A very interesting quick dip into shifting perceptions of magic in Christian Europe and how other cultures such as Islam enriched the practices of divination, calculation and astrology. For me, the two most interesting aspects were how the authority of the church through the inquisitors worked to divorce earlier belief systems, such as the tradition of nocturnal beings familiar to the illiterate classes, from the practices and beliefs of the Christian Church. Thus, consolidating the purity and integrity of the Christian doctrine, as distinct from previous beliefs and practices and laying the foundations of Christian orthodoxy. A good overview of a number of different aspects of magic. Thank you to the University of Barcelona, the Magic in the Middle Ages team and Coursera

I really enjoyed this course! I thought the lectures were really informative, and I feel like I definitely have a more rounded knowledge of Magic in the Middle Ages. Two criticisms that I have is that I think week 4 needs a bit of work in terms of emphasis and focus on overarching points. I also really hope that the instructors are able to fix the criteria on the first assignment (assignment instructions and rubric are different), and the links on the second assignment (two were broken links and didn't work, despite being essential to the completion of the assignment). I think these assignments definitely would discourage people from finishing the course. Beyond that, though, the course is great and I highly recommend it!

When signing up for the course I didn't realize the course wasn't about magic, but about the history of magic in the Middle Ages. Once I had overcome my disappointment, I actually liked the course content quite a lot. My only quibble is that the videos contain very little visual material .I would recommend, for the next iteration of the course the embedding of illustrations in the videos, or making available supplementary illustrated material in pdf form and/or hyperlinks.

The part I liked most was the chapter on Magic and Islam, which was very well thought out and presented. The supplementary video with the cut-out figures of Arab scholars was (unintentionally?) quite funny.

Los profesores han demostrado una imparcialidad difícil de ver hoy en día en temas históricos y se han proporcionado muchas fuentes para ampliar información. La única crítica que hago es respecto de las tareas calificadas por compañeros. Las considero muy dirigidas en tanto que se espera una forma de responder muy concreta y, en mi opinión, va contra el sentido crítico independiente, además de que ser calificado por otras personas que son, al igual que uno mismo, alumnos, no me parece adecuado ("ciegos, guías de ciegos") incluso dirigiendo la respuesta por parte del profesorado hacia puntos clave. Salvo eso, el resto perfecto y en balance general, muy recomendable.

This was a really enjoyable and interesting course on a subject I had not studied in much detail prior. It contained a lot of detail without being overwhelming, and the lecturers were personable and informative in their delivery. It was also a good length and workload to commit to. My only small criticism would be that I would perhaps have preferred more of the essay and analysis based assessments, as the quizzes only required reiteration of the videos and I think that it would be more helpful to future historians to practice forming opinions and arguments. Apart from that, I have thoroughly enjoyed this MOOC and would definitely recommend.

It has some very interesting lectures specialy those related to islam, astrology and astronomy.

I found language clear, even when they had a large number of foreign names and words and the idea of using maps and other materials to make easier to understand the concepts is a great idea.

I found too extremely and using fancy or stilted language, so I had to play several times some videos even when using the subtitlles to get a clear idea, bacause the questions are very specific.

I highly recommend to give audio in spanish or truly slow down the speed and kind of language used.

A bit less theorical would be great.

Thank you for sharing this course!

I really enjoyed learning about magic in the middle ages and am grateful for the opportunity offered by the University of Barcelona. The lectures were clearly spoken and the content was good.

However, I would have liked to go more into detail about the practices of magic, I missed that a little bit. For example, the specifics of several charms/ingredients/etc are only treated on a few occasions.

I have now also enrolled in different courses on Coursera and I can say that this course could have been organised better, with better assignments, quizzes, etc. So there is still room for improvement.

This course is very interesting and provides objective information and "myth-busters" that prove the difference between what we think of Magic in the Middle Ages and what was most probably the reality. The lectors are all very enthusiastic and it is refreshing to have many different people with different specializations than just one lector. What I didn't enjoy about this course was having to peer review my classmate's assignments; as I often tend to complete a whole course in a short time , this process slowed down my progress and I wasn't enjoying the course as much as I wished to.

The switch from witches, Christianity to magic in the middle east could have been better handled. Maybe in introduction of each instructor and their subject at the beginning would have helped. I also found the variety of accents a bit of a challenge. In other courses I have been able to downloads transcripts of each lesson. Having said that, I loved the course! Thank You. Very informative! I am a Canadian Indigenous women and I certainly would have been burned at the stake. You have given me such clarity on how Christianity has impacted my life.

It is an excellent course, I think it would be very good if they expanded a little more on Kabbalah. Check the link of the last work, it is actually http://www.billyandcharlie.com/planets/luna.html

Using graphic resources like the map in the section on magic in Islam was a great idea. Graphic resources help to better understand concepts and are great allies of memory.

I think it would be very good to add links to articles related to the subject and that the bibliography can be downloadable or written, rather than at the end of the video.

I really enjoyed the material of this course and the professors' careful attention to avoiding passing any judging past eras using today's standards. I was also glad that they did not only include European magic (Middle Eastern magic was also covered). The only issue I had with this course was that peer-reviewed assignments (i.e. the written ones) were difficult, in that it was not always clear what was expected of the answers (namely that fairly specific things were required of the answers, whereas the questions seemed more open-ended).

I'd give this a 4.5 if I could, overall I really enjoyed this course! Weeks 1-3 were strong, week 4 didn't hold my attention as much but it came back strong in week 5. I'd knock some points off for the written assignments, the phrasing was sometimes confusing so I had to do some digging in the discussion forums to figure out what I was supposed to write. There are also links to pictures in the week 5 assignment that are broken, would be nice if those could be edited for future students.

This course gives general information on the magic of middle ages. However, I wish the course could be arranged in a more logical and coherent way, such as geographical or chronological, which will help to understand and memorize. Material in Week 4 is very confusing. It is hard to get the key points from those materials and what the instructors want to tell me. On the other hand, materials in Week 2 is easy to be understood and reflected in the first written assignment.

I think the course is really helpful in determining the timeline and historical findings of the root of magic and it's fundamentals. It provided me with the insights through time and different perspective and contexts. Though much deeper info was not shared, but much reading and implied context that was relevant is mentioned within. Course may not be perfect, and there's room for some fine-tuning. All in all, I enjoyed and benefited a lot from the course.

I found this course to be worthwhile overall. There were some technical glitches and some areas of the course that need to be addressed. However, this course was challenging, interesting, and encouraged me to explore the topic further. The instructors all clearly really enjoy this topic and I appreciate all their heard work in putting this course together. I learned new information I didn't know before and I'm glad I was able to take this class.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course as the content was dense and interesting. The teachers were dedicated, thoroughly committed and extremely knowledgeable. My favourite parts were the Middle Ages in Europe and the Islamic world's contribution. The peer reviewing could be eccentric. I think giving people a number of words to write instead of characters would improve the responses to the essays. Thank you all for your dedication.

T

Me encant+ó, no espera este tipo de temáticas en cursos impartidos por universidades; fue una grata sorpresa porque me encantan estos temas cuando están dados con seriedad y contenido

Lo único que al ser en inglés se me complico mucho, no tanto las clases en video porque tienen subtítulos, sino las actividades que si o si están en inglés.

El resto impecable, muy interesante y ojalá hayas mas cursos sobre estos temas.

Nice subject. I liked the videos of every unit beside UNIT 4: MAGIC IN ISLAM: those ones are the less "entertaining" because in more than a point they consist mostly in a list of book's and author's names one probably have never heard of (and probably will forget after 5 seconds).

I liked very much the part about astrology and i found very interesting the essay to be written in that unit.

First and foremost thank you for providing us with all that material which is of high quality! The only improvement I can think of is a better sound quality and also having a person of your institution to review peers' assignment (or something of similar logic in order to improve the evaluation process of the assignments). Thank you for your time and may you continue your wonderful work!

This class struggles from translation issues, and order issues, for instance having to watch bonus material before knowing the answers on some of the quizzes. However, it is an incredible class, informative, and provides a very, very interesting point of view on the Middle-Ages, which in all my learning has always been Anglo-English-centric. It's an excellent class despite everything.

A very comprehensive and succinct course. Some problems that arose included the rubric the we had to judge the assignments was not given to us while writing the text. Also, the link you provided for the first part of the second assignment did not work. Here is the real link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190406173330/http://www.billyandcharlie.com/planets/moon.html

A great introduction. I wish there was a bit more on the earlier periods (say from 1000-1400 CE) rather than so much focus on the late middle ages (15th/16th centuries), though I do understand that there is much more documentation from the Inquisition than earlier.

The lectures were nicely organized and provided a lot we could investigate further on our own.

It was truly a pleasure to take this course. I am a historian, and this course give me new information and bibliographical resources to understand medieval cosmovision. The only problem that I see, it is that it had a really cathedratical structure, therefore it could be a little bit more didactic. Besides that, I enojoyed and learned a lot with this course.

The only reason this course did not get top marks is because very often the audio and the video did not match. Even with captions turned on it was, at times, difficult to follow as the captions follow the audio and end when the video ends even if the audio is not quite finished.

Other than that I found this course enjoyable as well as educational.

The assignments could be updated (both of the links for the second assignment do not work, even though there was a lot of discussion about them in the forums!)

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the course. The professors were very thorough and seemed to really be experts and passionate about the field of study.

Great course and fun to learn about!