 welcome to Tan Academy's Renaissance to Modern Times History series. My name is Kathleen Lewis and it will be my privilege to walk with you through this series. Whether you love history like I do or you just know that this is a class that you have to take, I pray that you will come to see history for the story that it is and you don't get bogged down in the dates and the names and the places. They're important but what's more important is the story. The story of a loving God always faithful reaching out to his people even when we behave in ways that are contrary to his loving will. Along with this series you'll also be reading Tan's story of the church and Old World in America. Not only that but you'll have an opportunity to read some wonderful works of literature that will help to flesh out all of the material that we'll be talking about in the series and that you'll read in the textbooks. Before we begin today and before we begin any of our lessons we're going to turn to our Heavenly Father in prayer. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. O Creator ineffable, who of the riches of thy wisdom did appoint three hierarchies of angels and did set them in wondrous order over the highest heavens and who did apportion the elements of the world most wisely. Do thou who art in truth the fountain of light and wisdom, dain to shed upon the darkness of my understanding the rays of thine infinite brightness and remove far from me the twofold darkness in which I was born, namely sin and ignorance. Do thou who give speech to the tongues of little children, instruct my tongue and pour into my lips the grace of thy benediction. Give me keenness of apprehension, capacity for remembering, method and ease in learning, insight in interpretation and copious eloquence and speech. Instruct my beginning, direct my progress and set thy seal upon the finished work. Thou who art true God and true man, who livest and reignest world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you for taking that time of prayer with me. The prayer that I shared with you that we'll be using at the beginning of each of our lessons was written by St. Thomas Aquinas. Before we get started into the content of this series, I'd like to share with you a few words from Pope Benedict and from Pope St. John Paul. They were writing about history and understanding their words will help you to see the perspective that I would like to share with you on history. In the incarnation of the Son of God, we see forged the enduring and definitive synthesis which the human mind of itself could not even have imagined. The eternal enters time. The whole lies hidden in the part. God takes on a human face. God is not a distant hypothesis placed at the origin of the world, but is present in the life of man, of every man. History therefore becomes the arena where we see what God does for humanity. God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily. The things of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves. For the people of God, history becomes a path to be followed to the end, so that by the unceasing action of the Holy Spirit, the contents of revealed truth may find their full expression. Pope St. John Paul simply and beautifully summarized history as the arena where we see what God does for humanity. And that's really the focus for this series and all of the history series that we'll be sharing through tan. Those who do not know God only look for the actions of human beings, whether they're rulers or everyday people. As people of faith, however, we approach history very differently. We know that history began with the creation of a loving father and that history continues in his loving care. We know that he seeks to draw all people to himself. We also know that, sadly, we rulers and everyday people often act in opposition to his loving will. And sometimes, some men and women, rulers and everyday people do conform themselves to his loving will and they serve as models for us in the present. Studying history from this perspective is our goal. So coming down just a little bit from those lofty heights to the practical part of a study of history, let's take a look at some very basic elements that we need to understand. First, an understanding of basic chronology, how time moves. Because all of human life operates in time, history occurs in time and our study of history has to have a way for men to mark time. How do we reference certain time periods? Well, you might remember that early civilizations would reference time based on the reign of a particularly important ruler, a pharaoh, a king, a Caesar. Ancient Greeks accustomed themselves to referencing time based on the Olympic games, how long it had been since the last Olympic game. Romans would mark time from the founding of the city of Rome. We mark time a little differently. There was something that happened that serves as the origin point for us. And that's the incarnation, the coming of God as man. And that point is our origin point for the study of history. Let's take a look at this chronology. Here you see on the timeline the incarnation. All of the events that occurred before the incarnation are referenced in the study of history as occurring in a year BC, before Christ. And then all of the events that happen after the incarnation, all of the events that we'll be covering in this history series, happen in a year that is Anno Domini in the year of our Lord. Now because this history series is only covering events after the incarnation, I won't actually make that reference. I won't say AD 1571, for instance, when I'm talking about the Battle of Lepanto. I will just reference 1571. And you'll know that this is the time period that we're in. Another thing to keep in mind when you're looking at a timeline like this, is that the years from zero, from the incarnation, basically, until 99 AD, those years are part of the first century, even though you'll see that the year doesn't start with a one. Moving further along, the years from 100 to 199 are considered the second century, even though the year will start with the numeral one. So again, when we're talking about the Battle of Lepanto, which occurred in 1571, that happened in the 16th century, even though the year starts with 15. That's a basic understanding of the movement of time that you'll need to know when you're studying history. In this series, we're going to be reviewing the people, the events, and the broad cultural movements from about the 14th century into modern times. Many of the things that are happening in our world today have their roots in this time period. The type of government making the laws under which you live, the kinds of churches that you drive past in your town, all of those things have roots in these centuries that we'll be covering together. Another thing that I'd like to take some time to mention is that as many people and places, dates and events and movements as we will cover in our series, there's more. There's never enough time to really unpack all of the mysteries of human history, not in this lifetime. Now, in some ways, that can be frustrating. I can remember going through history at different times in my life and reading something in the chapter of a book and saying to myself, oh my goodness, why wasn't I taught this back in college, back in high school, back in grade school? It can be frustrating in that way, but I would challenge you to move past that frustration and actually take some pleasure and joy in the fact that a study of history is never ending, at least not in our lifetime. There's always going to be more mystery, something new to discover when you're studying history. Until the end of time, when the Lord reveals in all of its glory his plan for the salvation of man, you'll have the opportunity to learn more and to seek more. Now, as exciting as all of these people and events might be, it's not the whole story either. We need to know the where that these people lived, the where that the events happened. And the name for that is geography. Now, whether geography is a completely separate course for you in your studies at home, or it's folded into your study of history, I would encourage you to make serious use of maps and other kinds of resources to learn about geography in order to understand history better. After all, all of history, human history is going to happen right here. But it's a little easier to think about geography, not so much like that, but maybe a little more like this. This map shows us the world as we understand it to be, the geography of the world. What does this have to do with history? You might be asking yourself. That's a fair question. And it's one that I'd like to spend a little bit of time with you to answer. Imagine for a moment that you lived thousands of years ago. You were part of a small tribe. And about a week's journey away, about a week's walk away from you, there was another tribe. Would you try and speak to the people in that tribe? Would you look for opportunities to trade with them? Would you learn from them? Would you share the same language or begin to share similar words so that your languages looked very similar? Well, that depends in great part to geography. If the land between your two settlements looks like this, a nice flat plain over which you can walk fairly easily, even with older members of your tribe or very young members of your tribe, then the chances are good that over time, your two settlements will interact with one another quite a bit. You'll probably start to trade. You'll probably speak to one another learning each other's language. And over time, your languages will become more similar. Chances are good that before too long, your tribes may start to intermarry as well. Over enough time, your tribes may actually become one culture. They might even share a government. Now, that's if the week's journey looks like this. But what if the week's journey of this land has instead between the two settlements to cover terrain like this? Well, suddenly a week's walk over a flat plain is going to take a lot longer. And not only that, members of your tribe may choose not to even embark on a journey like that. They may not even be aware that there's another settlement on the other side of mountains like this. What are the chances if the two settlements have this mountain or mountain range between them? What are the odds that they'll talk to one another, try and trade with one another? You certainly wouldn't be taking older members of your community on a walk like that, let alone the younger ones. In a situation like this, your two settlements will probably evolve cultures, develop cultures that are very different. You may not ever trade with one another. You probably won't share a government. This way shows us that geography will help to determine the course of history. A flat plain people living next to another set of people's a week's journey away will interact, maybe peacefully, maybe go to war. Two settlements with a mountain range between them may interact very little, if at all. This is one of the many reasons why we'll be discussing geography as we talk about history this year, and we'll be looking at maps and reviewing events that happened in relation to what the topography or the land movement elevations and what not look like. We also want to know where kingdoms or cities are in modern times. When you look at major trade routes or kingdoms that existed in the 14th century, you're not necessarily going to be referencing places that exist today. And so it will be important for us to make note, and I will, and certainly your textbooks will, to say, we're going to pause here and mention that this place is in modern day Germany, or this place is in modern day Croatia. Another reason that it's important to pay attention to geography when you're studying history is that borders change quite a bit as wars are fought and treaties are made. So if you happen to read in a certain textbook that there was an artist who lived in the kingdom of the two Sicilies, would you know where that artist lived? Well Sicily is still an island that you can see on a map today, but it might surprise you to know that the kingdom of the two Sicilies was actually most of southern Italy, including the island of Sicily, for a long time in the time period we'll be studying. Knowing that helps you to recognize that that artist may in fact have lived only a day's journey from Rome, living in the kingdom of the two Sicilies. Remember too that the idea of the nations we know today, like Germany or Italy, we're only developing during the time period that we're covering in this series. One of the things that you will notice about both of those nations, Germany and Italy, is that for a great deal of our time in the series, when we're talking about modern day Germany, talking about modern day Italy, at that time we're referencing multiple kingdoms that existed. It's not until later in the centuries of this series that you'll find a unified Germany or a unified Italy. Now, keeping all of this information together, what you read in the textbook, what we share together in this series, what you learn through the literature and what you see on the maps, keeping all of that straight might seem like a daunting task and it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It's going to be important that you cultivate some good note-taking skills and I want to encourage you, if you haven't done that before in your schooling, that this is the year that you commit yourself to learning how to take notes that help you to organize the material that you come across in a way that you can study later and retain over time, not only for a test, although that's important, you want to get a good grade on your test, but it's also important that that information is retained so that it's something you can hold on to for a lifetime. Now, how are you going to do that? You might say, Mrs. Lewis, I have tried taking good notes in the past and I haven't found anything that works for me. I just can't keep it together in my head. I understand. It's a skill, though, that needs to be practiced in order to be mastered and I've had the privilege of watching students over the years that I've been teaching work on that skill diligently and I've seen the rewards. I've seen them in high school and in college being able to go back to notes that they took in some of my middle school classes for information that some of their peers couldn't find when it was time to study for their exams. All right, let's take a look at how you're going to take notes because, as I said, it has to be a system that will work for you. On the board here, you'll see two different methods illustrated. The first method is known as the Cornell method of note-taking and Cornell is a university, so that's where the name comes from. Now, under this method, a student would actually divide his or her paper the way that you see here. On the day of the class or while you're reading your material, you would be taking notes here in this portion of the paper. After the class, and I know you're thinking to yourself, oh, it's not even finished when the class is finished, but trust me, this pays off. The little bit of extra time it takes to do this will pay off later. You will go back and here at the bottom of the paper you would write a summary. What did I put? What is all of this mean? Because this part of your notes, it might be kind of messy, actually. You're trying to take notes quickly as a teacher or professors talking. So this helps you to summarize. Once I've gone through all of this, what does that mean? And you want to do that as soon after class as you're able, because that's when the information will be fresh. Over on this side are certain cues. This is important for you to write so that later, when you go back to the notes, you don't have to read through all of this in order to find something very specific that you're looking for. These cues on the side of the paper will provide an ease of reference for you later. Now, you might be saying to yourself, Mrs. Lewis, my brain does not work like that. And honestly, I understand. I've had students for whom this was never going to work. They tried, and that's important that you try it. They tried, and it just wasn't going to work for them at all. Their brain works graphically. They think in pictures. Well, there's a method for note taking for that, too. It's called sketch notes. Now, if your brain works like this naturally and this makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, this might make you anxious just looking at it. But if this stressed you out, this might look really comfortable for you. And if that's the case, maybe sketch notes is going to be the way for you to organize your history notes for this year. You can see lots of pictures included on the page. But also, there is text, sometimes bits of information that are written during class. Sometimes this information is written afterwards. So the dates, the names, the places that are here still need to be referenced here. But these illustrations might help your brain to process it better. You also might notice that there aren't any lines on this paper. Students who use sketch notes to organize their thoughts and to organize information typically don't find these lines to be helpful. They like a nice blank white sheet of paper when they get started. And that might be the same for you too. So here it is. Now, whether you're naturally a Cornell method type of person or naturally a sketch notes type of person, that part isn't nearly as important as the fact that you commit yourself through this history series to taking good notes that will be useful to you throughout the course and even into your further education. Before we end our time together, I always like to offer a prayer. Now, the prayer that we'll offer at the end of the other lessons is a specific prayer for the people we learned about during that lesson. We haven't really talked about any particular historical figures in this lesson since this was our introduction. So instead, I'd like to invite you to pray with me a Glory Bee. And on this occasion, we'll be praying for your success in this class. I'll be praying for that. And I hope that you also keep me in mind. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you. And until we meet again.