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A World Lit Only By Fire Study Guide

A World Lit Only By Fire Summer Reading Test

Section 1: The Medieval Mind

1. Whose country was described as "the back of a horse?"
The Huns' country

2. Who declared he was "above grammar?"
Sigismund

3. Who invaded Rome in A.D. 410?
The Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric

4. Who was the last Roman emperor of the west?
Romulus Augustulus

5. What were the serfs' basic agricultural tools?
Picks, forks, spades, rakes, scythes, and balanced sickles

6. Why did outlaws flourish in the Hercynian Forest?
The were seldom pursued

7. What replaced Rome as the imperial fixer of European frontiers?
Constantinople

8. What is the Nicene Creed?
The Creed that Constantine set up for his theology

9. What was the first great work to shape and define the medieval mind?
De civitate Dei

10. What did Canossa symbolize?
Secular submission

11. When did the designation of saints emerge?
Second and third centuries after Christ

12. Why did Leo III become a very unpopular emperor?
He issued a Draconian act in 726

13. From where did the name exchequer emerge?
Royal treasury officials were so uneducated they used a checkered cloth for doing sums

14. What was the lowest title of the aristocratic order?
Knight

15. Why were proclamations from the Holy See called bulls?
Bulla, a leaden seal which made them official

16. Why was the papacy moved to Avignon in 1305?
Italian disorders and a campaign to outlaw the Catholic Knights Templar

17. Why do we know nothing of the architects and builders of Chartres or Canterbury?
They were glorifying God. To them their identity in this life was irrelevant

18. What was the Great Schism?
The period in the Church where there were multiple popes, or antipopes, at one time

19. When did the Renaissance begin?
Early 1400s

Section 2: The Shattering

1. Who was the next explorer to successfully navigate the Straits of Magellan after Magellan?
Sir Francis Drake

2. What was the...