AC9HH8K03 Year 8 Humanities and Social Sciences

Content descriptor a significant event, development, turning point or challenge that contributed to continuity and change in Medieval, Renaissance or pre-modern Europe

Elaborations

Medieval Europe

• • Elaboration describing the features of castles and churches of the period, such as Warwick Castle in England and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, as examples of the Church’s power in terms of its control of wealth, land and labour
• • Elaboration examining the nature of illuminated manuscripts and recognising that the medieval manuscripts of monastic scribes contributed to the survival of many ancient Greek, Roman and Arab literary texts
• • Elaboration explaining the changing relations between Islam and Europe, including the effects of the Crusades and trade
• • Elaboration describing the impact of the Magna Carta on different social groups including the nobility, religious orders, merchants, workers/craftsmen, peasants and women
• • Elaboration investigating the effects of the Black Death in a city such as Carthage, Damascus or Rome; for example, labour shortages, peasant uprisings, the weakening of feudal structures, increased social mobility, and challenges to religious ideas and power
• • Elaboration identifying the effect of the Black Death on human populations using studies of church records from the period, considering the reliability of these statistics and explaining the impact of the population change in areas such as farming, commerce, culture and religion

The Renaissance

• • Elaboration describing the significance of double-entry bookkeeping, as seen in the Messari accounts of the Republic of Genoa in 1340 CE, in accelerating the production of wealth and patronage
• • Elaboration investigating learning in the Renaissance period (for example, humanism and the influence of ancient Greece and Rome) and analysing the symbolic representation of this learning in architecture, artworks and inventions from individuals such as Brunelleschi, Copernicus, Donatello, da Vinci, Michelangelo and Titian
• • Elaboration explaining why the Catasto of 1427 was introduced in Florence following the end of war with the Duchy of Milan
• • Elaboration identifying a range of primary sources, such as artwork, music, literature, architecture, correspondence and diaries, that demonstrate the spread of the Renaissance across Europe

The emergence of the modern world

• • Elaboration describing the impact of the printing press on the rise of literacy
• • Elaboration investigating the Enlightenment ideas about human freedom and the exercise of authority, which promoted radical change to the political order; for example constitutional government and the separation of Church and state
• • Elaboration examining how rulers in different European nations responded differently to new and dissenting ideas that were emerging by comparing the responses of France, England, Spain and Russia
• • Elaboration investigating the way of life in key features of the French “Ancien Régime” and how it represented increasing centralisation of administrative power in the monarchy