Topic List
Listed here are merely starting points. The list is not exhaustive or complete. As noted elsewhere, you are welcome to come up with your own topic. All topic choices have to be approved by me, whether you come up with your own or choose it from the list. As also noted elsewhere, a topic is not a thesis, so choosing the topic is only the first step.
- Hundred Years War
- causes, consequences, aspects (e.g., finance, social impact, etc.). Joan of Arc is here, Henry V and a great deal more. Don't plan to do "The Hundred Years War" - plan to do some aspect of it.
- Changes in warfare and weaponry
- Cannons and gunpowder come along, but an increased importance of infantry, which has significant social implications
- Ciompi Revolt
- A short-lived but significant revolt in Florence
- Rise and fall of Burgundy
- not the narrative, but why it became prominent; or why it collapsed as a duchy under Charles the Bold
- Royal fiscal policy
- How kingdoms raised money and how they spent it. Good fodder for a comparison-style paper.
- Any individual city
- Venice, Ghent, Milan, Augsburg, London, Lyon ... you choose. Not Florence, though.
- Hanseatic League
- A country or kingdom
- A "secondary" one. Not England, France or Germany. Instead, choose Portugal or Poland, Bohemia or Wales, or something similar.
- Old age and death
- Peasantry and serfdom
- Gentry in England
- There wasn't a "gentry" class in other places; only England.
- The poor
- Criminals and criminality
- Gender issues
- Childhood
- Female saints
- Queens and female rulers
- Would include countesses, duchesses, etc.
- Working women
- Chivalry
- Knighthood and knightly orders
- Diplomacy, spies, and ambassadors
- Medici
- Other families qualify, too.
- Any specific trade: mining, goldsmith, carpenter,
- Crusading
- Not just specific crusades in the 14thc and 15thc, but also crusading literature, proposals for crusades, and the role of the idea of crusade.
- Franciscans
- The Spiritual Franciscans are of particular interest.
- Any German emperor: Henry VII, Lewis of Bavaria, Charles IV, Sigismund, Frederick III, Maximilian I
- Any individual German principality, including Austria, Brandenburg, the Palatinate, Bavaria, etc.
- Rural trades
- Including shepherds, woodcutters, millers, blacksmiths, etc.
- Representative institutions
- Not just English Parliament, but also the Estates General, and various urban institutions.
- Political thought
- Marriage and love
- Teutonic Knights
- Technology
- Any specific trade good (iron, wine, salt, wool, wheat, timber, furs)
- Literacy
- Universities
- Jews
- Moors
- English rule in Gascony, Brittany and/or Normandy
- Urban change in the late Middle Ages
- Rural change in the late Middle Ages
- Change and the nobility
- Urban rebellions
- Not only the Ciompi but many others, in Italy and the Netherlands especially.
- Rural revolts
- Forms of piety
- Popular religion
- This covers things like festivals, rituals, "superstitions" and a variety of practices that bordered along the edges of heresy. Witchcraft falls here, too.
- The advent of printing
- Changes in ships and navigation
- Social order and social hierarchy
- Brethren of the Common Life
- Major monarchs
- Too many to list
- The papacy in the late Middle Ages
- The development of papal government, but you can also look at a pope, or maybe a set of popes, or compare a couple of popes.
- Conciliarism
- Guilds
- Mercenaries and routiers
- Lithuania
- Art and society and patronage
- Slavery in the late Middle Ages
- Popular preaching and preachers
- Humanism and civic life
- Well-documented families, such as the Pastons
- The city of Rome in the late Middle Ages
- The Papal States
- The papacy in Avignon
- Renaissance popes