OFFERED 2025-2026

• 2025-2026 Time and Tuition:
  • Mondays, 12:30 – 2:00 pm Eastern
  • Tuition
    • Seminar with writing tutorial: $90 per month (10 months, August through May)
    • Seminar only: $75 per month (10 months, August through May)
• Location: Signal Mountain, Tennessee
• Grades: 9-12 AND 8th grade strong readers
• Prerequisite for tutorial portion: Writing III
• Pairing: You can pair this course with Medieval Literature!
• Description: Students learn about the significance of medieval and renaissance culture. In addition to study of the histories, governments, economics, wars, arts, and customs of Medieval and Renaissance Christendom, the course examines how these eras shaped the United States and its Constitution.
• Assessment:
  • All: Students must complete all readings and daily-work/commonplacing as well as oral exams.
  • Writing tutorial only: Each term, students compose one essay, one other written piece, and one project – choosing between an academic/artistic portfolio and a history-related handcraft. (Students in both history and literature courses only create one project per term.) In December and May, tutorial students participate in Defense Day by giving a brief presentation on one of their essays and responding to questions from the audience.
• FINAL BOOK LIST for 2025-2026: (Hard copies are required; recommended editions/translations are listed below)
  • Boethius — The Consolation of Philosophy (Recommended: Goins translation/Ignatius, ISBN: 9781586174378) <= Needed for the first week of class
  • Geoffrey of Monmouth — History of the Kings of Britain (Recommended: Thorpe translation/Penguin, ISBN: 9780140441703)
  • Einhard — Life of Charlemagne (Recommended: Ganz translation/Penguin, ISBN: 9780140455052)
  • Asser — Life of Alfred the Great (Recommended: Keynes translation/Penguin, ISBN: 9780140444094)
  • Ramon Lull, Book of the Order of Chivalry – ‎Boydell, ISBN: 978-1843838494
  • BOOK CHOICE: EITHER Joinville and Villehardouin — Chronicles of the Crusades (Recommended: Smith translation/Penguin, ISBN: 9780140449983) OR Ibrahim’s Sword and Scimitar (Hachette Books) OR Ibrahim’s Defenders of the West (Bombardier Books). Joinville and Villehardouin offer full primary source accounts of the Fourth Crusade and of the crusade of St. Louis; Ibrahim’s works, while largely secondary, include hundreds of essential quotations from rarely-read primary sources. Sword is largely chronological, while Defenders is a series of biographies. Both are commended by acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson. Ibrahim’s works do not pass lightly over the extreme sufferings of Christians; however, it is vital to remember that the same types of suffering are being endured by persecuted Christians today.
  • Aquinas — On Law, Morality, and Politics (Recommended: Regan, 2nd ed./Hackett, ISBN: 9780872206632)
  • Froissart — Chronicles (Recommended: Brereton translation/Penguin, ISBN: 9780140442007)
  • Vasari — Lives of the Artists (Recommended: Modern Library edition, ISBN: 9780375760365)