We started this unit by reading about The Book of the Lion, which was about the first crusade. But this wasn’t the main focus of the project so I’m not going to go into much detail.

Fall of Rome

We then looked at the fall of Rome, there were eight main reasons. The first being the invasions by barbarian tribes, during the attacks, they lost many parts of their military strength,  threathing their safety. The second reason is the economic struggles they had, and the over use of slaves, despite all the attacks from the barbarians they were also suffering from internal struggles and they were having financial issues. Third there was the rise of the Eastern Empire, the east and west side of Rome were split apart and after many years they ran into some disagreements and drifted apart, and as the east side flourished, the west side fell into debt and an economic crisis. The fourth reason was partly the military overspending and over expansion, Rome was a very large arena to govern, and because of that it was hard to come to decisions quickly.  The fifth reason was unstable government, being the governor was a very dangerous job and there was always a risk of being assassinated, there was also a large geographical area that had to be governed and keeping control of this was inconsistent. The sixth reason for the fall of Rome was the arrival of the Huns and other tribes, which caused a strain on resources required to defend the attacks on Rome. The seventh reason was trade values declining and the spread of Christianity, as resources became harder to obtain by trade, Christianity spread making Roman values and their religion fade. Finally the eighth reason the Roman legions became weaker, Rome didn’t have enough soldiers and there army slowly became weaker and unable to defend their territory.

Myths + Heroes

We then looked into Myths and Heroes, this was quite an interesting topic as we were introduced to the “heroes journey.” Which you actually see quite often without realizing as it is used in most movies, books, and tv shows. Think of Harry Potter for example while you watch the video below, and think of how the “heroes journey” can be applied to other movies, shows or books that have been created.

Feudalism

I’ll briefly describe what we learned about feudalism and what it is. Feudalism is a political system, “It was a combination of military and legal customs in medieval Europe that formed the structure of the society. In general, feudalism was based on the relationships between owners of land and the people who laboured on the land.” Feudalism relied on “the three f’s of feudalism” fief, fealty, and faith, fief is the land, fealty is loyalty, and faith is belief and devotion.

Myth vs History 

Can you trust myths, or history? Well we learned about what to believe and what’s probably false.  to summarise the research we did, myths are usually false and just to give people hope, and history is mostly true. But you cannot have a myth without history, or history without myths. We specifically looked at Robin Hood which is debatable whether it’s a myth or history, but in the end it is a good story.

Crusade

We also learned about the Crusade, which is  “a medieval military expedition, one of a series made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries.” It was the Muslims and Christians at war against each other to take control of the holy land. This was quite an interesting topic so I’d recommend reading into it.

2. The Black Death: Many people perished during this plague, and businesses fell into debt, which didn’t help the economy.

3. Wealth: Everyone started to focus more on the amount of money you had, rather then the amount of land you owed. Your wealth was now displayed by the clothes you wore, materials you bought, and meals you served.

4. The peasants revolt: Peasants began attacking the wealthier, because they felt as though they were treated very poorly.

Quilting

After finishing the reading on Book of the Lion, and researching the fall of Rome, myths and heroes, feudalism, crusades, rise of towns, quilts, and story telling. our mandate was to create a story. The story had to be from two points of view, and in the end they had to connect. We did this in groups, my group consisted of myself, Jackson, Aedan, and Sam.

Our first story was a about a son of a king who was the least favourite and his brother would assume power once their father died.  This made him very upset. A war was declared, and the favoured brother would go to fight as the father had given him training, but he got hurt during training which meant the king had no choice but to send his other son to war. He made a friend that taught him how to fight and after seeing him die he realized he didn’t want to be part of killing people anymore. So he ran into the forest and soon saw a light. He went towards it and saw another boy, they began talking and realized they were on different sides of the conflict. They thought about fighting each and even drew their swords, but they realized it didn’t matter what religion or beliefs you held, but that they were both human beings.

The second story had the same ending but the other boy comes from a poor childhood and has no parents.  The outline of  both stories was the same, but the details of each story differed but both had the same out come.  After finishing both stories, we started to design what would go on our quilts. While there had to be three blocks for each story (a beginning, middle and end) and we would have to quilt them to connect them in some way. We began to brain storm ideas of how we could create an abstract design that describes each part of the story from beginning to end. My group went through quite a few drafts before reaching our final one, and then perfecting it.

Once we had out final drafts they got printed on fabric, and then sewn together.

Well that just about wraps up this blog post until next time

– Paisley