the Papal Government to Avignon, on the Rhone River in modern-day France. This period of exile coincided with the further decline and secularization of the Roman Catholic Church in ways that would hurt the overall reputation of the church in the decades to come. 

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Sources:

Avignon and Its Papacy

The Avignon Papacy Contested

The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades

The Church of the West and the Middle Ages

Here's a super quick review of about one thousand years of church history. This will take us up to the tragic years of the Avignon Papacy. 

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Sources:

The Medieval Church

Going to Church in Medieval England

Medieval Christianity

A History of the Church in the Middle Ages

I sit down with Virginia Postrel and talk about her new book: "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made The World". We discuss how the development of textiles has often been overlooked in historical study and why that is such a crucial mistake.

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Today we examine the ways in which Roman Catholicism impacted the lives of everyday European in the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance period to better understand the impact that the Reformation will have on normal early modern Europeans.

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Interested in learning more about the Middle Ages? Check out the following excellent work by Dan Jones: Powers and Thrones