Course Details

  • Online, asynchronous
  • 7 weeks | May 27 to July 11, 2025
  • 3 credits | $1,932
  • Last day to register: May 28, 2025
  • This course fulfills the Catholic Thought and Action or Language, Arts, and Humanities general education requirement.

Course Overview

This course will examine the growth of the early Christian movement during Late Antiquity. Discussions will focus on several important themes including persecution and martyrdom, monasticism and asceticism, the development and refutation of heresies (Gnosticism, Arianism, Nestorianism), and the creation of orthodoxy in belief, creed, and ritual.

Course Advantages

This course immerses you in religious writing and art from 500-1500 CE, a period of great theological diversity and artistic creativity. How did religious writers and artists—from monks to so-called ‘heretics’, from apocalyptic preachers to philosophically-minded scholars, from literary lay women to zealous reformers—reflect on God, themselves, and the world? As you analyze and evaluate their writings and artwork, you will focus on the merits and limits of their thinking, comparing their distant medieval concerns to your own present situation. By translating yourself into the thought-world of medieval heretics, martyrs, and saints, you will test out their ideas and consider how they continue to shape the modern world.

Additional Information

Faculty will contact all students after the Wednesday, May 28, registration deadline.

About the Instructor

Craig Tichelkamp

adjunct professor of religious studies & Theology
Prof. Tichelkamp (pronounced TISH-uhl-camp) has taught at Stonehill in the Religious Studies & Theology Department for five years, helping students to think critically about religion, its role in the world and in their own lives. His research is in Christian mystical theology in medieval Latin cultures, but he loves to teach broadly in the theological and ethical traditions of Catholicism and its neighbors. In his courses, students use theological, historical, and literary methods to reflect critically on God, themselves, and the world. Outside of class at Stonehill, Prof. Tichelkamp has helped with programming and educational initiatives through the Office of Intercultural Affairs for First-Generation and LGBTQ+ students.

Questions? Contact Us

Duffy Academic Center – 112

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