Posted on March 17: Mystic Women of the Middle Ages premieres tonight

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to live in the Middle Ages? To eat medieval food, take medieval medicine and listen to medieval music?

McMaster researchers Kathy Garay and Madeleine Jeay do.

The creators of Mystic Women of the Middle Ages II, a six-part documentary series premiering tonight on Vision TV at 8 p.m., wrote most of the scripts, supervised the location filming throughout Europe last summer and also appear in the series. They are excited about presenting the medieval period to the public. It has been an area both have researched, published and taught for 30 years.

“It is a period which is sufficiently different from our own to be fascinating, but at the same time it has enough similarities to help us understand our own time,” Garay says. “We are keenly aware that our contemporary culture has its origins and roots in the medieval period.”

The series explores the lives of extraordinary women, including spectacular location footage from Eastern and Western Europe: France, Germany, Hungary and Italy. The music, composed especially for the series, was inspired by authentic medieval music. There are descriptions of each episode on the Vision TV Web site.

Garay, who teaches for the Faculty of Humanities, and Jeay, a professor of French, also are offering McMaster's first online degree credit course on the theme OF Body and Soul, Pleasure and Pain in the Later Middle Ages. The course is available to anyone in level 2 or above of any university program, worldwide. The seven-week course runs June 23  Aug. 8. Full information about the course is available at www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/hum2f03.

Developed with support from the Office of the Dean of Humanities and McMaster's Learning Technologies Resource Centre, the course will examine the roles played by women and men of all social classes in the late medieval period.

“We will be showing segments from both the first and second Mystic Women TV series in the Spirituality module of the course,” Garay says. “The course is also linked with our interactive Web site, Medieval Women.”

Both the series and online course provide the chance to explore the medieval period, an era which has a powerful attraction for people today, Garay says. “While the series focuses on spiritual women and is intended for the general viewer, the course is an in-depth analysis of late medieval life, examining such topics as feasts and fasts, health and medicine and the lifecycle.” According to Jeay, “just as the series incorporates extensive location footage and original recreations of medieval music, the course is designed as a multimedia experience, with video, images and music, as well as translations of original medieval texts.”