Suggested teaching exercises: how to use the book in class

A. Students work through a few different questions, depending upon the situation:

1. What does the portrait reveal about the worldview of the person it describes? How is that useful to us in understanding the primary sources?
2. What sources can you see the portrait drawing on? Find specific correlations to material that are in the primary sources?
3. What is the image of (the Church, Christianity, Royal power, etc., as relevant) presented in the portrait?
4. Take two portraits and talk about ways in which they describe the same events in similar and different terms. What do those similarities and differences tell us about the unique perspective of the author?

B. Student creativity:

1. Each student writes a portrait of an imagined life based either on a historic figure or on composite figure.
2. The student presents that portrait in class and discusses how they came to decide to write about that character and what research they did to write it.