If you are planning to get married, if you have been baptized, if your family has buried a dear one, if you have followed Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Lady Dianne in the news, you may be curious about certain rituals we observe today. The origins of marriage, baptism, funeral rites, and coronation lie in the distant past, however, and our understanding of how they developed has been lost on us, even while we continue to participate in them. Ritual has a central functional value in every society. It expresses the most fundamental human needs, both physical and spiritual. "Ritual forms the framework within which higher ethical and spiritual conceptions have developed" (E. O. James). If this is true, the study of ritual has value for understanding ourselves, our behavior, and our beliefs. It also has value for understanding people of other times and other civilizations. Medieval Society left a rich intellectual and cultural heritage. The thesis of this course is that one illuminating and previously neglected way to approach the study of the intellectual and social history of the Medieval period is through its ritual.