The culture of Western Europe in the developed Middle Ages. Culture of Western Europe in the Middle Ages

Department of History, Political Science and Cultural Studies

ABSTRACT
in cultural studies

Topic 10. Culture of medieval Europe

Plan
Introduction

The origins and pereodization of the culture of the Middle Ages.
Features of the culture of European barbarians. The culture of the Franks.
Church culture of the Middle Ages.
Feudal knight culture.
Urban carnival laughter culture.
Education and literature.
Art of the Middle Ages: architecture, painting, sculpture, theater.

Introduction

The Middle Ages in the history of Western Europe cover more than a millennium - from the 5th century to the 16th century.
In the Middle Ages, as in other eras, complex and contradictory processes took place on the European continent, one of the main results of which was V the emergence of states and the entire West in its modern form.
The most difficult and stormy stage was the early Middle Ages, when a new, Western world was born. Its emergence was due to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire (V century), which in turn was caused by its deep internal crisis, as well as the Great Migration of Peoples, or the invasion of barbarian tribes - Goths, Franks, Alemans, etc. From the IV-IX centuries there was a transition from the "Roman world" to the "Christian world", with which Western Europe arose.
The most powerful of them was the Frankish state, founded at the end of the 5th century by King Clovis and turned under Charlemagne (800) into a huge empire, which also collapsed by the middle of the 9th century. However, at the stage of the mature Middle Ages, all the main European states - England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy - are formed in their modern form.
The development of this topic in the world scientific literature is quite large, however, many of the sources, in accordance with the new technologies used in the study of the past, are somewhat outdated and have some inaccuracies in their content. Books by Russian scientists such as Vipper R.Yu. And Vasiliev A.A., about the history of the Middle Ages, were repeatedly published in Russia until 1917 and enjoyed wide popularity. They tell about the origin, flourishing and decline of the centers of world civilization - the period of the Middle Ages, when modern nations were laid. Textbooks of the Soviet period (G.N. Granovsky, A.Ya. Gurevich, V.G. Ivanov, B.I. Purishev, V.F. Semenov) have some ideological background, entailing a specific relationship to the events taking place so long ago . The textbook by A. N. Bystrova “The World of Culture (Fundamentals of Cultural Studies)” has its own characteristics: an accessible language of presentation, an abundance of specific examples, citations from literary, philosophical, scientific sources, richness and variety of illustrations. This publication attempts to take a holistic view of culture: it presents both the theory and the history of culture.

1. Origins and re-odization of the culture of the Middle Ages.

Culturologists call the Middle Ages a long period in the history of Western Europe between Antiquity and New Time. This period covers more than a millennium from the 5th to the 15th centuries.
Within the millennial period of the Middle Ages, it is customary to distinguish at least three periods. These are: the early Middle Ages, from the beginning of the era to 900 or 1000 years (up to the X-XI centuries); High (Classic) Middle Ages. From the X-XI centuries to about the XIV century; late Middle Ages, 14th and 15th centuries.
The early Middle Ages is a time when turbulent and very important processes took place in Europe. First of all, these are the invasions of the so-called barbarians (from the Latin barba - beard), who from the 2nd century AD constantly attacked the Roman Empire and settled on the lands of its provinces. These invasions ended with the fall of Rome.
At the same time, the new Western Europeans, as a rule, accepted Christianity, which in Rome by the end of its existence was the state religion. Christianity in its various forms gradually supplanted pagan beliefs throughout the territory of the Roman Empire, and this process did not stop after the fall of the empire. This is the second most important historical process that determined the face of the early Middle Ages in Western Europe.
The third significant process was the formation on the territory of the former Roman Empire of new state formations created by the same "barbarians". Numerous Frankish, Germanic, Gothic and other tribes were in fact not so wild. Most of them already had the beginnings of statehood, owned crafts, including agriculture and metallurgy, and were organized on the principles of military democracy. Tribal leaders began to proclaim themselves kings, dukes, etc., constantly fighting with each other and subjugating weaker neighbors. On Christmas Day 800, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, was crowned Emperor of the entire European West by the Catholic Pope in Rome. Later (900), the Holy Roman Empire broke up into countless duchies, counties, margraviates, bishoprics, abbeys and other destinies. A characteristic feature of life in the early Middle Ages was constant robbery and devastation, and these robberies and raids significantly slowed down economic and cultural development.
During the classical or high Middle Ages, Western Europe began to overcome these difficulties and revive. Since the 10th century, cooperation under the laws of feudalism has allowed the creation of larger state structures and the collection of sufficiently strong armies. Thanks to this, it was possible to stop the invasions, significantly limit the robberies, and then gradually go on the offensive. Eventually Western Christians won dominion over the Mediterranean Sea and its islands. Numerous missionaries brought Christianity to the kingdoms of Scandinavia, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, so that these states entered the orbit of Western culture.
The relative stability that followed made it possible for the rapid rise of cities and the pan-European economy. Life in Western Europe has changed a lot, society was rapidly losing the features of barbarism, spiritual life flourished in the cities. In general, European society has become much richer and more civilized than during the ancient Roman Empire. An outstanding role in this was played by the Christian Church, which also developed, improved its teaching and organization. On the basis of the artistic traditions of ancient Rome and the former barbarian tribes, Romanesque and then brilliant Gothic art arose, and along with architecture and literature, all its other types developed - theater, music, sculpture, painting, literature. Of particular importance was the fact that during this period Western European scholars were able to read the writings of ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, primarily Aristotle. On this basis, the great philosophical system of the Middle Ages, scholasticism, was born and grew.
The late Middle Ages continued the processes of formation of European culture, which began in the period of the classics. However, their course was far from smooth. In the XIV-XV centuries, Western Europe repeatedly experienced a great famine. Numerous epidemics brought inexhaustible human losses. The development of culture was greatly slowed down by the Hundred Years War. However, in the end, the cities were revived, crafts, agriculture and trade were established. Conditions arose for a new upsurge of spiritual life, science, philosophy, art, especially in northern Italy. This rise necessarily led to the so-called Renaissance or Renaissance.
2. Features of the culture of European barbarians. The culture of the Franks.

"History of the Franks" in ten books, created by Bishop Gregory of Tours, is an exceptional monument of European culture of the early Middle Ages. It describes the events of the 6th century related to the history of the emergence and development of the Frankish state of the Merovingian era on the territory of the former Roman province of Gaul (present-day France). The Romance peoples of Ancient Romania inhabited the territories of Europe, where the Romance language has been preserved since the time of the Roman Empire. 1
The borders between them were indistinct, in addition, the more "prestigious" Germanized peoples absorbed the southerners in the course of the redrawing of medieval borders. For example, the French almost completely assimilated the Provencals and Franco-Provencals, Gascons and Walloons (who retained their identity, but not their dialect). The Spaniards and Catalans swallowed up the Mozarabs, and the Italians the Sicilians.
The Roman conquerors did not come to a completely bare land and the inhabitants of it had their own worldview. This territory developed its own long-established rules and this served as the birth of a new civilization. Many areas of material culture yielded to the barbarian peoples. Medieval Europe develops the secret of a special method of making weapons, having learned how to make steel using the Damascus method.
At the end of the 7th century, the rulers of Austria, having replaced the last "lazy kings" from the Merovingian family, became the rulers of the united Frankish state. By the name of its largest representative, Charlemagne (768 - 814), the new dynasty was called the Carolingian. The time of her reign was marked by important changes on the continent. The polarity of class relations was clearly marked, accompanied by the growth of large landownership. Charles united under his auspices almost all the peoples of Europe converted to Christianity and contributed to the spread of Christian teaching among the conquered tribes. In his hands was the capital of the ancient empire - Rome. At the height of his power, in the face of the most powerful monarchs of that time - the Byzantine emperor and the Caliph of Baghdad - Charles came up with the idea of ​​reviving the Roman Empire in the West. The empire of Charles was a fairly loose early feudal state, in which only the church had a well-established organization. The liturgy throughout the empire was celebrated according to the Roman model, the Benedictine rule became the basis of monastic life.
The culture of medieval Europe has its own "barbaric" foundation and source. This own culture of the peoples of Europe, which they defended from destruction by the Romans, retained its original character, partly perceiving the culture of antiquity, and partly rejecting it as unnecessary and hostile.
Regarding the beginning of the Middle Ages in Western Europe, the modern French theorist Jacques Le Goff writes: “The Roman civilization committed suicide, and there was nothing beautiful in its death. However, it did not die, since civilizations do not die, but brought into medieval culture a huge number of its features and foundations” 2
The barbarian culture is characterized by geneocentrism. Here a person is important only insofar as his family stands behind him, and he is a representative of the family. Hence, genealogy, the study of the genus, is of great importance. The hero always has and knows his ancestors. The more ancestors he can name, the more "great" their deeds he can list, the more "noble" he himself becomes, which means the more honors and glory he himself deserves. The Middle Ages asserts a different starting point, it is characterized by theocentrism: the personality of God is placed in the center, a person is evaluated by him, a person and all things are directed towards him, everywhere a person is looking for traces of God’s stay and deeds. This leads to the emergence of "Vertical" thinking, "vertical culture".

Church culture of the Middle Ages

4. Feudal knight culture

The most striking type of culture is formed by the culture of knights. Knightly culture is a warrior culture. The Middle Ages were established in the course of continuous wars, first barbarian, against the Romans, then feudal. The culture of knights is a culture of military affairs, "martial arts". True, this circumstance is hidden from us by later developments in culture, when romanticism “ennobled” knightly culture, gave it a courtly character, and began to absolutize knightly ethics. Knights are a class of professional military men of the Middle Ages. Many of them - the top, were themselves the largest feudal lords. They developed a peculiar way of life: tournaments, catches, court receptions and balls, and, from time to time, military campaigns. They were distinguished by a special professional ethics - fidelity to the seigneur, serving the "beautiful lady". The presence of a certain "vow" - a promise that the knight is obliged to fulfill.
Courtois? Znost, courtois? Ziya ( English courtly love; fr. amour courtois from courtois- courteous knightly ), a system of rules of conduct at court or a set of qualities that a courtier should have in Middle Ages - Early Modern . 5 In the Middle Ages, courtesy concerned, first of all, the rules of behavior in relation to a woman and was expressed in courtly love. The southern French version of courtly culture arose in Provence, in the south of France in the 11th-12th centuries. its creators were poets who called themselves "troubadours", that is, "inventors". This is a very diverse audience: townspeople, clerics, sovereign seigneurs (the first troubadour was the Duke of Aquitaine Guillaume), even kings (Alphonse the Wise and Richard the Lionheart, grandson of Guillaume of Aquitaine). But most of all among the troubadours are knights of various ranks.
In addition to the cultural activities intended for the knights, those where they played the first roles, a court culture is also taking shape, where civilians were the main actors; courtly culture was established: dances, music, poetry - serving the inhabitants of the royal court or the castle of a large feudal lord. At the court, a certain etiquette, ceremonial, ritual is formed - that is, the order of organizing life, the sequence of actions, speeches, events.

Urban carnival laughter culture

Education and literature

Art of the Middle Ages: architecture, painting, sculpture, theater

Barbarian kingdoms developed in the 4th-6th centuries. The barbarians immediately adopted Christianity, but a strong pagan influence was observed in their art.
The farther north, the less Romanization left its mark on the claim of these kingdoms, the more elements of paganism in it. Christianity was most difficult to inculcate in the kingdoms of the Scandinavian Peninsula and Denmark. Until the 11th century religious architecture did not develop here. In the IX-X centuries. they began to erect stone crosses decorated with reliefs at the crossroads. Judging by the items found in the burial mounds, the decoration is dominated by animal-ribbon and geometric types of ornaments, while the images of animals and mythological monsters are flat and stylized, which is typical of pagan art.
England and Ireland of that period were only superficially romanized. Their first Christian places of worship were generally devoid of decoration and extremely primitive. Monasteries became the center of artistic life in these countries, with the construction of which the art of book miniature became widespread.
In the architecture of the Ostrogothic and Lombard kingdoms, a more distinct connection with antiquity can be traced, but elements of barbarian architecture are strong in it. Temples and baptistries of that period had a round shape, the dome was hollowed out of stone, roughly hewn. There are tombstones with plots on Christian themes, made in the technique of flat relief.
The characteristic features of the architecture of the barbarian kingdom include crypts - basements and semi-basements under the basilicas.
In the Frankish kingdom, the art of book miniatures was developing, which was decorated with isomorphic headpieces of stylized animal figures. The art of the barbarians played a positive role in the development of a new artistic language, freed from the fetters of antiquity, and, above all, in the development of the ornamental and decorative trend, which later became an integral part of the artistic creativity of the classical Middle Ages.
Art of the Carolingian Empire .
"Carolingian Renaissance" (the flourishing of culture dating back to the era of the first emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire" Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty. The era of Charlemagne was marked by the reform of the administrative, judicial and church spheres, as well as the revival of ancient culture. The capital of the empire, Aachen, became the center of this revival .
In the art of the Carolingian and Ottonian empires, a distinctive feature is a kind of fusion of ancient, early Christian, barbarian and Byzantine traditions, especially manifested in the ornament. The architecture of these kingdoms is oriented towards Roman designs. These are basilicas, centric temples made in stone, wood or mixed media. The interior decoration is made up of mosaics and frescoes.
The monastery building is developing. In the Carolingian Empire, 400 new monasteries were built and 800 existing ones were expanded.
The empire of Charlemagne turned out to be short-lived and collapsed in the 9th century after the invasion of the Vikings and Hungarian tribes. But the Carolingian ideal of a Christian empire continued to live well into the 10th century. The basis of European culture is now the Christian religion. Peripheral culture assimilates the Carolingian tradition.

4.Romanesque architecture

The leading form of Romanesque art was architecture. Its development was associated with monumental construction, which began in Western Europe at the time of the formation and flourishing of feudal states, the new growth of culture and art. The monumental architecture of Western Europe originated in the art of the barbarian peoples. In each country, this style developed under the influence and strong influence of local traditions. The severity and power of Romanesque structures were generated by concerns about their strength. Builders limited themselves to simple and massive forms of stone.
The center of life in the early Middle Ages was the castles of feudal lords, churches and monasteries. The fortified castle - the dwelling of the feudal lord and at the same time a fortress that protected his possessions - clearly expressed the character of the formidable era of feudal wars. His planning was based on practical calculation. Usually located on the top of a mountain or rocky hill, the castle served as a defense during sieges and as a preparation center for raids. The castle with a drawbridge and a fortified portal was surrounded by a moat, monolithic stone walls crowned with battlements, and towers. The core of the fortress was a massive round or quadrangular - the refuge of the feudal lord. Around it is a vast courtyard with residential and office buildings. The experience of building castles was subsequently transferred to monastic complexes, which were entire villages and fortress cities. The significance of the latter increased in the life of Europe in the 11th-13th centuries. In their layout, usually asymmetric, the requirements of defense, a sober consideration of terrain features, etc. were strictly observed. The compositional center of the monastery in the city was usually the temple - the most significant creation of Romanesque architecture. It rose in pointed towers above the small buildings surrounding it. The external view of the Romanesque Cathedral is severe, simple and clear. The central nave rises above the side ones, the bypass walls - above the chapels, above them - the main apse. The center of the composition is formed by the tower of the middle cross, crowned with a spire. Sometimes the western facade, apse and transepts are closed by bell towers. They give stability to the structure. The towers and walls with a massive plinth make the exterior of the cathedral look like a fortress, firmly and inviolably connected to the ground. France. Monuments of Romanesque art are scattered throughout Western Europe. Most of them are in France. In the architecture of Central and Western France, there is the greatest variety in solving structural problems, a wealth of forms. The features of the Romanesque style temple are clearly expressed in it. An example of this is the church of Notre-Dame la Grande in Poitiers. In the grandiose churches of Burgundy, which took first place among other French schools, the first steps were taken to change the design of vaulted ceilings in the type of basilica church with a high and wide middle nave, with many altars, transverse and lateral ships, an extensive choir and a developed, radially located crown. chapels. The high, three-tiered central nave was covered with a box vault, not with a semicircular arch, as in most Romanesque churches, but with light lancet outlines. A classic example of such a complex type is the grandiose main five-nave monastery church of Cluny Abbey, destroyed in the early 19th century. it became a model for many temple buildings in Europe. She is close to the temples of Burgundy. They are characterized by the presence of a wide hall located in front of the naves, the use of high towers. Burgundian temples are distinguished by the perfection of forms, the clarity of dissected volumes, the measured rhythm, the completeness of the parts, their subordination to the whole. Monastic Romanesque churches are usually small in size, the vaults are low, the transepts are small. With a similar layout, the design of the facades was different. For the southern regions of France, near the Mediterranean Sea, for the temples of Provence, a connection with ancient late Roman order architecture is characteristic, the monuments of which have been preserved here in abundance, hall temples that were simple in form and proportions prevailed, distinguished by the richness of sculptural decoration on the facades, sometimes reminiscent of Roman triumphal arches. Modified domed structures penetrated the southwestern regions. Germany. The powerful imperial cities on the Rhine (Speyer, Mainz, Worms) occupied a special place in the construction of large cathedrals in Germany. The cathedrals erected here are distinguished by the grandiosity of massive clear cubic volumes, an abundance of heavy towers, and more dynamic silhouettes. In Worms Cathedral, built of yellow-gray sandstone, the divisions of volumes are less developed than in French temples, which creates a feeling of monolithic forms. Such a technique as a gradual increase in volumes, smooth linear rhythms is not used either. The squat towers of the crossroads and four high round towers with cone-shaped stone tents at the corners of the temple on the western and eastern sides, as if cutting into the sky, give it the character of a severe fortress. Smooth surfaces of impenetrable walls with narrow windows dominate everywhere, only sparingly enlivened by a frieze in the form of arches along the cornice. In Worms Cathedral, the pressure of the vaults on the walls is relieved. The central nave is covered with a cross vault and brought into line with the cross vaults of the side aisles. For this purpose, the so-called "connected system" was used, in which for each span of the central nave there are two side spans. The edges of the external forms clearly express the internal volumetric-spatial structure of the building. Spain. The architecture of Spain was influenced by the presence of pilgrimage routes from France. On the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, the paths converged at Puente la Reina, and from there one road led to the monastery of Santiago de Campostela. The belief that the Apostle James was buried there was so strong that the monastery became the most famous medieval pilgrimage site after Rome and Jerusalem. The appearance of the monastery in Santiago was changed during the Baroque era. The architects who rebuilt the church in the 30s of the 18th century preserved not only the Romanesque interior design, but also parts of the western façade, covered by a magnificent new façade.

The militant spirit of Spanish Catholicism is nowhere better manifested than in the fortified church with a monastery in Loarre, which could serve as a fortress, as well as the city wall of Ávila, erected at about the same time.

The influence of Mozarabic architecture and the use of Muslim artisans make Spanish Romanesque a particularly interesting subject to study. In the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos, which houses some of the most famous examples of Spanish monumental sculpture, the corner pylons are decorated with finely crafted relief plates, modeled on Romanesque ivory carvings and Mozarabic illuminated manuscripts.

The old cathedral of Salamanca can be seen as the culmination of the development of Spanish Romanesque architecture. The monumental dome, which rests on two floors of arcades, has a rich exterior decor, it is octagonal, with a convex profile and covered with stone plates with fish scale ornaments. Bearing pediments and turrets with conical roofs contribute to the creation of a cheerful overall impression and complex architectural polyphony.

5.Romanesque art

The term "Romanesque style" is applied to the art of the 11th-12th centuries. It is conditional and arose in the first half of the 19th century, when a connection between medieval architecture and Roman architecture was discovered. The Romanesque period is the time of the emergence of a pan-European monumental style of medieval architecture, sculpture and painting in the era of the highest development of feudalism.

Unlike Byzantium, where art was regulated by the metropolitan school, the unity of the Romanesque style did not exclude the abundance and diversity of local local schools, which testified to the possibility of various searches within the same style.

Romanesque art in Western Europe was predominantly religious, as was the outlook of feudal society. The Catholic Church had exceptional ideological and economic power. In the conditions of the feudal fragmentation of Europe, it was the only force uniting peoples. Monasteries were large economic units, were the focus of mental life and centers of church education and artistic creativity. The western church is characterized by attempts to reconcile the religious and rational explanations of the world, which also distinguished it from the eastern one and opened up the possibility of a freer interpretation of dogma, knowledge of the real world.

The desire for increased spirituality distinguishes the images of Romanesque art in the same way as Byzantine, but their content and form of expression are different. In Western European art, a direct active attitude to life was combined with religiosity. The image of a spiritually perfect person, detached from the real world, did not develop here to the same extent as in Byzantium. Romanesque architecture strikes with power, sculpture - with a restless spirit. In the increased expression of feelings, one can feel the traditions of barbarian art, the stormy and formidable nature of the era.

The birth of a new civilization, the long process of the formation of feudalism in Western Europe, accompanied by the destruction of tribal relations, wars and crusades, gave rise to a sense of the disharmony of life, the incompatibility of beauty and reality. Both in the sermons of the church and in the minds of the people lived the idea of ​​the sinfulness of the world, full of evil, temptations, subject to the influence of terrible mysterious forces. On this basis, an ethical and aesthetic ideal arose in the Romanesque art of Western Europe, opposite to ancient art. The superiority of the spiritual over the physical was expressed in the contrast of violent spiritual expression and the external ugliness of the appearance, as if embodying inert matter. In the formation of medieval artistic culture, folk art was of great importance. His influence was reflected in the monumental forms of architecture, in the interpretation of biblical and gospel stories, in an attraction to fantasy. Romanesque art was created mainly in monasteries. However, the tradition of folk art also penetrated into church art. Secular culture did not disappear in the Roman era. The heroic epic, the poetry of the troubadours, the romance of chivalry, the everyday genre, the fablio, farces, sayings full of mockery, fables reached their peak at that time.

6.gothic temple

It is difficult to find suitable words to describe the impressions of a Gothic cathedral. They are high and stretch to the sky with endless arrows of towers and turrets, phials, pointed arches. But what is more striking is not so much the height as the richness of the aspects that open up when you walk around the cathedral.
Gothic cathedrals are not only high, but also very long: for example, Chartres is 130 meters long, and the transept is 64 meters long, and it takes at least half a kilometer to walk around it. And from every point the cathedral looks different. Unlike the Romanesque church with its clear, easily visible forms, the Gothic cathedral is boundless, often asymmetrical and even heterogeneous in its parts: each of its facades with its own portal is individual. The walls are not felt, as if they do not exist.
Arches, galleries, towers, huge windows, an infinitely complex, openwork play of forms. And all this space is inhabited - the cathedral is inhabited by a mass of sculptures. They occupy not only portals and galleries, but they can also be found on the roof, cornices, under the vaults of chapels, on spiral staircases, and appear on drainpipes. In a word, a Gothic cathedral is a whole world. He really absorbed the world of a medieval city. If even now, in modern Paris, Notre Dame Cathedral reigns over the city, and the architecture of baroque, empire, classicism fades before it, then you can imagine how even more impressive it looked then, in that Paris, among the crooked streets and small courtyards along the banks Seine. Then the cathedral was something more than just a place of church service. Together with the town hall, it was the center of the entire social life of the city. If the town hall was the center of business activity, then in the cathedral, in addition to worship, theatrical performances took place, university lectures were given, sometimes parliament met, and even small trade agreements were concluded. Near the cathedral, as a rule, there were shopping arcades. The needs of urban life prompted to transform the closed, thick-walled, fortress-like Romanesque cathedral into such a spacious one, open to the outside. But for this it was necessary to change the design itself.
And after the design, there was a change in the architectural style. The turn to Gothic began with architecture, and only then began to spread to sculpture and painting. Architecture has always remained the basis of the medieval synthesis of the arts. If we compare typical Romanesque and Gothic buildings, it seems that they are opposite. But if we take the buildings of the transitional period, it is clear that the Gothic originates from Romanesque roots. It all started with the simplest cell, with a cell covered with a vault, a travea. They were square, and this put a certain limit on the expansion of the main nave.
With such a system of ceilings, the temple could not be spacious enough inside - it remained narrow and dark. The idea of ​​architects is to expand and lighten the system of vaults. Solid vaults are replaced by ribbed ceilings with a system of load-bearing arches. All the airiness, all the fabulousness of the Gothic structure has a rational basis: it follows from the frame system of construction. This is how through galleries, arcades, huge windows appear. The galleries are used to install statues, and the windows are used for monumental painting from colored glass. Medieval artists passionately loved pure, bright, sonorous colors. This was reflected in stained-glass windows, and in miniatures, and in the coloring of sculptures. Inside the cathedral is spacious, the transept almost merges with the longitudinal space. Thus, the sharp boundary between clergy and visitors is eliminated. "Sanctuary" ceases to be something inaccessible and secret. Gothic style is dramatic, but not gloomy or dull.
Cathedrals and town halls were built by order of city communes. They were built and completed for a long time - decades, and even centuries.
In most Gothic cathedrals, sculptural decoration prevailed over painting, with the exception of stained-glass windows: this again was determined by the nature of the architecture, making the walls openwork and therefore unsuitable for frescoes. Gothic painting did not develop in the form of wall paintings, but mainly in miniatures of manuscripts and in the paintings of altar doors.
The painting of altars developed more in those countries where Gothic architecture, for one reason or another, retained the relative massiveness and smoothness of the walls.

7. Gothic of France, Germany, Czech Republic, England.

France is considered to be the cradle of the Gothic. Back in XII, during the restructuring of the church of Saint Denis, a rib vault (bypass and chapels) was first used here. Notre Dame Cathedral was the largest temple of the early Gothic period. The western facade in its design served as an example for many subsequent cathedrals. In the design of Notre Dame Cathedral, the basic principles of Gothic are clearly traced: the ribbed lancet vault of the central nave, whose height is 35 m, lancet windows, flying buttresses. But from the ponderous Romanesque architecture there remained a massive expanse of walls, squat pillars of the central nave, the predominance of horizontal articulations, heavy towers, and restrained sculptural decoration.
The early Gothic cathedral in Lana, three-nave with a three-nave transept, also has Romanesque features. A feature of Lansky Cathedral is the decoration of the top of the towers with figures of 16 bulls. Chartres Cathedral is an example of the transition to mature Gothic and the connection of facades of different times. A brilliant example of mature French Gothic is the cathedral at Reims. In the appearance of the Reims Cathedral, a craving for verticalism of all lines is visible. The entire western façade is completely decorated with sculpture, the stone has acquired an openwork, truly it resembles lace. Note, however, that unlike late Gothic, this "lace" does not hide the structure of the building. The largest and tallest Gothic cathedral in France is Amiens. Amiens Cathedral took 40 years to build. Amiens Cathedral is often referred to as the "Gothic Parthenon".
By the middle of the XIII century. the scope of construction in France is weakening. The last remarkable Gothic creation of this period is the chapel of Louis IX, the "holy chapel" of Saint Chapelle. From the 14th century the late Gothic period begins, in France it lasts two centuries. The 15th century in Gothic architecture is also called Flaming Gothic. Late Gothic structures are overloaded with decoration, intricate decorative carvings and intricate rib patterns.
Feudal castles at the end of the 13th century were built only with the permission of the king, in the XIV century. this generally becomes the privilege of the king and his entourage, luxuriously decorated palaces appear in the castle complexes. Castles are gradually turning into pleasure residences, into hunting chateaus. But urban construction (town halls, workshop buildings, residential buildings) does not decrease.

Gothic art in Germany is not as unified as French. There are a number of reasons for this, primarily the weakness of imperial power, the constant struggle of the feudal lords with the townspeople. There is no need to prove the influence of French architecture on German, many German masters simply studied in France, worked in French building artels. But this did not prevent German architects from preserving their national identity. German Gothic architecture developed later than French. German cathedrals are simpler in plan, the crown of chapels, as a rule, is absent, flying buttresses are very rare, the vaults are higher, the building is more elongated vertically, the spiers of the towers are very high. A feature of the German Gothic are single-towered temples topped with a tall one. In the north of Germany, instead of stone, brick is used as a building material. The so-called Brick Gothic is generally characteristic of Northern Europe, especially in civil architecture.
Due to the delay of the Gothic in comparison with the French in Germany, the Gothic features in architecture fused more strongly with the Romanesque. The exterior decor is much more restrained, stingier.
Sculptural decor, as in the Romanesque period, in German churches is used more in the interior than outside, it is more diverse in material: not only stone, but also wood, bronze, knocking. In late Gothic German sculpture, as well as in French, the fragmentation of forms increases, monumentality is lost, pathos is accentuated, mannerisms, naturalistic details appear, which almost completely French Gothic did not know even of the latest period.

Czech gothic. During the Gothic period (13-14 - partly 15th century), the Czech Republic entered the circle of developed and cultural countries of Europe, had significant independence despite the formal subordination of the Holy Roman Empire. Vulnerable wooden architecture is being replaced with stone, which contributes to its safety and preservation for centuries. Samples of Czech Gothic architecture are not much inferior to samples of Gothic architecture in other countries, with only two exceptions - the architecture of France and Italy. The Gothic cathedral became the dominant building in the city squares, uniting around itself the town hall and the houses of the inhabitants with the Gothic galleries of the first floor - a characteristic feature of many Czech cities from the Gothic era and later. The Gothic cathedrals of the Czech Republic are often of the hall type, when the central nave is equal to the height of the side aisles or slightly exceeds them. The transept has not received development, it is almost never used. The outer walls are thick, powerful, lacking additional supports, as in the cathedrals of France. Narrow high windows are decorated with stained-glass windows. Labour-intensive technology and wars hampered construction, and large cathedrals were left unfinished, as was the case with the grandiose Cathedral of St. Vita in Prague. It was completed in forms close to the medieval style of Parlerge only at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Gothic of England. Formed in France, Gothic came to other countries. In England, the main nave of the cathedral is narrower than in France, and often longer; two transepts, one in the middle and the other closer to the eastern part of the church, form the shape of an "archbishop's cross" in plan; to a semicircular apse with a semicircular bypass of the choir and a crown of chapels radially diverging from it, the British preferred the rectangular completion of the eastern end of the temple. Thickened, as in Romanesque buildings, walls, a composition with accentuated horizontal divisions, also characteristic of Romanesque architecture, remained in England long after their disappearance in France.
Many English cathedrals were monastic, but even those that were not part of the monasteries retained in their appearance the features of monastic architecture, for example, a closed courtyard adjoining the cathedral, or a cloister. Often the main entrance to the cathedral was arranged from the side of one of the side aisles, and not from the western side. Due to the relatively low height of the vaults, which towered over the relatively narrow naves, and the rather large thickness of the walls, there was no need to use buttresses and flying buttresses.
In the development of English Gothic, three periods can be conventionally distinguished. In the last decades of the 13th c. and the very beginning of the 14th century. falls into the early Gothic period. This style is closer to French, then simple four-part vaults were usually used; the exception is Canterbury Cathedral, where they are six-part. Beam supports repeat French samples, a little later in the west of England, supports of complex shape appear. There are few decorative elements. Narrow windows have lancet endings. A more elaborate system of decoration appears at Westminster Abbey at the very end of the period. Westminster Abbey - "the most French" of the English buildings, the tallest, built using a system of buttresses.
In the 14th century the so-called. decorated gothic. As its name implies, decorativeness replaces the austerity of early English Gothic. The most amazing metamorphosis occurs with windows, the width of which increases so much that it becomes necessary to have decorative sculptural elements between the stained glass panels. At first, the ends of the windows are completely filled with circles and arcs, then this pattern is replaced by winding curves, forming a complex ornament.
In the 15th century "decorated Gothic" is being replaced by "perpendicular Gothic". This name is associated with the predominance of vertical lines in the pattern of decorative elements. Perpendicular Gothic existed until the beginning of the 16th century.

9. The addition of Byzantine art

The formation of Byzantine art took place in those areas of the Eastern Roman Empire, where ancient, Greek-Hellenistic art has long been in contact with the ancient artistic tradition of the cultures of the Near East. In the new capital of the empire - Constantinople - in the 4th-5th centuries, numerous ancient monuments brought from various ancient centers were concentrated. Here, elements of the artistic cultures of different peoples merged, and new forms of art were gradually developed. The very appearance of the city with its vast squares, decorated with triumphal columns, crowned with statues of emperors, with aqueducts that brought fresh water from distant sources, cisterns and baths, was reminiscent of ancient Rome. The city was surrounded by a complex system of defensive structures erected at the beginning of the 5th century and consisting of a double row of walls and a deep moat, with numerous towers and several gates for civil or military purposes.
Ancient traditions were just as alive in the large centers of the eastern provinces, such as Alexandria and Antioch. Recently unearthed in Antioch, the mosaic floors of the 5th-6th centuries, both in content and in form, largely reproduce the old samples; a number of points bring them together with the Sasanian art. In small provincial towns, as well as on the periphery in the same eastern regions, local artistic cultures also developed.
New forms of art appeared already in the painting of the Roman catacombs. The same kind of wall paintings were found in the countries of the Near East.
Such, for example, are the widely known temples dedicated to various cults in Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, the burial crypts in Palmyra and others. The late Hellenistic portraits on boards discovered in the burials of the Fayum oasis, made in the wax technique, the so-called encaustic painting (Fayum portraits), are closely related in technique, and to some extent in form, with early Byzantine icons.
In the 4th-6th centuries, a number of areas of the Near East became the center for the creation of a new Christian iconography, and this iconography appears in two manifestations: in some works, the traditions of Greek-Hellenistic art are clearly detected, in others, created in monasteries and other Christian centers of Syria and Palestine, - traditions of Syrian art.
In the same period, in the Christian art of the eastern provinces, trends are revealed that represent a kind of opposition to the art of the dominant church.
Thus, Byzantine art arose on a very complex basis. It was also diverse in its further development, for its monuments were created in the most diverse areas in terms of their artistic culture, which for more or less long time were part of the empire, which was constantly changing its borders.
Starting from the 4th and 5th centuries, the provinces of Byzantium were exposed to the gradually increasing influence of the artistic culture of the barbarians, which can be traced in the art of Constantinople, Greece, and also Italy. In Syria and Asia Minor, the relationship with Sasanian art, and later with the culture created by the eastern peoples under the Arabs, is especially noticeable.

10. Time of Justinian

In the history of Byzantine art, the reign of Justinian marks an entire era. Talented writers, such historians as Procopius and Agathius, John of Ephesus, such poets as Paul the Silentiary, such theologians as Leontius of Byzantium, brilliantly continued the traditions of classical Greek literature, and it was at the dawn of the 6th century. Roman the Melodist, "the king of melodies", created religious poetry - perhaps the most beautiful and most original manifestation of the Byzantine spirit. Even more remarkable was the magnificence of the fine arts. At this time, in Constantinople, a slow process, prepared for two centuries in the local schools of the East, was being completed. And since Justinian loved buildings, because he managed to find outstanding masters to carry out his intentions and provide inexhaustible means at their disposal, as a result, the monuments of this century - miracles of knowledge, courage and magnificence - marked the pinnacle of Byzantine art in perfect creations.

Art has never been more varied, more mature, more free; in the VI century there are all architectural styles, all types of buildings - basilicas, for example, St. Apollinaria in Ravenna or St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki; churches representing polygons in plan, for example, the churches of St. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople or St. Vitaly in Ravenna; buildings in the shape of a cross, crowned with five domes, like the church of St. Apostles; churches, such as St. Sophia, built by Anthimius of Trall and Isidore of Miletus in 532-537; thanks to its original plan, light, bold and precisely calculated structure, skillful solution of problems of balance, harmonious combination of parts, this temple remains an unsurpassed masterpiece of Byzantine art to this day. The skilful selection of multi-coloured marble, fine sculptures, mosaic decorations on a blue and gold background inside the temple are an incomparable splendor, an idea of ​​which can still be obtained today, in the absence of a mosaic destroyed in the church of St. Apostles or barely visible under the Turkish painting of St. Sophia, - according to the mosaics in the churches of Parenzo and Ravenna, as well as the remains of the wonderful decorations of the church of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki. Everywhere - in jewelry, in fabrics, in ivory, in manuscripts - the same character of dazzling luxury and solemn grandeur that marks the birth of a new style is manifested. Under the combined influence of the East and ancient tradition, Byzantine art entered its golden age in the era of Justinian.

What legacy did the Middle Ages inherit from the former society? The collapse of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the destruction of cities, roads, irrigation systems, the ruin of villages and, consequently, the decline of crafts and agriculture. The “Great Migration of Nations” in the 4th century (the movement of the barbarian tribes of the Normans, Lombards, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Alans and others from north to south, from west to east and back), caused by famine, wars and lack of land, led Europe to devastation . What the barbarians did not destroy, natural disasters completed: floods, fires, diseases. For example, since 546, the plague that came from the East devastated Italy, Spain, and Gaul for half a century. As a result, the Middle Ages began with a regression in the material and spiritual spheres. The time has come, known as the "dark ages".

Technically, society has been thrown back. Stone construction stopped, because there was no one and nothing to work with stone, and wooden construction resumed again, so fires became more frequent. The production of glass disappeared, because they stopped importing soda. In craft and agriculture, primitive tools were again used, which led to a backwardness in military affairs, and medieval Europe remained for a long time unarmed against barbarian invasions.

There is also a spiritual regression: a huge number of works of literature, sculpture, and painting have been destroyed. The fines for misdemeanors that appeared in the early Middle Ages demonstrate the extreme degree of moral decline: drunkenness, gluttony, depravity, violence, which are committed against the backdrop of a decline in public administration and a crisis of power.

In this chaos, the Christian church, on the one hand, has become a unifying and organizing principle. The monasteries turned out to be bastions of culture in the midst of general ignorance, protecting and preserving the remnants of ancient culture and especially the literary language. Precious old manuscripts were kept in the monastic libraries. scriptoria(lat. scriptorius“Writing”), they corresponded and resumed, teaching in schools was conducted in Latin, which became the language of science. For a long time, only churches and monasteries had educational institutions that preserved “scholarly literacy”.

On the other hand, the church has contributed to the destruction of the culture of the past. We have already spoken about the destruction of the scientific center and library in Alexandria, the prohibition of many ancient traditions. In 415, fanatical monks brutally tore to pieces a mathematics teacher from Alexandria, Hypatia, and in 529, the Athenian school that had grown out of the Platonic Academy was closed.

So, the former Roman Empire has been scattered into small fragments of barbarian states, of which one or the other flourishes for a short period of time, shining with the reflected splendor of the former Roman greatness. The first of these was the state of the Franks, the empire of Charlemagne, the most Christian ruler, who planted Christianity with fire and sword. He gathered a brilliant court around him, inviting the best scientists, poets, and politicians to him. It was thanks to his efforts that Western Europe became an advanced region in comparison even with Byzantium. The empire of Charlemagne occupied a vast territory, ruled by trained administrators, educated advisers. State decrees began to be brought to the attention of subjects not by heralds, as before, but in writing.

However, both Charlemagne and other Frankish sovereigns, with a purely barbarous spontaneity, considered the kingdom as their own property. They gave and took away land, disposed of all income personally, and the population was considered people who depended only on them. The habit of perceiving the state as a military organization also remained from barbarian times. For a long time, various meetings, for example, of landowners, or annual reviews of the armed people, which the Franks called “March fields” (compare the Field of Mars), were preserved, and the entire free population gathered for them. To resolve important issues, Charlemagne convened meetings of the secular and church nobility.

There were attempts to create codes of laws, but samples of Roman law so far remain only samples, and barbaric “truths” - codes of judicial customs are taken as the basis. As a rule, there are no general laws in them, but there are lists of fines for certain offenses. Often they were very cruel. For example, a person accused of stealing could prove his innocence in two ways: either by dipping his hand into boiling oil or water, or by throwing him bound into a river. If the hand after the burns healed quickly or he managed to swim out, then he was considered innocent. Not a single court thought about whether the defendant was sane, did not look for social causes of misconduct, did not allow the thought of the possibility of a miscarriage of justice. The medieval court sought not to correct, but to punish a person, and this was accompanied by torment or execution. Royal laws had as their task only one thing: to make subjects of the sovereign's vassals, to seal them with an oath of allegiance to the lord. Thus, another system of relations between people arose: if the ancient man was supposed to be fair, then the medieval man was right.

MEDIEVAL CULTURE OF WESTERN EUROPE AND BYZANTINE

"Middle Ages" - the designation of the period in the history of Western Europe between Antiquity and Modern times, accepted in cultural thought. The Middle Ages is a significant era in the history of mankind. This period spans over a millennium. Within this period, there are three main stages (it should be noted that the division is conditional and the chronological framework is approximate):

Early Middle Ages, V-XI centuries;

High (classical) Middle Ages, XII-XIV centuries;

Late Middle Ages, XV-XVI centuries.

The early Middle Ages are sometimes referred to as the "Dark Ages" investing in this concept a certain destructive connotation. The birth of European civilization and culture took place in a difficult environment of wars and migrations. In the era of the "Great Migration of Nations" (IV-VIII centuries), numerous tribal unions (Germanic, Slavic, Turkic, etc.) moved across Europe - the so-called barbarians (from the Latin barda-beard). The Western Roman Empire fell under the blows of the barbarians On its former territory, barbarian states were formed that waged constant wars with each other.The decline and barbarism into which the West plunged rapidly at the end of the 5th-7th centuries as a result of barbarian conquests and incessant wars are opposed not only to the achievements of ancient civilization, but also to the spiritual life of Byzantium, which did not survive such a tragic turning point in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages.

However, it is impossible to delete this time from the cultural history of Europe. It was then that the foundations of European civilization were laid. After all, in ancient times there was no "Europe" in the modern sense as a certain cultural and historical community with a common destiny in world history. It began to really take shape ethnically, politically, economically and culturally in the early Middle Ages as a result of the life of many peoples who inhabited Europe for a long time and came again. It was the early Middle Ages, which did not give achievements comparable to the heights of ancient culture or the High Middle Ages, that laid the foundation for European cultural history proper.

The new culture arose on the basis of the interaction of the heritage of the ancient world, more precisely, the collapsed civilization of the Roman Empire, Christianity generated by it and the tribal, folk cultures of the barbarians.

To understand the development of medieval culture, it is important to take into account that it was formed in the region where until recently there was the center of a powerful Roman civilization that could not disappear in one moment. The most important means of cultural continuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages was the Latin language. It has retained its significance as the language of church and state office work, international communication and culture. Medieval Europe also preserved the Roman school tradition - the system of seven liberal arts.

The most striking phenomena in the culture of the end of the 5th century - the first half of the 7th century are associated with the assimilation of the ancient heritage, which became a breeding ground for the revival of cultural life in Ostrogothic Italy and Visigothic Spain. Master of Offices (First Minister) of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric Severin Boethius(c. 480-525) was considered one of the most revered teachers of the Middle Ages. His treatises on arithmetic and music, writings on logic and theology, translations of Aristotle became the foundation of the medieval system of education and philosophy. Boethius is often called the "father of scholasticism". His essay "On the Consolation of Philosophy" became one of the most widely read works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Another master of offices of the Ostrogothic kingdom, Flavius ​​Cassiodorus(c. 490 - c. 585), hatched plans for the creation of the first university in the West. In southern Italy, on his estate, Cassiodorus founded a monastery - the Vivarium - a cultural center that united a school, a workshop for copying books (scriptorium), and a library. The vivarium became a model for the Benedictine monasteries, which, starting from the second half of the 6th century, become the guardians of the cultural tradition in Western Europe. Visigothic Spain put forward one of the largest educators of the early Middle Ages - Isidore of Seville(c.570 - 636), who gained the fame of the first medieval encyclopedist. His main work "Etymology" (in twenty books) is a collection of what has been preserved from ancient knowledge.

But the assimilation of the ancient heritage was not carried out freely and on a large scale. At the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th centuries, Pope Gregory I sharply opposed the idea of ​​allowing pagan wisdom into the world of Christian spiritual life, condemning vain worldly knowledge. His position triumphed in the spiritual life of Western Europe for several centuries. Since the second half of the 7th century, cultural life in Western Europe has been in decline, it is barely warm in the monasteries. Until the 11th-12th centuries, Europe lagged behind Byzantium and the Arab East in its cultural development. Only the 11th-14th centuries will be the time when medieval European culture acquires its “classical forms.” Starting from the 12th century, interest in ancient wisdom revives again in the spiritual culture of Europe.

The extremely meager data of the sources do not allow us to recreate any complete picture of the cultural life of the barbarian tribes that stood at the origins of medieval civilization in Europe. It is known for sure that by the time of the Great Migration of Nations, by the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the beginning of the formation of the heroic epic of the peoples of Western and Northern Europe (Old German, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Irish), which replaced history for them, dates back.

The barbarians of the early Middle Ages brought a peculiar vision and feeling of the world, still full of primitive power, nourished by the ancestral ties of man and the community to which he belonged, militant energy. The worldview of these new inhabitants of Europe was characterized by feelings of the inseparability of man from nature, the indivisibility of the world of people and the world of gods. The unbridled and gloomy fantasy of the Germans, the Celts inhabited the forests, hills and rivers with evil dwarfs, werewolf monsters, dragons and fairies. Gods and people - heroes waged a constant struggle with evil forces. At the same time, the gods appeared in the minds of people as powerful sorcerers and wizards. These ideas are reflected in the bizarre ornaments of the barbarian animal style, in art. During the Christianization of the barbarians, their gods did not die, they transformed and merged with the cults of local saints or joined the ranks of demons.

The Germans also brought with them a system of moral values ​​that had already been formed in the depths of the patriarchal-tribal society. Particular importance was attached to the ideals of loyalty and military courage. The psychological make-up of the Germans, Celts and other barbarians was characterized by open emotionality, unrestrained intensity in the expression of feelings. All this also left its mark on the emerging medieval culture.

The Christian religion and the Roman Catholic Church played a special role in the formation of medieval culture. Christianity in late antiquity became that unifying shell into which a variety of views could fit - from subtle theological doctrines to pagan superstitions and barbarian rites. During the period of transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, Christianity was very receptive to other ideological phenomena, absorbed and combined them. This was one of the most important reasons for its gradual strengthening. During the decline of culture in the early Middle Ages, it was the church that remained the only social institution common to all countries, tribes and states of Europe.

Christianity originated at the beginning of the 1st century in Palestine conquered by Rome as a creed about the Messiah, a divine savior who will save people from suffering. The highest religious goal of Christianity is salvation. Jesus Christ, by his martyrdom, took upon himself the sins of mankind and showed the way to salvation. This path is faith in the great and one God in three persons (Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit). Salvation requires spiritual efforts and faith from a person, but it is impossible to be saved on your own. The path of salvation is the path of becoming like Jesus and (with His help) the transformation of one's sinful nature. Salvation is possible only in the bosom of the Church.

Christianity became the official religion in the Roman Empire in the 4th century, and later the Germanic, Slavic and other tribes of Europe adopted the Christian faith. Christianity becomes the state religion in the young barbarian states. It was Christianity that became the main axis of the new social worldview that was taking shape in Western Europe. In the conditions of a difficult, harsh life (wars, destruction, famine, etc.), against the background of extremely limited and most often unreliable knowledge about the world, Christianity offered people a coherent system of knowledge about the world, about its structure, about the forces acting in it and laws. Showing considerable attention to the inner life of a person and highlighting above all morality with its problems of the meaning of human existence, spiritual life, equality of people, condemnation of violence, Christianity asserted a special type of spirituality and formed a new, higher level of human self-consciousness. The moral values ​​of Christianity, the universally significant preaching of love, had great emotional attraction for people.

Since Christianity performed the function of an ideological integrator in the medieval society of Western Europe, the ego led to the consolidation of its organization - the Roman Catholic Church, which was a strictly hierarchically centralized system headed by the Pope and aspired to supremacy in the Christian world. The Church was a large landowner, sanctified the inviolability of the existing social order, church dogmas served as the starting point and foundation of all spiritual life.

Each historical epoch has its own worldview, its own ideas about nature, time, space, about the order of everything that exists, about the relationship of people to each other. Christianity underlay the worldview of the individual and mass ideas, although it did not absorb them entirely. Christianity, in comparison with antiquity, significantly changed the image of the world and man. The ancient understanding of the world as an eternal, indivisible, beautiful cosmos is being replaced by the idea of ​​a bifurcated, complex and contradictory world. The consciousness of medieval man proceeded from the statement of the dualism of the world. At the same time, the earthly world lost its independent value and turned out to be correlated with the heavenly world. Earthly existence was considered as a reflection of the existence of the higher, heavenly world. On frescoes in temples, heavenly forces (God the Father, Christ, Mother of God, angels) were depicted on the upper part of the wall, earthly beings were placed in the bottom row. The dualism of medieval ideas divided the world into polar pairs of opposites: heaven-earth, god-devil, top-bottom. The concept of the top was combined with the concept of nobility, purity of goodness, the concept of the bottom - with ignobleness, rudeness, evil.

Ideas about a person were dualistic - the soul and body were divided and opposed. The body was considered base, mortal, and the soul is close to God and immortal. The superiority of the soul over the body requires that a person take care, first of all, of the soul, suppress sensual pleasures. The problem of soul and body acquired in medieval culture the form of an eternal conflict between heavenly and earthly, spiritual and bodily, sacred and sinful principles in man. The body turns a person away from a higher destination. The combination of these polar principles in man is God's punishment for original sin. Hence the most important idea for the Christian Middle Ages was the humiliation and suppression of the bodily in man.

The central position in the Christian doctrine of man is the creation of him in the image and likeness of God. All other creations were created for the sake of and for man, who is the crown of creation. Thus, a person in Christianity has acquired a certain intrinsic value. All phenomena of the world began to be perceived from the point of view of human experience and values. At the same time, the value of a person in Christianity is supra-individual. This is not about the value of the individually unique in earthly life, but about the immortal soul that God breathed into each individual.

The most important feature of medieval consciousness was that man perceived the world, the surrounding reality as a system of symbols. The medieval symbol expressed the invisible and intelligible through the visible and material. For any phenomenon, in addition to a literal, factual understanding, one could also find a symbolic, mystical interpretation that reveals the secrets of faith. About each object, in addition to information relating to its physical nature, there was also another knowledge - knowledge of its symbolic meaning. The world of symbols was inexhaustible. Thus, the Christian cathedral was a symbol of the universe. Its structure was conceived in everything similar to the cosmic order, a review of its internal plan, dome, altar, aisles should have given a complete picture of the structure of the world. Portals of cathedrals and churches were perceived as "gates of heaven". The western part of the cathedral symbolized the future ("end of the world"), the eastern part - the sacred past (there was always an altar in the eastern part of the temple).

Numbers and geometric figures had a deep symbolic meaning; they expressed world harmony. The number 3 was considered a symbol of the Holy Trinity and everything spiritual; 4 - a symbol of the four great prophets and 4 evangelists, as well as the number of world elements, that is, a symbol of the material world. Multiplication 3 * 4 in the mystical sense meant the penetration of the spirit into matter, the announcement of the true faith to the world. The number 12 was associated with the 12 apostles. Addition 4 + 3 symbolized the union of two natures - bodily and spiritual. At the same time, 7 is a symbol of the seven sacraments, seven virtues, seven deadly sins; 7 - the number of days of creation (the Lord worked for six days, rested on the seventh day) and a symbol of eternal rest. Many medieval writings had seven chapters.

The settlements where people lived were conceived as centers, the rest of the world was located on the periphery (outskirts). The space was divided into "own", familiar, nearby and "foreign", distant and hostile. Although Christianity expanded the world (compared to the ideas of the barbarians), all non-Christians, as well as Christian heretics, were excluded from the ranks of full-fledged human beings.

The ideas of medieval Europeans about time were vague, optional. Personal, everyday time moved in a vicious circle: morning-afternoon-evening-night, winter-spring-summer-autumn. From the point of view of Christianity, time was linearly directed: from the creation of the world to the Last Judgment and the end of earthly history. The history of mankind was considered as the life of an individual. Medieval society was young, a man at forty was already considered an old man. There was no special emotional relationship to childhood. In medieval images, babies had the faces and figures of adults.

The attitude towards nature was very specific. In the early Middle Ages, man viewed nature as an extension of his own "I". There has not yet been a complete isolation of man from nature. In the future, the medieval European no longer merges himself with nature, but he does not oppose himself to it either. The most natural and common measures of measuring land are the cubit, span, finger, number of steps. In the monuments of art and literature there is no aesthetic attitude to nature. Nature is a symbol of the invisible world. She could not be the object of admiration. Therefore, the image of nature in literature and painting was conditional and obeyed the canon. The forest in the chivalric romance means the place of the knight's wandering, the field - the place of the duel, the garden - the place of a love adventure or conversation. By itself, the landscape of the author was not interested.

The specificity of the perception of the world and space by a medieval person can be better understood by considering the categories of microcosm and macrocosm. The gigantic world (macrocosm) created by God included the "small cosmos" (microcosm) - man. Everything that is in the macrocosm is also in the microcosm. This theme, known in ancient Greece, was very popular in medieval Europe. Each part of the human body was represented in accordance with one or another part of the Universe: the head corresponded to the heavens, the chest to the air, the stomach to the sea, the legs to the earth, the hair to the herbs, etc. Many attempts have been made to visually embody the idea of ​​macro- and microcosm. In one of the allegorical drawings, the macrocosm is represented as a symbol of eternity - a circle held in the hands of Nature. Inside the circle is placed a human figure - a microcosm. The analogy of microcosm and macrocosm was the very foundation of medieval symbolism, because nature was understood as a mirror in which a person can contemplate the image of God.

Medieval ideas about labor and wealth should be emphasized. In ancient society, labor was considered the work of slaves, the lot of the unfree, physical labor was seen as a hard and unclean occupation that degrades human dignity. Christianity, having proclaimed the principle "if one does not want to work, that one does not eat," broke with these antiquity attitudes. But the attitude of the church towards labor was contradictory. On the one hand, the church taught that the need to work is a consequence of the fall (Adam and Eve did not work in paradise). Labor is punishment. A person needs to care more about spiritual salvation, and not about physical well-being. On the other hand, labor was recognized as a necessary occupation of man. Christian theologians valued above all the educational role of labor, for "idleness is the enemy of the soul." But labor should not become an end in itself and serve as enrichment.

Wealth and money in and of themselves are neither good nor evil. Possession of them may help, but may prevent the soul from reaching heavenly bliss. But the church expressed a different attitude towards different forms of ownership. Trade and usury were sharply condemned. Generous spending on the church by the privileged classes was welcomed.

In medieval society, each person was a member of a social group - an estate. Christianity itself sanctified the hierarchical structure of feudal society. Three main estates in medieval Europe - the clergy, the nobility (chivalry), the people. For each of these estates, the medieval consciousness recognized not only a function useful for society, but also a sacred duty. The highest state affairs ("earthly affairs") - the maintenance of the church, the defense of the faith, the strengthening of the world, etc. - were considered a sacred duty of chivalry, and all concerns about spiritual life ("deeds of heaven") - the lot of the clergy. Therefore, the clergy was considered the first upper class, and chivalry - the second. The Lord commanded the third estate, that is, the common people, to work, cultivating the land or trading the fruits of their labor, and thereby ensuring the existence of all. The fulfillment of these duties in real historical conditions required an appropriate way of life and activity. Occupations, conditions of material existence, behavior, way of thinking, views of a medieval person were determined by his belonging to one or another class. In this regard, within the framework of a single medieval culture, the following subcultures can be distinguished: the noble (knightly), the culture of the clergy, the peasant culture and the culture of the townspeople (burghers).

Consider the most important features of some subcultures of medieval Europe. Chivalric novels, medieval historical chronicles paint the image of an ideal knight. And although the real life of the era never corresponds to the ideals, the ideals always correspond to the era. The main knightly virtues included the following. It was desirable that the knight come from an ancient family, since in medieval society the spiritual life was based on authorities, and "antiquity" was a guarantee of respect. But sometimes they were knighted for exclusively military exploits. The knight was required to have the strength (to wear armor) and the courage of a warrior; he was expected to constantly look after his fame. Glory demanded tireless confirmation of military qualities, and, consequently, more and more tests and feats. From the very obligation to take care of fame, it followed that there was no point in doing good deeds if they were destined to remain unknown, and also that pride was completely justified. The most important knightly virtue was fidelity - to God, overlord, word, etc. The custom included vows-oaths that were not violated. Generosity was an indispensable property of a knight. It was necessary, without bargaining, to give anyone (but equal) what he asks. It's better to be broke than to be known as a miser. Glory to the knight was brought not so much by victory as by noble behavior in battle, a generous attitude towards the opponent. The duty of the knight was also the service of the Beautiful Lady. "Fight and love" is the knight's motto. This love for a woman was supposed to elevate the soul and ennoble morals. Gradually, a code of courtly ("courtly" - from old French "court") love developed. The rules of courtly love presupposed a "noble" way of conquering her: accomplishing feats in her honor, victories in knightly tournaments, testing fidelity in a long separation, the ability to clothe one's feelings in aesthetic forms of courtship.

Thus, the ideal of a knight was far from the Christian model of a person - a deeply religious and moral person. But he refracted the Christian virtues in accordance with the conditions of the life of chivalry. Courtly love, which the church condemned, undoubtedly developed under the influence of the Christian cult of love as a suffering that purifies the soul. There is no doubt that the origins of the knightly value system in many respects date back to the period of barbarism (the ideals of courage, loyalty and other military qualities). At the same time, it should be noted that the chivalric code is an ideal that has only partially been realized in people's behavior. Actual morals were "simpler", coarser, more primitive. So, the worship of the Beautiful Lady was combined with rudeness in family relationships. The valor and nobility of the knights were often intertwined with the savagery of morals (for example, behavior during a feast), bloodthirstiness, and lack of education. The rules of honor were valid only within the knighthood and did not apply to others.

The duality of value orientations was even more clearly manifested in folk culture. The principle of "two worlds" affirmed by Christianity - the division of the world and the opposition in it of spirituality and corporality, "top and bottom" - was hardly perceived by the people's consciousness, which retained a live, direct connection with the natural roots of man in rural labor, in everyday pagan traditions. In everyday life, spirit and flesh, good and evil, striving for God and sensual joys, fear of "sin" and "sin" were constantly intertwined. God was treated as a man with a rough nature, and in the church they danced to obscene songs about gospel characters. This was not a manifestation of depravity, but rather the barbaric childishness of their perceptions and ideas.

The highest manifestation of this originality of medieval culture was folk holidays, where the natural need for psychological relief, for carefree fun after hard work resulted in a parodic mockery of everything high and serious in official Christian culture. According to M.M. Bakhtin, an outstanding Russian scientist and philosopher, three types of forms of folk culture should be distinguished:

1) Ritual and spectacular forms (festivals of the carnival type, various public laughter performances);

2) Verbal laughter forms (including parody works of various kinds): oral and written, in Latin and in folk languages;

3) Various forms and genres of familiar-areal speech (cursing, swearing, oath, etc.).

Ritual-spectacular forms included carnivals, "holidays of fools", "donkey festival", temple festivities accompanied by fairs and square entertainments, comic rites of civil or domestic ceremonies (parodies of jesters on knightly tournaments, etc.), household feasts with election for laughter table kings. The verbal and laughter forms included parodic works such as "Liturgy of Drunkards", "Testament of a Donkey", parodic disputes, parodic prayers, which were created in Latin in monasteries, universities, and schools. Folk secular motifs prevailed in the vernacular languages ​​- parodic epics: animals, clownish, rogue and stupid. Familiar-areal speech is characterized by a fairly frequent use of curses, swear words and swear words. Cursing contributed to the creation of a free carnival atmosphere. All forms of folk laughter culture are closely interconnected and intertwined with each other in many ways.

The creators of the carnival-laughter culture were ordinary people - peasants and townspeople. But one can single out significant differences in the position, system of values, worldview of these social groups. The peasant remained merged with his natural surroundings. His horizons were limited to the immediate rural district. The whole course of his life depended on natural rhythms. Constant communication with nature led the peasants to believe that everything moves in a circle: spring-summer-autumn-winter; plowing-sowing-growth-harvest. The peasant treated himself not so much as an individual, but as a member of the rural "world", of the community. There was no self-developed personality, the consciousness of the peasant was collectivist.

The layer of townspeople was formed from representatives of different classes, but most of the population were artisans. In the city, the dependence of its inhabitants on nature and its rhythms was much weaker than among the peasants. Man, face to face with the nature he was changing, asked himself a question that could not have occurred to a peasant: whether the tools of labor and his other products were the creations of God or his own creations.

The city dweller was more subject to the order created by himself than to natural rhythms. He more clearly separated himself from nature and treated it as an external object. The city became the bearer of a new relationship to time: time moves not in a circle, but in a straight line, and rather quickly. In the 13th century, mechanical clocks were installed on city towers. They serve not only as a source of pride for the townspeople, but also satisfy an unheard-of need before - to know the exact time of day. Time becomes the measure of labour.

The life of a medieval city dweller was regulated in all manifestations. Guild (shops - associations of artisans by profession) codes regulated not only production issues, they included instructions on the procedure for baptism, weddings, types of clothing, etc. The workshop was the form in which the whole life of artisans, as well as their families, passed. It was in the workshop environment that a fundamentally new attitude to work was developed. The craftsman considered labor as a source not only of existence, but also of moral satisfaction. Creating a bright, unique product, the master at the same time affirmed himself in the thought of his own significance and uniqueness. Thus, in the cities, an idea unusual for the Middle Ages was born that a person is not only a part of some community, but also an individual, valuable not by nobility or holiness, but by his talent, manifested in everyday work.

In medieval society, the city opposed everything: the feudal lords, who sought to profit at his expense; church if it interfered in its internal affairs. In the course of the centuries-old struggle for self-government in cities, ideas of freedom and equality were forged. The cities of the medieval East and Byzantium lacked that social type of a citizen, a member of a free self-governing community, which was formed in a medieval European city. A free citizen of medieval Europe who realized his individuality became the bearer of a new system of values. It is in the city that the culture of the Renaissance is formed in the future.

Education in medieval Europe acted primarily as a religious education. During the early Middle Ages, only monasteries had schools. The monasteries played an important role in maintaining education during a period of cultural decline. When organizing church schools, some knowledge of antiquity was used. The system of "seven liberal arts" was divided into two parts: trivium and quadrivium. Trivium included grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, quadrivium - arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. Grammar was considered the "mother of all sciences", dialectics gave formal logical knowledge, the foundations of philosophy and logic, rhetoric taught to speak correctly and expressively. "Mathematical disciplines" - arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy - were conceived as sciences of numerical ratios that underlay world harmony.

From the 11th century, a steady rise in medieval schools began. Schools were divided into monastic, cathedral (at city cathedrals), parish. With the growth of cities, secular city schools (private and municipal) arise, not subject to the direct dictates of the church. The students of non-church schools were vagrants schoolchildren originating from different layers. Education in schools was conducted in Latin, only in the XIV century did schools teaching in national languages ​​appear.

In the XIII century, universities appeared in Europe: Parisian - in France, Oxford and Cambridge - in England, Palermo and others - in Italy. At the end of the 15th century, there were already 65 universities. Universities had legal, administrative, financial autonomy, which was granted to him by special documents of the sovereign or pope. The medieval university had several faculties; the junior faculty, obligatory for all students, was artistic, where the seven liberal arts were studied in full. Other faculties - legal, medical, theological. Classes at universities usually took the form of lectures: professors and masters read and commented on the works of authoritative church and ancient authors. Public debates were held on topics of a theological and philosophical nature. Teaching was conducted in Latin.

Universities have become centers for the development of philosophy and science. They replaced the former ecclesiastical higher theological schools, but Christian theology also played a leading role in the universities. Medieval university science was called scholastics(from the Latin word "school"). Scholastic knowledge is, in fact, speculative knowledge. Scholasticism was most clearly reflected in medieval theology and philosophy. A controversy runs through all medieval philosophy realists And nominalists about universals (concepts). The beginning of the controversy is connected with the question of the Trinity: how can God be one in the faces of sin? Subsequently, the disputes turned into a discussion on the philosophical problem of the relationship between the general and the individual. Realists argued that there are first of all general concepts, and individual things are derived from them. Nominalists insisted that single things really exist and general concepts are formed on their basis. The nominalists made a significant contribution to the development of scholastic logic.

From the 11th century, as a result of the Crusades, Europe began to get acquainted with the culture of the Arab East and Byzantium. As in their time the Arabs translated Greek, Indian and other treatises, so in Europe they are now beginning to translate Arabic manuscripts. Another channel for the penetration of Eastern "learning" into Europe is Spain, which for several centuries was an Arab province. Thanks to cultural contacts, the Arabic numeral system is introduced in Europe (before that, Europeans used uncomfortable Roman numerals, which greatly complicated mathematical operations). Through Arabic mediation, Europe became acquainted with the legacy of the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, while Arabic versions of his writings were translated into Latin. It was not until the 13th century that the works of Aristotle began to be translated directly from Greek. The works of Greek and Arabic scientists were translated into Latin: Archimedes, Hippocrates, Avicenna, and others. Acquaintance with these works contributed to the spread of free-thinking and rationalism in European science in the 13th century.

By the XIII century can be attributed the emergence of experimental knowledge in European universities. Roger Bacon(1214-1292), English learned monk, professor at Oxford University, was one of the first who insisted on the need for experimental knowledge of nature, opposed scholasticism. Bacon conducted physical experiments, discovered some laws in optics (for example, the law of reflection and refraction of light), and compiled a recipe for gunpowder. He put forward a number of remarkable guesses - about the possibility of creating self-propelled ships, chariots, vehicles flying through the air or moving along the bottom of the sea. His successors continued research in the field of physics, mechanics, and astronomy. Nicholas Orezmsky(1330-1382) approached the discovery of the law of falling bodies, developed the doctrine of the daily rotation of the Earth, substantiated the idea of ​​using coordinates. Professor and Rector of the University of Paris Jean Buridan(c. 1300-1358) introduced the concept of momentum - an omen of the later law of inertia.

Alchemy occupied an important place in the scientific culture of medieval Europe. Alchemists, busy searching for the "philosopher's stone" that can turn base metals into gold or silver, along the way made a number of important discoveries. The properties of various substances, methods of influencing them were studied, various alloys and chemical compounds were obtained. Thus, alchemy was the forerunner of modern chemistry. At the same time, it was a specific phenomenon of medieval culture, combining a magical and mythological vision of the world with sober practicality, rational logic and an experimental approach.

The growth of cities and trade leads already in the period of the late Middle Ages to the expansion and filling of practical, experimental knowledge. Watches were invented, paper production was established, book printing was opened, a mirror and glasses appeared. Geographical knowledge has been greatly enriched. In the XIV-XV centuries, numerous descriptions of new lands, maps, atlases were compiled.

In the medieval culture of Europe, the position and role of art were quite complex and contradictory. This was due to his relationship with Christian ideology. Christianity rejected sensual, "bodily" forms created by art, capable of arousing "sinful desires." But in medieval society, literacy was the lot of a few, and only fine arts could make the dogmas of religion accessible and understandable to people, giving them a sensually visual character. Therefore, art occupies an exceptional position in medieval culture, as it was addressed to all strata of society; architecture and sculpture, along with the spoken word, became "sermons in stone" for the illiterate.

In order for the images to be perceived as the embodiment of the divine, it was necessary to make them different from the earthly phenomena familiar to everyone, to tear them away from their usual environment, to exclude them from earthly experiences. Art ceases to be an imitation of nature, the real world - images of strange, almost incorporeal, frozen figures appear, but striking with the spiritual power of "holy sorrow", "purifying suffering".

The central and synthesizing type of art of medieval Europe was architecture, which united all other types and genres, subordinated them to its own design, artistic image. It is the delimitation of architectural styles that serves as the basis for the periodization of medieval art. There are two main periods: Romanesque And Gothic. The Romanesque style characterizes the art and architecture of Western Europe in the 10th-12th centuries. The term "Romanesque" was introduced in the 19th century on the basis of the similarity of the buildings of this period with ancient Roman architecture. The main buildings of the Romanesque era are the castle-fortress and the temple-fortress. The castle is the fortress of the knight, the church is the fortress of God. Romanesque art is imbued with the spirit of militancy and constant self-defense, as it belongs to the era of feudal fragmentation. Raids and battles were the elements of life. Castles were most often located on hills, surrounded by moats with towers.

The most complete expression of the spirit of the era was the cathedral - the main city and monastery building. The grandiose dimensions of the cathedrals inspired the idea of ​​human weakness. Outside and inside the Romanesque cathedral is severe and massive. Like a castle-fortress, it is crowned with several towers. The combination of simple, geometrically clear parts of the building with their pronounced expediency, the abundance of smooth surfaces of massive walls give the temple nobility, monumentality and grandeur. In Western Europe, unlike Byzantium and Rus', sculpture and reliefs were of great importance in the design of cathedrals. In the images of various creatures (centaurs, lions, half-lizards, half-birds, all kinds of chimeras) on the capitals and at the foot of the columns, on the windows, in the reliefs of the walls, the "barbarian" foundations of European medieval art are clearly revealed. This is reflected in the understanding of the human image. In the squat figures of the Romanesque saints, the apostles, one can trace their characteristic masculinity, clearly of common origin.

The transition from Romanesque to Gothic is associated with the growth and flourishing of the cities of Western Europe. Religious and secular buildings, sculpture, book illustrations and other works of fine art began to be created in this style. The term "Gothic" "originated in Italy during the Renaissance. Initially, all medieval art was called this term, considering it a product of the Goth barbarians. Later, the art of the high (classical) and partially late Middle Ages, the end of the 12th-15th centuries, began to be called Gothic. The main phenomenon Gothic, the embodiment of everything new in the artistic and social life of this era - the city's cathedral, which symbolized the freedom, strength and wealth of the city.

The Gothic cathedral has a completely different appearance than the Romanesque. It is boundless, often asymmetrical, directed upwards; its walls, as it were, do not exist; facades are filled with all kinds of openwork forms: columns, towers, galleries, arches, spiers, sculptors, carved ornaments. This seemingly incredible appearance of the Gothic structure was made possible thanks to new design principles. At the heart of the airiness, fabulousness of the Gothic cathedral is the frame system of construction. Gothic cathedrals are filled with a mass of sculptures, the arrangement of reliefs and sculptures is subject to church canons. But by creating specific biblical and gospel characters, the artists revealed in them a new, deeper and more complex idea of ​​a person about himself and his place in the world. Gothic art reflected the cruelty and hardships of life in the era of wars, crusades, epidemics. The image of a suffering, offended person is a hidden nerve of Gothic art. The plots of martyrdom were widely spread: the torture of Christ, the crucifixion, mourning, the sufferings of Job, the beating of babies. However, Gothic is available not only for an expressive, emphasized image of suffering, but also for the expression of subtle spiritual movements, the transfer of a wide variety of feelings and states of a person, and the high spirituality of images.

Having considered the features of Western European culture, let's turn to another medieval culture - Byzantine. The culture of Byzantium is distinguished by its deep originality.

Back in the 4th century, the united Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern. Barbarian attacks, social movements, internal strife in the West threatened the very existence of the Roman state; this forced Emperor Constantine I to move the political center of the empire to the East. The adoption of Christianity by Constantine also played a role in moving the center of ideological life to the East, for it was the eastern provinces that were not only the cradle, but also the ideological support of the Christian religion. In 324 - 330 years. Constantine founded the new capital of the empire (on the European coast of the Bosporus Strait), named after him Constantinople.

The final division of the Roman Empire officially took place in 395, each part of it had its own emperor. The Eastern Roman Empire eventually became known as the Byzantine Empire (the city of Constantinople was founded on the site of the former Greek colony of Byzantium). But the Byzantines themselves called themselves Romans (in Greek, Romans), and the empire - Roman. Greek became the official language of the empire. The capital of the empire for a long time bore the proud name of New Rome. Byzantium managed to avoid the invasion of the barbarians and continued to exist in power and glory, having survived after the fall of the Western Roman Empire as the "" empire of the Romans ".

In the early period of the history of Byzantium (4th - first half of the 7th century), it included the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire. It included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, part of Mesopotamia and Armenia, the southern coast of Crimea, etc. The geographical position of Byzantium, which spread its possessions on two continents - in Europe and Asia, and sometimes which extended its power to the regions of Africa, made this empire, as it were, a link between East and West. The mixture of Greco-Roman and Eastern traditions left its mark on public life, statehood, religious and philosophical ideas, and the art of Byzantine society.

At the dawn of the Middle Ages, Byzantium remained the sole custodian of ancient cultural traditions. Citadels of preserving the cultural heritage of antiquity were cities. The large urban centers of early Byzantium still retained the appearance of the ancient city. Ancient traditions in education were preserved on a significant scale. Byzantium inherited from the Greco-Roman world a classical education based on the study of the seven liberal arts. The curricula developed in previous centuries have not yet undergone a radical break. V. Byzantium had the highest level of elementary literacy for that time. In the 4th - first half of the 7th century, higher schools also existed in the Byzantine Empire. The schools of philosophy and natural sciences in Alexandria, Antioch, the Academy of Athens (created by Plato) and other higher educational institutions have retained their former glory. Until the 13th century, Byzantium was ahead of all the countries of medieval Europe in terms of the level of development of education, in terms of the intensity of spiritual life.

Ancient traditions dominated the natural sciences for a long time. Particular attention was paid to those branches of knowledge that were associated with practice, primarily medicine, agriculture, crafts, military and construction. During this period, a lot of work was done to systematize and comment on the works of ancient scientists. But the contribution of Byzantine scientists of that time to the development of scientific thought was not limited to this. In early Byzantium, there was a process of gradual rethinking and improvement of scientific knowledge accumulated by antiquity. This helped Byzantine scientists to advance significantly in mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, navigation, construction and military affairs, and in many other branches of science.

In the first centuries of the existence of the empire, an important worldview revolution took place, and the ideological foundations of Byzantine society took shape. The new system of worldview was based on the traditions of pagan Hellenism and acquired an official status Christianity. In the beginning, Christianity was the religion of slaves and freedmen, of the poor and oppressed peoples; it preached the ideas of equality and universal love, a protest against luxury and wealth, the focus of which was Rome. The first Christian sects were persecuted by the Roman government, but under Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the state religion. The gradual transformation of the ideas of Christianity turned it from a religion of the oppressed into a creed that justified and sanctified the existing world order. The doctrine of the one God substantiated the inviolability of imperial power. Already in the early period of the Byzantine Empire, the foundations of its most important political doctrine were laid - the idea of ​​symphony and harmony in relations between the Christian church and the state. The Christian church deifies the origin of the imperial power, and the imperial power will give the Church the sanction of inviolability. At the same time, it should be noted that the cult of the emperor, the preaching of the exclusivity of the Byzantine statehood, was based on the Roman state tradition.

The formation of Christianity in Byzantium went through the processes of rapprochement and repulsion of the ancient heritage. Christianity fought desperately with the philosophical, natural-scientific and aesthetic views of the ancient world. Passionate polemics, in particular, were conducted by pagan philosophers and Christian theologians. But at the same time, Christianity absorbed many of the philosophical ideas of antiquity. Thus, fighting Neoplatonism, Christianity eventually absorbed this philosophical doctrine, which became one of the most important starting points of medieval philosophy and theology (theology). Connection, mixing of pagan and Christian ideas, ideas manifested itself in all spheres of knowledge, literature, art.

At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the Christian ideology of Byzantine society is characterized by the presence of two lines (levels): aristocratic, associated with the church and the imperial court, and folk, rooted in the religious and ethical ideas of the masses. The appeal to the ancient heritage was carried out precisely by representatives of the aristocratic line. Christian theologians, writers, preachers used the psychologism and eloquence of ancient rhetoric, the logic of Aristotle, the simplicity and plasticity of the philosophical prose of Greco-Roman authors. The asserting Christianity sought to oust the Greco-Roman traditions from all spheres of culture. The struggle of ancient and emerging Christian culture characterizes the entire period of the 4th-first half of the 7th centuries. This struggle leads to the closure of higher educational institutions that have been preserved since antiquity (including the famous Platonic Academy), the death of the largest library of Alexandria. But higher theological schools are being opened, in which, in addition to theology, they also give secular knowledge.

The most important ideological issue for the church was the question of the structure of the universe. The biblical concept of the universe begins to penetrate into Byzantine geographical literature. In the 4th-6th centuries, two main schools of Christian geographical thought developed. The first (Antiochian) school was based on a dogmatic approach to the interpretation of Holy Scripture and had an extremely negative attitude towards ancient geography. The second (Cappadocian-Alexandrian) school showed respect for ancient traditions in geography and philosophy. Representatives of this school (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, etc.) remained committed to the ancient idea of ​​the sphericity of the Earth, the sphericity of the heavens surrounding it from all sides (while representatives of the Antiochian school believed that a solid dome-shaped sky was stretched over the flat Earth).

A mixture of ancient traditions and Christian principles was also observed in art. Christianity transformed the legacy of antiquity. In the construction of Christian churches, the Roman type of construction was used - basilica. This is an elongated building, divided in length by rows of columns into three or five naves; the middle nave was usually wider and higher than the side ones. The longitudinal naves were often crossed by a transept, located closer to the eastern end and protruding from both sides, so that the building had the shape of a cross, the main symbol of Christianity. Gradually, another type of temple began to acquire more and more importance - cross-domed, which has the shape of an equal cross in plan and is completed in the center with a dome.

Christianity radically changed the purpose of the temple. The Christian cathedral, unlike the Greek temple, was not the seat of a statue of a deity, not the abode of God, but a symbol of the Universe and the place on Earth where believers heeded the "voice of God", where they could join the ideal world of divine spheres and participate in religious sacraments. Therefore, if in antiquity the main importance was attached to the external appearance of the temple, then in the Christian cathedral the main attention was paid to its internal space, which was supposed to create the illusion of miraculousness, incomprehensibility.

The strength of the influence of the Christian church on the believers was determined by the unity of architecture, fine and applied arts. From antiquity, Byzantine masters inherited the art of fresco painting and mosaics. In the 5th century, icons appear - objects of worship for believers. The origins of the icon lie in the funeral portraits of the Hellenistic era and in the revered, deified portraits of late Roman emperors. In the Christian cult, the icon has become a reification, the realization of the unreal, a manifestation of the divine essence. Therefore, the icon itself became a shrine; it was decorated with precious stones, salaries.

In VI - first half of the 7th century the basic principles of Byzantine art are formed. It largely relied on ancient views on the essence of beauty, but synthesized and rethought them in the spirit of Christian ideology. A distinctive feature of Byzantine art is its deep spiritualism, the preference of the spirit over the body. Without denying bodily beauty, Byzantine thinkers put the beauty of the soul, virtue, moral perfection much higher.

With the growing influence of Christianity in Byzantium, secular artistic creativity never died out. Palaces of emperors and houses of the nobility were built, which were decorated with murals and mosaics on secular themes: emperors, scenes of court life, hunting, rural life and work, performances of actors were depicted. In early Byzantium, many works of secular portrait sculpture were created. Secular culture still almost completely dominated at that time in the field of theatrical performances and mass spectacles inherited from the ancient era. The circus (hippodrome) was especially popular. The efforts of the Christian church to replace pagan spectacles with church festivals have not yet had much success.

VIII-IX centuries in the social and cultural life of Byzantium are characterized by drama and tension. From the first quarter of the 8th century, the iconoclastic movement gained strength, which had a significant impact on the cultural development of Byzantium. Iconoclasts put forward the thesis of the indescribability and unknowability of God. Researchers believe that the formation of iconoclastic doctrines was influenced by the religious and aesthetic systems of Judaism and Islam, in which there were prohibitions on the image of God.

The struggle between iconoclasts and iconodules led at first to the destruction of mosaics, icons, frescoes (iconoclasts replaced them with the symbol of the cross or geometric ornament). After the victory of the iconodules, the victors mercilessly burned iconoclastic books. By destroying works of art and monuments of human thought, both iconoclasts and iconodules harmed the cultural development of Byzantium. But iconoclasm paved the way for the victory of sublime spirituality, the establishment of deep spiritualism in art.

One of the consequences of the ideological struggle of the 8th-9th centuries was the strengthening of the influence of religious ideology on Byzantine literature. Such literary genres as the lives of the saints and liturgical poetry (church hymns and canons) are gaining particular popularity. One of the famous hymnographers of this period was John of Damascus(c. 675 - 753), his liturgical poetry subsequently gained great popularity and entered the Orthodox liturgy of many countries, including Rus'. John of Damascus was also the largest Byzantine theologian and philosopher, who made an attempt to systematize the entire amount of knowledge of Christian theology. To create his theological work, he used the teachings of Plato, the logic of Aristotle, the foundations of ancient science. Damascene's work "The Source of Knowledge" had a significant impact on the medieval theology of Byzantium and Western Europe.

The strengthening of the impact of Christian ideology was also felt in the sphere of scientific knowledge and education; the ancient heritage was more critically perceived. With the capture of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs, the largest scientific centers concentrated there were lost. But even in these conditions, the development of scientific knowledge continued. Constantinople becomes the center of education and scientific knowledge. There appear brilliant erudite scientists who have no equal in the West. Among them is the outstanding scientist-encyclopedist Leo Philosopher or Mathematician(beginning of the 9th century - c. 869). Possessing deep knowledge in the field of mathematics, physics, mechanics, philosophy, having studied ancient authors, he introduced a lot of new things into the development of Byzantine science. One of his most interesting discoveries was the use of letters as arithmetic symbols, by which he essentially laid the foundations of algebra. Leo the Mathematician recreated the University of Constantinople, a secular high school that taught the seven liberal arts. The university, where outstanding scientists of that era taught, trained officials, diplomats, and military leaders.

From the 10th century, a new stage in the history of Byzantine culture begins: a generalization and classification of everything achieved in science, theology, philosophy, and literature takes place. Generalized encyclopedic works are being created. During this period, encyclopedias on history, agriculture, and medicine were compiled. Emperor's writings Constantine Porphyrogenitus(913 - 959) "On the Governance of the State", "On Themes", "On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court" is an encyclopedia of the most valuable information about the political and administrative structure of the Byzantine state, and also contains rich materials of a historical, geographical and ethnographic nature about neighboring countries and peoples, including the Slavs.

In the culture of this period, generalized spiritualistic principles completely triumph. Social thought, literature, art, as it were, break away from reality and become isolated in a circle of higher abstract ideas. In the works of church literature, there are symbolic stereotyped heroes performing specified actions against the backdrop of abstract landscapes; in painting and architecture, strict, rational symmetry begins to dominate, a calm, solemn balance of lines and movements of human figures on the frescoes and mosaics of temples. Fine art acquires a timeless and extra-spatial character.

At the same time, in artistic creativity, as in all spiritual life, traditionalism and canonicity are affirmed. Thus, the iconographic canon in Byzantine painting is finally taking shape - strict rules for depicting all scenes of religious content and images of saints. Iconographic types and subjects have hardly changed over the centuries. In wall paintings, in mosaics and icons, even in book miniatures, the head, as the center of spiritual life, becomes the dominant human figure; the body is shamefully hidden under flowing folds of clothing. In the depiction of a human face, the artist brings to the fore his spirituality, inner grandeur, the depth of spiritual experiences. Sculpture almost completely disappears from cult art, leaving only a flat relief.

At the same time, unlike Western Europe, which almost completely lost the treasures of ancient culture in the early Middle Ages, the traditions of the Greco-Roman civilization never died in Byzantium. Ancient traditions, temporarily weakened in the 8th-9th centuries, have been revived with renewed vigor since the 10th century. In the 11th-12th centuries, important worldview shifts took place in Byzantine culture. There is a rise in scientific knowledge and the emergence of rationalism in philosophical thought. Rationalist tendencies among Byzantine philosophers and theologians manifested themselves in the desire to combine faith with reason, and sometimes put reason above faith.

The most important prerequisite for the development of rationalism in Byzantium was a new stage in the revival of ancient culture. Byzantine thinkers of the XI-XII centuries. perceive from ancient philosophers respect for reason. At the same time, the attention of Byzantine philosophers was attracted by the ideas of various schools of ancient philosophy, and not only by the works of Aristotle (as was the case in Western Europe). The spokesmen for rationalistic trends in Byzantine philosophy were Michael Psell, John Ital and their followers. But all these representatives of rationalism were condemned by the church, and their works were burned. However, their activities paved the way for the emergence of humanistic ideas in Byzantium in the XIII - the first half of the XV century.

The renewed interest in antiquity and the growth of rationalist tendencies were reflected in the development of literature. New literary genres appear - secular love lyrics and accusatory satirical poetry. The old literary genre of the late antique love story is being revived. Through authorized translations, the Byzantines became acquainted with the literature of the East (primarily Indian and Arabic). There is a gradual departure, sometimes still timid, from the cliches and canons that dominated the literature of previous eras. There is a tendency to individualization of the author's face, to the manifestation of the author's position. Literature is approaching life: in place of the unequivocal characterization of the hero as a vessel of good or a container of evil, a complex human character comes; the hero is drawn not only with light or dark paint, but also with halftones; the image becomes more vital and truthful. Simple human feelings are glorified - earthly love, beauty of nature, friendship. There is a flourishing of folk literature of various genres, the folk language receives the rights of citizenship. However, all these new processes take place within the framework of medieval thinking and church ideology.

In the XI-XII centuries, Byzantine art reached a significant flowering. In church architecture, the basilica as a form of religious building gives way to a cross-domed church. The scale of the temple is reduced, it becomes small in size, but at the same time the temple grows in height - the vertical becomes the predominant idea. Increasingly important is the appearance of the temple, the decoration of the facade and walls. The architectural forms of temples are becoming more refined, more perfect, more cheerful. Second half of the 11th century and the entire XII century - the classical era in the development of Byzantine, fine arts: fresco and mosaic painting, icon painting, book miniatures. Despite the canonicity of art, sprouts of new trends are breaking through in it, which have found further development in the Byzantine art of the XIII-XIV centuries. In the period under review, the art of Byzantium intensively influenced the artistic creativity of other countries and peoples, became an indisputable standard for the art of the Orthodox world - Georgian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian. The influence of Byzantine art can also be traced in the Latin West, in particular in Italy.

The new phenomena noted above in the culture of the 11th-12th centuries were further developed in late Byzantine society. But the progressive tendencies of Byzantine culture met with resistance from the ideologists of the dominant church. In the XIII-XV centuries. there is a polarization of two main currents in Byzantine ideology: the progressive pre-Renaissance, associated with the birth of the ideas of humanism, and the religious-mystical, embodied in the teachings of the Hesychasts. Pre-Renaissance tendencies in Byzantine culture found expression in the development of humanistic features: in literature and philosophy, interest in the human personality, the reality surrounding a person, and nature is growing; in painting, dynamism, expression, and brilliance are enhanced.

By its characteristics, "Byzantine humanism" can be considered an analogue of Italian humanism. At the same time, we are talking not so much about the completed and formed culture of humanism, but about humanistic tendencies. But it is essential that during the period under review there was an ideological communication between Byzantine thinkers and Italian scientists, poets, writers, which influenced the formation of early Italian humanism. Byzantine erudite opened to Western humanists the wonderful world of Greco-Roman antiquity, introduced them to classical ancient literature, the true philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. But in Byzantium itself, the new trends were not completed; the sprouts of humanistic ideas in literature and art were stifled by the religious and mystical ideas of hesychasm (for more on hesychasm, see topic 4.1.).

The Byzantine Empire perished under the blows of the Turks in 1453, but the cultural influence of Byzantium outlasted the empire itself. It had a profound and lasting impact on the development of cultures in many countries of medieval Europe. Through Byzantium, they got the opportunity to get in touch with the ancient cultural heritage. The most intensive Byzantine cultural influence manifested itself in the countries where Orthodoxy was established, and Ancient Rus' is one of them.

LITERATURE

Bakhtin M.M. Creativity of Francois Rabelais and folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1990.

Darkevich V.P. Folk culture of the Middle Ages. M., 1988.

Dmitrieva N.A. Brief history of arts. M., 1988. Part I.

Byzantine culture. IV - the first half of the VII centuries. M., 1989.

Byzantine culture. Second half of the 7th-12th centuries M., 1989.

Le Goff J. Civilization of the Medieval West. M., 1992.

The culture of the Western European Middle Ages covers more than twelve centuries of the difficult, extremely complex path traveled by the peoples of this region. In this era, the horizons of European culture were significantly expanded, the historical and cultural unity of Europe was formed despite the heterogeneity of processes in its individual parts, viable nations and states were formed, modern European languages ​​were formed, works were created that enriched the history of world culture significant scientific and technical advances have been made. The culture of the Middle Ages is an inseparable and natural part of the global cultural development, which at the same time has its own deeply original content and original appearance.

The beginning of the formation of medieval culture. The early Middle Ages are sometimes referred to as the "Dark Ages", putting a certain pejorative connotation into this concept. The decline and barbarism into which the West was rapidly sinking at the end of the 5th-7th centuries. as a result of conquests and incessant wars, they were opposed not only to the achievements of Roman civilization, but also to the spiritual life of Byzantium, which did not survive such a tragic turning point in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. But it was during the early Middle Ages that the cardinal tasks that determined the future of Europe were solved. The first and most important of them is the laying of the foundations of European civilization, because in ancient times there was no "Europe" in the modern sense as a kind of cultural and historical community with a common destiny in world history. It began to really take shape - ethnically, politically, economically and culturally - in the early Middle Ages as the fruit of the vital activity of many peoples who inhabited Europe for a long time and came again: Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, Slavs, etc.

Paradoxically, it was precisely the early Middle Ages, which did not achieve achievements comparable to the heights of ancient culture or the mature Middle Ages, that laid the foundation for European cultural history proper, which grew out of the interaction of the heritage of the decaying civilization of the Roman Empire, Christianity generated by it, and with the other side - the tribal, folk cultures of the barbarians. It was a process of painful synthesis, born from the merger of contradictory, sometimes mutually exclusive principles, the search for not only new content, but also new forms of culture, the transfer of the baton of cultural development to its new bearers.

Even in late antiquity, Christianity became that unifying shell that could accommodate a variety of views, ideas and moods - from subtle theological doctrines to pagan superstitions and barbaric rites. In essence, Christianity during the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages was a very receptive (up to certain limits) form that met the needs of the mass consciousness of the era. This was one of the most important reasons for its gradual strengthening, its absorption of other ideological and cultural phenomena and their combination into a relatively unified structure. In this regard, the activity of the father of the church, the greatest theologian, Bishop Aurelius Augustine of Hippo, was of great importance for the Middle Ages, whose multifaceted work, in essence, outlined the boundaries of the spiritual space of the Middle Ages until the 13th century, when the theological system of Thomas Aquinas was created. . Augustine belongs to the most consistent substantiation of the dogma about the church, which played an important role in the formation of medieval Catholicism, the Christian philosophy of history, developed by him in the essay "On the City of God", Christian psychology. The philosophical and pedagogical writings of Augustine were of considerable value to medieval culture. To understand the genesis of medieval culture, it is important to take into account that it was primarily formed in the region where not so long ago there was the center of a powerful Roman civilization, which could not disappear historically at once, at a time when social relations and institutions continued to exist, culture begotten by her, the people fed by her were alive. Even in the most difficult time for Western Europe, the Roman school tradition did not stop. The Middle Ages perceived such an important element of it as a system of seven free arts, divided into two levels: the lower, initial - trivium, which included grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, and the highest - quadri-vium, which included arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. One of the most common textbooks in the Middle Ages was created by an African Neoplatonist of the 5th century BC. Marcian Capella. It was his essay "On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury". The most important means of cultural continuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages was the Latin language, which retained its significance as the language of the church and state business, international communication and culture, and served as the basis for the later Romance languages.

The most striking phenomena in the culture of the end of the 5th - the first half of the 7th century. associated with the assimilation of the ancient heritage, which became a breeding ground for the revival of cultural life in Ostrogothic Italy and Visigothic Spain.

The master of offices (first minister) of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric Severinus Boethius (c. 480-525) is one of the most revered teachers of the Middle Ages. His treatises on arithmetic and music, writings on logic and theology, translations of the logical works of Aristotle became the foundation of the medieval system of education and philosophy. Boethius is often referred to as the "father of scholasticism". The brilliant career of Boethius was suddenly interrupted: on a false denunciation, he was thrown into prison and then executed. Before his death, he wrote a small essay in verse and prose "On the Consolation of Philosophy", which became one of the most widely read works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The idea of ​​combining Christian theology and rhetorical culture determined the direction of the activity of the quaestor (secretary) and the master of offices of the Ostrogothic kings Flavius ​​Cassiodorus (c. 490 - c. 585). He hatched plans to create the first university in the West, which, however, were not destined to come true. He wrote Varia, a unique collection of documents, business and diplomatic correspondence, which became a model of Latin style for many centuries. In southern Italy, on his estate, Cassiodorus founded the monastery of Vivarium - a cultural center that united a school, a workshop for copying books (scriptorium), library. The vivarium became a model for the Benedictine monasteries, which, starting from the second half of the 6th century. turn into the guardians of the cultural tradition in the West up to the era of the developed Middle Ages. Among them, the Montecassino Monastery in Italy was the most famous.

Visigothic Spain put forward Isidore of Seville (c. 570-636), who gained fame as the first medieval encyclopedist. His main work "Etymology" in 20 books is a collection of what has been preserved from ancient knowledge.

However, one should not think that the assimilation of the ancient heritage was carried out freely and on a large scale. Continuity in the culture of that time was not and could not be a complete continuity of the achievements of classical antiquity. The struggle was to preserve only an insignificant part of the cultural values ​​and knowledge of the previous shokhi that had survived. But even this was extremely important for the formation of medieval culture, because what was preserved was an important part of its foundation and concealed the possibilities of creative development, which were realized later.

At the end of VI - beginning of VII century. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) sharply opposed the idea of ​​admitting pagan wisdom into the world of Christian spiritual life, condemning vain worldly knowledge. His position triumphed in the spiritual life of Western Europe for several centuries, and subsequently found adherents among church leaders until the end of the Middle Ages. The name of Pope Gregory I is associated with the development of Latin hagiographic literature, which perfectly responded to the demands of the mass consciousness of people of the early Middle Ages. The lives of the saints for a long time become a favorite genre in these centuries of social upheavals, famine, disasters and wars, and the saint becomes a new hero, a thirsty miracle, a man tormented by the terrible reality.

From the second half of the 7th c. cultural life in Western Europe is in complete decline, it is barely glimmering in the monasteries, somewhat more intensively in Ireland, from where monk-teachers "came" to the continent (see Chapter 7).

The extremely scarce sources of data do not allow us to reconstruct any complete picture of the cultural life of the barbarian tribes that stood at the origins of medieval civilization in Europe. However, it is generally accepted that by the time of the Great Migration of Peoples, the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the beginning of the formation of the heroic epic of the peoples of Western and Northern Europe (Old German, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Irish), which replaced history for them, dates back.

The barbarians of the early Middle Ages brought a peculiar vision and sense of the world, still full of primitive power, nourished by the ancestral ties of man and the community to which he belonged, militant energy, a sense of inseparability from nature, the indivisibility of the world of people and gods.

The unbridled and gloomy fantasy of the Germans and Celts inhabited the forests, hills and rivers with evil dwarfs, werewolf monsters, dragons and fairies. Gods and people-heroes are constantly fighting evil forces. At the same time, the gods are powerful sorcerers, wizards. These ideas were also reflected in the bizarre ornaments of the barbarian animal style in art, in which animal figures lost their integrity and certainty, as if “flowing” into one another in arbitrary combinations of patterns and turning into unique magical symbols. But the gods of barbarian mythology are the personification of not only natural, but already social forces. The head of the German pantheon Wo-tan (Odin) is the god of the storm, whirlwind, but he is also the leader-warrior, standing at the head of the heroic heavenly host. The souls of the Germans who fell on the battlefield rush to him in the bright Valhalla in order to be accepted into the Wotan's squad. During the Christianization of the barbarians, their gods did not die, they transformed and merged with the cults of local saints or joined the ranks of demons.

The Germans also brought with them a system of moral values ​​that had already been formed in the depths of a patriarchal-tribal society, where special importance was attached to the ideals of fidelity, military courage with a sacred attitude to the military leader, ritual. The psychological make-up of the Germans, Celts and other barbarians was characterized by open emotionality, unrestrained intensity in the expression of feelings. All this also left its mark on the emerging medieval culture.

The early Middle Ages is the time of the growth of the self-consciousness of the barbarian peoples who came to the forefront of European history. It was then that the first written “stories” were created, covering the deeds of not the Romans, but the barbarians: “Getika” by the historian of the Goths of Jordan (VI century), “History of the Franks” by Gregory of Tours (second half of the VI century), “The History of the Kings of the Goths , Vandals and Sueves" by Isidore of Seville (first third of the 7th century), "Ecclesiastical History of the Angles" by Bede the Venerable (late 7th - early 8th century), "History of the Lombards" by Paul Deacon (VIII century).

The formation of the culture of the early Middle Ages was a complex process of synthesis of late antique, Christian and barbarian traditions. During this period, a certain type of spiritual life of Western European society crystallizes, the main role in which begins to belong to the Christian religion and the church.

Carolingian revival. The first tangible fruits of this interaction were obtained during the period of the Carolingian Renaissance - the rise of cultural life that took place under Charlemagne and his immediate successors. For Charlemagne, the political ideal was the empire of Constantine the Great. In cultural and ideological terms, he sought to consolidate a diverse state on the basis of the Christian religion. This is evidenced by the fact that the reforms in the cultural sphere began with a comparison of various lists of the Bible and the establishment of its single canonical text for the entire Carolingian state. At the same time, a reform of the liturgy was carried out, its uniformity was established, conforming to the Roman model.

The reformist aspirations of the sovereign coincided with the deep processes that took place in society, which needed to expand the circle of educated people who could contribute to the practical implementation of new political and social tasks. Charlemagne, although he himself, according to his biographer Einhard, could not learn to write, constantly cared about the development of education in the state. Around 787, the "Capitulary on the Sciences" was published, obliging the creation of schools in all dioceses, at each monastery. Not only the clergy, but also the children of the laity were supposed to study in them. Along with this, a writing reform was carried out, textbooks were compiled in various school disciplines.

Manuscripts of the Carolingian time were decorated with miniatures, very diverse in style - reminiscent of the Hellenistic tradition (Aachen Gospel), emotionally rich, executed in an almost expressionist manner (Ebo Gospel), light and transparent (Utrecht Psalter). The court academy in Aachen became the main center of education. The most educated people of Europe of that time were invited here. Alcuin, a native of Britain, became the largest figure in the Carolingian Renaissance. He urged not to despise "human (i.e., not theological) sciences", to teach children literacy and philosophy so that they could reach the heights of wisdom. Most of Alcuin's writings were written for pedagogical purposes, their favorite form is a dialogue between a teacher and a student or two students, he used riddles and riddles, simple paraphrases and complex allegories. Among the students of Alcuin were prominent figures of the Carolingian Renaissance, in particular, the encyclopedic writer Raban Maurus. At the court of Charlemagne, a peculiar historical school developed, the most prominent representatives of which were Paul the Deacon, the author of the "History of the Lombards", and Einhard, who compiled the "Biography" of Charlemagne.

After the death of Charles, the cultural movement inspired by him quickly declines, schools are closed, secular tendencies gradually fade away, cultural life is again concentrated in monasteries. In the monastic scriptoria, the works of ancient authors were rewritten and preserved for future generations, however, the main occupation of learned monks was still not ancient literature, but theology.

Completely apart in the culture of the 9th century. stands a native of Ireland, one of the greatest philosophers of the European Middle Ages, John Scotus Eriugena. Based on Neoplatonic philosophy, in particular on the writings of the Byzantine thinker Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, he came to original pantheistic conclusions. He was saved from reprisal by the fact that the radical nature of his views was not understood by his contemporaries, who had little interest in philosophy. Only in the XIII century. Eriugena's views were condemned as heretical.

9th century gave very interesting examples of monastic religious poetry. The secular line in literature is represented by "historical poems" and "doxology" in honor of kings, retinue poetry. At that time, the first recordings of Germanic folklore and its transcription into Latin were made, which then served as the basis for the Germanic epic "Valtarius" compiled in Latin.

At the end of the early Middle Ages in the north of Europe - in Iceland and Norway, the poetry of skalds, which had no analogues in world literature, flourished, who were not only poets and performers at the same time, but also Vikings, vigilantes. Their laudatory, lyrical or "topical" songs are a necessary element in the life of the king's court and his squad.

The response to the needs of the mass consciousness of the era was the distribution of such literature as the lives of the saints and visions. They bore the imprint of popular consciousness, mass psychology, their inherent figurative structure, a system of ideas.

By the X century. the impetus given to the cultural life of Europe by the Carolingian revival dries up due to the incessant wars and civil strife, the political decline of the state. There comes a period of "cultural silence", which lasted almost until the end of the century and was replaced by a short period of rise, the so-called Ottonian revival. After him, in the cultural life of Western Europe there will no longer be periods of such a deep decline as from the middle of the 7th century. until the beginning of the ninth century. and for several decades in the X century. The 11th-11th centuries will be the time when medieval culture will acquire its classical forms.

Worldview. Theology, scholasticism, mysticism. Christianity was the ideological core of culture and the entire spiritual life of the Middle Ages. Theology, or religious philosophy, has become the highest form of ideology, intended for the elite, educated people, while for the vast mass of the illiterate, for the “simple”, ideology appeared primarily in the form of a “practical”, cult religion. The fusion of theology and other levels of religious consciousness created a single ideological and psychological complex, covering all layers of feudal society.

Medieval philosophy, like the entire culture of feudal Western Europe, from the very first stages of its development, shows a tendency towards universalism. It is formed on the basis of Latin Christian thought, revolving around the problem of the relationship between God, the world and man, discussed back in patristics - the teachings of the church fathers of the 2nd-8th centuries. The specificity of medieval consciousness dictated that not a single even the most radical thinker objectively denied and could not deny the primacy of spirit over matter, God over the world. However, the interpretation of the problem of correlation between faith and reason was by no means unambiguous. In the XI century. the ascetic and theologian Peter Damiani categorically stated that reason is insignificant before faith, philosophy can only be a "servant of theology." He was opposed by Berengary of Tours, who defended the human mind and in his rationalism reached the point of outright mockery of the church.

The 11th century is the time of the birth of scholasticism as a broad intellectual movement. This name is derived from the Latin word schola (school) and literally means “school philosophy”, which indicates the place of its birth rather than its content. Scholasticism is a philosophy that grows out of theology and is inextricably linked with it, but not identical with it. Its essence is the comprehension of the dogmatic premises of Christianity from rationalistic positions and with the help of logical tools. This is due to the fact that the central place in scholasticism was occupied by the struggle around the problem universals - general concepts. In her interpretation, three main directions were identified: realism, nominalism And conceptualism. Realists argued that universals exist from all eternity, residing in the divine mind. Connecting with matter, they are realized in concrete things. The nominalists, on the other hand, believed that general concepts are extracted by the mind from the comprehension of individual, specific things. An intermediate position was occupied by conceptualists who considered general concepts as something that exists in things. This seemingly abstract philosophical dispute had very concrete outlets in theology, and it is no coincidence that the church condemned nominalism, which sometimes led to heresy, and supported moderate realism.

The 12th century is sometimes called the age of "medieval humanism", the "medieval renaissance". Such definitions may cause reasonable objections, but they fix the special significance of this time in the spiritual life and culture of the Western European Middle Ages. It was then that interest in the ancient heritage grew, rationalism strengthened, European secular literature arose, mass religiosity changed in the direction of individualization of faith; a special culture of rising cities is emerging. And all these processes are permeated by the search for the human personality.

In the XII century. out of the confrontation of various trends in scholasticism, open resistance to the authority of the church grew. Its spokesman was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), whom his contemporaries called "the most brilliant mind of his age." A student of the nominee Roscelin of Compiègne, Abelard defeated the then popular realist philosopher Guillaume of Champeau in a dispute in his youth, leaving no stone unturned from his arguments. The most inquisitive and most daring students began to gather around Abelard, he became famous as a brilliant teacher and an orator invincible in philosophical debates. Abelard rationalized the relationship between faith and reason, making understanding an obligatory preliminary condition for faith. In his work Yes and No, Abelard developed the methods of dialectics, which significantly advanced scholasticism. Abelard was a supporter of conceptualism. However, although in the philosophical sense he did not always draw the most radical conclusions, he was often overwhelmed by the desire to bring the interpretation of Christian dogmas to its logical conclusion, which sometimes led him to heretical statements.

Abelard's opponent was Bernard of Clairvaux, who acquired the glory of a saint during his lifetime, one of the most prominent representatives of medieval mysticism. In the XII century. mysticism became widespread, became a powerful current within the framework of scholasticism. It expressed an exalted gravitation towards God the savior, the limit of mystical meditation was the merging of man with the creator. The philosophizing mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux and other philosophical schools also found a response in secular literature, in various mystical heresies. However, the essence of the clash between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux is not so much in the dissimilarity of their philosophical positions, but in the fact that Abelard embodied opposition to the authority of the church, and Bernard acted as its defender and major figure, as an apologist for church organization and discipline. As a result, Abelard's views were condemned at church councils in 1121 and 1140, and he himself ended his life in a monastery.

In philosophy, the growing interest in the Greco-Roman heritage is expressed in a more in-depth study of ancient thinkers. Their writings began to be translated into Latin, primarily the works of Aristotle, as well as treatises by Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen and other ancient authors, preserved in Greek and Arabic manuscripts.

For the fate of Aristotelian philosophy in Western Europe, it was essential that it was, as it were, re-assimilated not in its original form, but through Byzantine and especially Arab commentators, primarily Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who gave it a kind of "materialistic" interpretation. Of course, it is wrong to speak of genuine materialism in the Middle Ages. All attempts at a "materialist" interpretation, even the most radical ones, denying the immortality of the human soul or affirming the eternity of the world, were carried out within the framework of theism, i.e. recognition of the absolute existence of God.

The teachings of Aristotle quickly gained great prestige in the scientific centers of Italy, France, England, and Spain. However, at the beginning of the XIII century. it met with sharp opposition in Paris from the theologians who relied on the Augustinian tradition. A number of official prohibitions of Aristotelianism followed, the views of the supporters of the radical interpretation of Aristotle - Amaury of Vienna and David of Dinan - were condemned. However, Aristotelianism in Europe was gaining strength so rapidly that by the middle of the 13th century. the church was powerless before this onslaught and faced the need to assimilate the Aristotelian teaching. Dominicans were involved in this task. It began to be developed by Albert the Great, and the synthesis of Aristotelianism and Catholic theology was attempted by his student Thomas Aquinas (1125/26-1274), whose activity became the pinnacle and result of the theological-rationalistic search for mature scholasticism. The teaching of Thomas was at first met by the church rather warily, and some of his positions were even condemned. But since the end of the XIII century. Thomism becomes the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The ideological opponents of Thomas Aquinas were the Averroists, followers of the Arab thinker Averroes, who taught at the University of Paris at the Faculty of Arts. They demanded the liberation of philosophy from the interference of theology and dogma. In essence, they insisted on the separation of reason from faith. Central to the doctrine of the Averroists was the idea of ​​a single universal mind common to the entire human race. The Averroists Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacius also came to conclusions about the eternity and uncreation of the world and the denial of the immortality of the individual human soul. Their teaching was condemned by the Catholic Church.

In the XIII century. the mystical line in philosophy was developed by a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, who opposed Thomistic rationalism, relying on the Augustinian-Platonic tradition. Then in the XIV century. Meister Eckhart, a Dominican from Germany, gave a sharpened form to the main postulates of medieval Neoplatonism, who absolutized the impersonality and lack of qualitative characteristics of the creative principle. The pantheistic tendencies of Eckhart's teachings were especially clearly manifested in the assertion that the human soul is consubstantial with God and is an instrument of the eternal generation of himself by him. Eckhart's follower N. Ruysbroek in the Netherlands (XIV century) attached decisive importance in the ascent to God to man's inner religious experiences. German mysticism either closed itself in the depths of the human spirit, cutting it off from the world and the church, or, returning to the world, approached pantheism and also devalued the church and the cult.

In the XIV century. orthodox scholasticism, which asserted the possibility of reconciling reason and faith on the basis of the subordination of the first to revelation, was criticized by the radical English philosophers Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, who defended the positions of nominalism. Duns Scotus, and then Occam and his students, demanded a decisive distinction between the spheres of faith and reason, theology and philosophy. Theology was denied the right to interfere in the field of philosophy and experimental knowledge. Ockham spoke about the eternity of motion and time, about the infinity of the Universe, developed the doctrine of experience as the foundation and source of knowledge. Occamism was condemned by the church, Occam's books were burned.

The struggle of the church against occamism contributed to the development and spread in the 15th century. his other direction - formal-logical, whose focus was the study of signs-"terms" as independent logical categories. Scholasticism degenerated into an abstract play on words. Verbal balancing act, which lost its positive meaning, finally compromised her.

The greatest thinker who influenced the formation of the natural philosophy of the Renaissance was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), a native of Germany, who spent the end of his life in Rome as a vicar general at the papal court. He tried to develop a universal understanding of the principles of the world and the structure of the Universe, based not on orthodox Christianity, but on its dialectical-pantheistic interpretation. Nicholas of Cusa insisted on separating the subject of rational knowledge (the study of nature) from theology, thereby dealing a tangible blow to orthodox scholasticism.

Education. Schools and Universities. The Middle Ages inherited from antiquity the basis on which education was built. These were the seven liberal arts. Grammar was considered the "mother of all sciences", dialectics gave formal logical knowledge, the foundations of philosophy and logic, rhetoric taught to speak correctly and expressively. "Mathematical disciplines" - arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy were conceived as sciences about the numerical ratios that underlay world harmony.

From the 11th century a steady rise of medieval schools begins, the education system is being improved. Schools were divided into monastic, cathedral (at city cathedrals), parish schools. With the growth of cities, the appearance of an ever-increasing stratum of citizens and the flourishing of workshops, secular, urban private, as well as guild and municipal schools, which are not subject to the jurisdiction of the church, are gaining strength. The students of church schools were wandering schoolboys - vagants, or goliards, who came from an urban, peasant, knightly environment, the lower clergy.

Education in schools was conducted in Latin, only in the XIV century. there were schools with teaching in national languages. The Middle Ages did not know the stable division of the school into primary, secondary and higher, taking into account the specifics of children's and youthful perception and psychology. Religious in content, in form, education was of a verbal and rhetorical nature. The beginnings of mathematics and the natural sciences were presented fragmentarily, descriptively, often in a fantastic interpretation. Centers for teaching craft skills in the 12th century. workshops become.

In the XII-XIII centuries. Western Europe experienced an economic and cultural boom. The development of cities as centers of crafts and trade, the expansion of the horizons of Europeans, acquaintance with the culture of the East, primarily Byzantine and Arab, served as incentives for the improvement of medieval education. Cathedral schools in the largest urban centers of Europe turned into general schools, and then into universities, received the name from the Latin word universitas - totality, community. In the XIII century. such higher schools existed in Bologna, Montpellier, Palermo, Paris, Oxford, Salerno and other cities. By the 15th century There were about 60 universities in Europe.

The university had legal, administrative, financial autonomy, which was granted to it by special documents of the sovereign or pope. External independence of the university was combined with strict regulation and discipline of internal life. The university was divided into faculties. The junior faculty, obligatory for all students, was artistic (from Latin artes - arts), where the "seven free arts" were studied in full, then legal, medical, theological (the latter did not exist at all universities) . The largest university was Paris. Students from Western and Central Europe also rushed to Spain and Italy for education. The schools and universities of Cordoba, Seville, Salamanca, Malaga and Valencia gave more extensive and profound knowledge in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, and Bologna and Padua - by right.

In the XIV-XV centuries. the geography of universities is expanding significantly. Get development colleges(hence the colleges). Initially, this was the name of the student hostels, but gradually the boards turn into centers for classes, lectures, debates. Founded in 1257 by the confessor of the French king, Robert de Sorbonne, the collegium, called the Sorbonne, gradually grew and strengthened its authority so much that the entire University of Paris began to be called after it.

Universities have accelerated the formation of secular intelligentsia in Western Europe. They were real nurseries of knowledge, they played an important role in the cultural development of society. However, by the end of the XV century. there is some aristocratization of universities, an increasing number of students, teachers (masters) and university professors come from privileged strata of society. For a while, conservative forces take over in the universities.

With the development of schools and universities, the demand for books is expanding. In the early Middle Ages, a book was a luxury item. Books were written on parchment, a specially lined calfskin. Sheets of parchment were sewn together with thin strong ropes and placed in a binding made of boards covered with leather, sometimes decorated with precious stones and metals. The text was decorated with drawn capital letters - initials, headpieces, and later - magnificent miniatures. From the 12th century the book becomes cheaper, city workshops for copying books are opened, in which not monks work, but artisans. From the 14th century in the production of books, paper begins to be widely used. The process of book production is simplified and unified, which was especially important for the preparation of book printing, the appearance of which in the 40s of the XV century. (its inventor was the German master Johannes Gutenberg) made the book truly mass in Europe and led to significant changes in cultural life.

Until the 12th century books were predominantly concentrated in church libraries. In the XII-XV centuries. Numerous libraries appeared at universities, royal courts, large feudal lords, clerics and wealthy citizens.

Knowledge about nature. By the XIII century. the emergence of interest is usually attributed to experiential knowledge in Western Europe. Until that time, abstract knowledge, based on pure speculation, prevailed here, often being very fantastic in content. Between practical knowledge and philosophy lay an abyss that seemed unbridgeable. Natural scientific methods of cognition were not developed. Grammatical, rhetorical and logical approaches prevailed. It is no coincidence that the medieval encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais wrote: "The science of nature has as its subject the invisible causes of visible things." Communication with the material world was carried out through bulky, often fantastic abstractions. A peculiar example of this da-wala is alchemy. To a medieval man, the world seemed cognizable, but full of unusual things, inhabited by outlandish creatures, like people with dog heads. The line between the real and the higher, supersensible world was often blurred.

However, life demanded not illusory, but practical knowledge. In the XII century. some progress has been made in the field of mechanics and mathematics. This aroused the fears of orthodox theologians, who called the practical sciences "adulterous." At Oxford University, natural science treatises of ancient scientists and Arabs were translated and commented on.

Robert Grosseteste made an attempt to apply a mathematical approach to the study of nature. In the XIII century. Oxford professor Roger Bacon, starting with scholastic studies, eventually came to the study of nature, to the negation of authorities, resolutely giving preference to experience over purely speculative argumentation. Bacon achieved significant results in optics, physics, and chemistry. Behind him strengthened the reputation of the magician and wizard. It was said about him that he created a talking copper head or a metal man, put forward the idea of ​​building a bridge by thickening air. He owned statements that it is possible to make self-propelled ships and chariots, vehicles flying through the air or moving freely along the bottom of the sea or river. Bacon's life was full of vicissitudes and hardships, he was repeatedly condemned by the church and sat in prison for a long time.

William of Ockham and his students Nikolai Otrekur, Buridan and Nikolai Orezmsky (Orem), who did a lot for the further development of physics, mechanics, and astronomy, became the successors of his work. So, Oresme, for example, approached the discovery of the law of falling bodies, developed the doctrine of the daily rotation of the earth, substantiated the idea of ​​using coordinates. Nicholas Otrekur was close to atomism.

"Cognitive enthusiasm" was embraced by various sectors of society. In the Sicilian kingdom, where various sciences and arts flourished, the activity of translators, who turned to the philosophical and natural scientific works of Greek and Arabic authors, was widely developed. Under the auspices of the Sicilian sovereigns, the medical school flourished in Salerno, from which came the famous Salerno Codex by Arnold da Villanova. It gave a variety of instructions on maintaining health, descriptions of the medicinal properties of various plants, poisons and antidotes, etc.

Alchemists, busy searching for the "philosopher's stone" capable of turning base metals into gold, made a number of important discoveries by the way - they studied the properties of various substances, numerous ways of influencing them, obtained various alloys and chemical compounds, acids, alkalis, mineral paints, devices and installations for experiments were created and improved: a distillation cube, chemical furnaces, apparatus for filtering and distillation, etc.

The geographic knowledge of Europeans was greatly enriched. Even in the XIII century. the Vivaldi brothers from Genoa tried to go around the West African coast. The Venetian Marco Polo made a long-term journey to China and Central Asia, describing it in his "Book", which was distributed in Europe in many lists in various languages. In the XIV-XV centuries. rather numerous descriptions of various lands made by travelers appear, maps are improved, geographical atlases are compiled. All this was of no small importance for the preparation of the Great geographical discoveries.

The Place of History in the Medieval Worldview. Historical ideas played an important role in the spiritual life of the Middle Ages. In that era, history was not considered as a science or as entertaining reading; it was an essential part of the world outlook.

Various kinds of "stories", chronicles, annals, biographies of kings, descriptions of their deeds and other historical writings were favorite genres of medieval literature. This was largely due to the fact that Christianity attached great importance to history. The Christian religion initially claimed that its basis - the Old and New Testament - is fundamentally historical. The existence of man unfolds in time, has its beginning (the act of creation) and the end - the second coming of Christ, when the Last Judgment will be accomplished and the goal of history will be realized. History itself was presented as the way of the salvation of mankind by God.

In a feudal society, a historian, chronicler, chronicler was thought of as "a person who connects times." History was a means of self-knowledge of society and a guarantor of its ideological and social stability, for it asserted its universality and regularity in the change of generations, in the world-historical process. This is especially evident in such “classical” works of the historical genre as the chronicles of Otto of Freisingen, Guibert of Nozhansky, and others. Perhaps the largest historical work of the European Middle Ages was “Heimskringla” (“Circle of the Earth”) by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, dedicated to the history of Norway.

Universal "historicism" was combined with a seemingly surprising lack of a sense of concrete historical distance among people of the Middle Ages. They represented the past in the form and costumes of their era, seeing in it not what distinguished people and the event of ancient times from themselves, but what seemed to them common, universal. The past, as it were, became part of their own historical reality. Alexander the Great appeared as a medieval knight, and the biblical kings ruled in the manner of feudal sovereigns.

In the XIII century. in medieval historiography, new trends arose associated with the development of cities. They, in particular, were reflected in the "Chronicle" of the Italian Franciscan Salimbene, which was distinguished by a keen interest in the events of worldly life, subtle observation and rationalism in explaining the causes and consequences of events, and the presence of an autobiographical element.

Heroic epic. The keeper of history, collective memory, a kind of life and behavioral standard, a means of ideological and aesthetic self-affirmation was the heroic epic, which concentrated the most important aspects of spiritual life, ideals and aesthetic values, and the poetics of medieval peoples. The roots of the heroic epic of Western Europe go deep into the barbarian era. This is primarily evidenced by the plot outline of many epic works, which is based on the events of the time of the Great Migration of Nations.

Questions about the origin of the heroic epic, its dating, the relationship between collective and authorial creativity in its creation are still debatable in science. The first recordings of epic works in Western Europe date back to the 8th-9th centuries. The early stage of epic poetry is associated with the development of early feudal military poetry - Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Old Norse - which has been preserved in not numerous fragments.

The epic of the developed Middle Ages is folk-patriotic in nature, but at the same time it reflected not only general human values, but also specific feudal ones. In it, the idealization of ancient heroes takes place in the spirit of the knightly-Christian ideology, the motive of the struggle “for the right faith” arises, as if reinforcing the ideal of defending the fatherland.

Epic works, as a rule, are structurally integral and universal. Each of them is the embodiment of a certain picture of the world, covers many aspects of the life of heroes. Hence the displacement of the real and the fantastic. The epic was probably familiar to every member of medieval society in one form or another.

In the Western European epic, two layers can be distinguished: historical (heroic tales that have a real historical basis) and fabulous, closer to folklore.

The record of the Anglo-Saxon epic "The Tale of Beowulf" dates back to about 1000. It tells of a young warrior from the Gaut people who performs heroic deeds, defeats monsters and dies in a fight with a dragon. Fantastic adventures unfold against a real historical background, reflecting the process of feudalization among the peoples of Northern Europe.

Icelandic sagas are among the famous monuments of world literature. The Elder Edda includes nineteen Old Norse epic songs that preserve the features of the most ancient stages in the development of verbal art. "Younger Edda", belonging to the poet-skald of the XIII century. Snorri Sturluson, is a kind of manual in the poetic art of skalds with a vivid presentation of Icelandic pagan mythological traditions, rooted in ancient Germanic mythology.

The French epic "The Song of Roland" and the Spanish "The Song of My Side" are based on real historical events: the first is the battle of the Frankish detachment with enemies in the Ronceval Gorge in 778, the second is one of the episodes of the Re-conquista . Patriotic motifs are very strong in these works, which allows us to draw certain parallels between them and the Russian epic work The Tale of Igor's Campaign. The patriotic duty of idealized heroes turns out to be above all. The real military-political situation acquires in epic tales the scale of a universal event, and through such hyperbolization, ideals are affirmed that outgrow the boundaries of their era, become human values ​​“for all times”.

The heroic epic of Germany, the Nibelungenlied, is much more mythologized. In it, we also meet with heroes who have historical prototypes - Etzel (Atilla), Dietrich of Bern (Theodoric), the Burgundian king Gunter, Queen Brunhilda, etc. The story about them is intertwined with plots, the hero of which is Siegfried (Sigurd) ; his adventures are reminiscent of ancient heroic tales. He defeats the terrible dragon Fafnir, who guards the treasures of the Nibe-Lungs, performs other feats, but eventually dies.

Associated with a certain type of historical understanding of the world, the heroic epic of the Middle Ages was a means of ritual and symbolic reflection and experience of reality, which is characteristic of both the West and the East. This manifested a certain typological proximity of medieval cultures from different regions of the world.

Knight culture. A bright and so often romanticized later page of the cultural life of the Middle Ages was knightly culture. Its creator and bearer was the military-aristocratic estate, which originated in the early Middle Ages and flourished in the 11th-14th centuries. The ideology of chivalry has its roots, on the one hand, in the depths of the self-consciousness of the barbarian peoples, and on the other hand, in the concept of service developed by Christianity, which at first was interpreted as purely religious, but in the Middle Ages acquired a much broader meaning and spread to the area of ​​​​purely secular relations, up to serving the lady of the heart.

Loyalty to the lord was the core of the knightly ethos (norms of conduct). Treachery and treachery were considered the worst sin for a knight, entailed exclusion from the corporation. War was the profession of a knight, but gradually chivalry began to consider itself generally a champion of justice. In fact, justice was understood in a very peculiar way and extended only to a very narrow circle of people, bearing a clearly expressed class-corporate character. Suffice it to recall the frank statement of the troubadour Bertrand de Born: "I love to see the people starving, naked, suffering, not warmed up."

The code of chivalry demanded many virtues from those who should follow it, for a knight, in the words of Raymond Lull, the author of a well-known instruction, is one who "does nobly and leads a noble life." With chivalry, the emergence of a courtly (court) culture, a special style of behavior, life, and expression of feelings is associated. The cult of the lady has become an essential element of courtesy. The chosen one of the heart was worshiped as a goddess, she was sung in beautiful verses, knightly deeds were performed in her honor.

Much of the knight's life was deliberately exposed. Courage, generosity, nobility, which few people knew about, had no price. The knight constantly strived for superiority, for glory. The whole Christian world should have known about his exploits and love. Hence the outward brilliance of knightly culture, its special attention to ritual, paraphernalia, symbolism of color, objects, and etiquette. Knightly tournaments, which imitated real battles, gained special splendor in the 13th-14th centuries, when they gathered the color of chivalry from different parts of Europe.

At the end of the XI century. troubadours appear in Provence - poets-knights-kings. They not only composed poems, mainly about love, but often sang them with musical accompaniment. One of the first troubadours was Duke of Aquitaine Guillaume IX. In the XII century. the troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn gained great fame, in whose work courtly lyrics found their most complete expression as the poetry of the feudal court and the ceremonial light associated with it. The “Master of Poets” was called Giraut de Borneil (the last third of the 12th - the beginning of the 13th century). In courtly poetry, voices are heard not only of male troubadours, but also of women - Beatrice de Dia, Mary of Champagne. Like the brave heroes of chivalric novels, they resolutely claim their rights to equality with the stronger sex.

In the XII century. poetry truly becomes the "mistress" of European literature. Her passion spreads in the north of France, where trouvers appear, in Germany, on the Iberian Peninsula. In Germany, poet-knights were called minnesingers, among them the most famous were Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue, Walter von der Vogelweide.

Knightly literature was not only a means of expressing the self-consciousness of chivalry, its ideals, but also actively shaped them. The feedback was so strong that medieval chroniclers, describing the battles or exploits of real people, did it in accordance with the patterns from chivalric novels, which, having arisen in the middle of the 12th century, became the central phenomenon of secular culture in a few decades. They were created in native languages, the action developed as a series of adventures and adventures of heroes. One of the main sources of the Western European chivalric (courtly) romance was the Celtic epic about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. From it was born the most beautiful tale of love and death - the story of Tristan and Isolde, forever remaining in the treasury of human culture. The heroes of this Breton cycle are Lancelot and Perceval, Palmerin and Amidis and others, according to the creators of the novels, among which the most famous was the French poet of the 12th century. Chretien de Troyes, embodied the highest human virtues that belonged not to the other world, but to earthly existence. This was especially pronounced in the new understanding of love, which was the center and driving force of any chivalric romance. One of the most common motifs of a chivalric romance is the search for the Holy Grail - the cup into which, according to legend, the blood of Christ was collected. The Grail has become a symbol of higher spirituality.

In the XIV century. in the ideology of chivalry, a painful gap between dream and reality begins to grow. The courtly romance is gradually declining. As the importance of the military class declined, chivalric romances increasingly lost touch with real life. Their plots became more fantastic and implausible, their style more pretentious, religious motifs intensified. An attempt to revive the chivalrous romance with its heroic pathos belongs to the English nobleman Thomas Malory. Written by him on the basis of ancient tales of the Knights of the Round Table, the novel "The Death of Arthur" is an outstanding monument of English prose of the 15th century. However, in an effort to glorify chivalry, the author involuntarily reflected in his work the features of the decomposition of the estate system and the tragic hopelessness of his generation.

Caste isolation manifested itself in the creation in the XIV-XV centuries. various knightly orders, the entry into which was arranged with magnificent ceremonies. The game changed reality. The decline of chivalry was expressed in deep pessimism, uncertainty about the future, glorification of death as a deliverance.

Urban culture. From the 11th century Cities are becoming centers of cultural life in Western Europe. The anti-church freedom-loving orientation of urban culture, its connections with folk art, were most clearly manifested in the development of urban literature, which from its very inception was created in folk dialects, as opposed to the dominant church Latin-language literature. In turn, urban literature contributed to the process of turning folk dialects into national languages, which developed in the 11th-13th centuries. in all countries of Western Europe.

In the XII-XIII centuries. the religiosity of the masses ceased to be predominantly passive. The huge "silent majority" from the object of church influence began to turn into the subject of spiritual life. The defining phenomena in this area were not the theological disputes of the church elite, but the seething, fraught with heresies of popular religiosity. There was a growing demand for "mass" literature, which at that time was the lives of the saints, stories about visions and miracles. In comparison with the early Middle Ages, they became psychologized, artistic elements were intensified in them. The favorite "folk book" was compiled in the XIII century. The “Golden Legend” of the Bishop of Genoa, Jacob Voraginsky, to the plots of which European literature turned until the 20th century.

Verse short stories, fables, jokes (fablios in France, schwanks in Germany) become popular genres of urban literature. They were distinguished by a satirical spirit, rude humor, and vivid imagery. They ridiculed the greed of the clergy, the barrenness of scholastic wisdom, the arrogance and ignorance of the feudal lords, and many other realities of medieval life that contradicted the sober, practical view of the world that was being formed among the townspeople.

Fablio, Shvanki put forward a new type of hero - resilient, roguish, intelligent, always finding a way out of any difficult situation thanks to his natural mind and abilities. Thus, the hero of the well-known collection of Schwank "Pop Amis", which left a deep mark on German literature, feels confident and at ease in the world of urban life, in the most incredible circumstances. With all his tricks, resourcefulness, he asserts that life belongs to the townspeople no less than to other classes, and that the place of the townspeople in the world is solid and reliable. Urban literature castigated vices and morals, responded to the topic of the day, was eminently "modern". The wisdom of the people was clothed in it in the form of well-aimed proverbs and sayings. The church persecuted poets from the lower classes of the city, in whose work it saw a direct threat. For example, the writings of the Parisian Rutbef at the end of the 13th century. were condemned by the pope to be burned.

Along with short stories, fablios and schwanks, an urban satirical epic took shape. It was based on fairy tales that originated in the early Middle Ages. One of the most beloved among the townspeople was "The Romance of the Fox", formed in France, but translated into German, English, Italian and other languages. The resourceful and daring Fox Renard, in the image of which a prosperous, intelligent and enterprising city dweller is bred, invariably defeats the stupid and bloodthirsty Wolf Isengrin, the strong and stupid Bren Bear - they easily guessed a knight and a major feudal lord. He also fooled Leo Noble (the king) and constantly mocked the stupidity of Donkey Baudouin (priest). But sometimes Renard plotted against chickens, hares, snails, and began to persecute the weak and humiliated. And then the common people destroyed his intentions. On the plots of the "Roman of the Fox" even sculptural images were created in the cathedrals in Autun, Bourges, etc.

Another work of urban literature, The Romance of the Rose, was widely circulated, written in succession by two authors, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. The hero of this philosophical and allegorical poem, a young poet, aspires to the ideal embodied in the symbolic image of the Rose. In the "Roman of the Rose" the ideas of free thought, Nature and Reason, the equality of people are sung.

Carriers of the spirit of protest and freethinking were wandering scholars and students - vagants. Among the vagants, oppositional sentiments against the church and the existing order were strong, which were also characteristic of the urban lower classes as a whole. The Vagantes created a kind of poetry in Latin. Witty, scourging the vices of society and glorifying the joy of life, the poems and songs of the Vagantes were known and sung by all of Europe from Toledo to Prague, from Palermo to London. These songs especially hit the church and its ministers.

The development of urban literature in the XIV-XV centuries. reflected the further growth of the social self-awareness of the burghers. In urban poetry, drama, and the new genre of urban literature that arose at that time - the prose short story - the townspeople are endowed with such features as worldly wisdom, practical wisdom, and love of life. The burghers are opposed to the nobility and the clergy as the backbone of the state. These ideas permeated the work of the two greatest French poets of that time, Eustache Duchene and Alain Chartier.

In the XIV-XV centuries. in German literature, the meistersang (poetry of representatives of the craft and workshop environment) is gradually replacing the knightly minnesang. The creative competitions of Meistersingers, which took place in many German cities, are becoming very popular.

A remarkable phenomenon of medieval poetry was the work of François Villon. He lived a short but stormy life full of adventures and wanderings. He is sometimes called "the last vagant", although he wrote his poems not in Latin, but in his native French. These poems, created in the middle of the 15th century, amaze with surprisingly sincere human intonation, a violent sense of freedom, a tragic search for oneself, which allows one to see in their author one of the forerunners of the Renaissance and new romantic poetry.

By the XIII century. refers to the birth of urban theatrical art. Church mysteries, which were known much earlier, under the influence of new trends associated with the development of cities, become more vivid, carnival. Secular elements penetrate them. Urban "games", i.e. theatrical performances, from the very beginning, are secular in nature, their plots are borrowed from life, and the means of expression are borrowed from folklore, the work of itinerant actors - jugglers, who were at the same time dancers, singers, musicians, acrobats, conjurers. One of these urban "games" was "The Game of Robin and Marion" (XIII century), a simple story of a young shepherdess and shepherdess, whose love won over the intrigues of an insidious and rude knight. Similar theatrical performances were played right on the city squares, and the citizens present took part in them.

In the XIV-XV centuries. farces were widely used - humorous scenes in which the life of the townspeople was realistically depicted. The closeness of the compilers of farces to the poor is evidenced by their frequent condemnation of the heartlessness, dishonesty and greed of the rich. The organization of large theatrical performances - mysteries - passes from clergy to craft workshops and trading corporations. The mysteries are played out in city squares and, despite the biblical plots, are topical in nature, including comedic and everyday elements.

XIV-XV centuries - the heyday of medieval civil architecture. Large beautiful houses are being built for wealthy citizens. The castles of the feudal lords are also becoming more comfortable, gradually losing the importance of military fortresses and turning into country residences. The interiors of castles are being transformed, they are decorated with carpets, objects of applied art, and exquisite utensils. The art of jewelry and the production of luxury goods are developing. The clothes of not only the nobility, but also wealthy citizens become more diverse, rich and bright.

New trends. Dante Alighieri. Crowning the Middle Ages and at the same time rising at the origins of the Renaissance is the majestic figure of the Italian poet and thinker, the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Exiled from his native city by political opponents, condemned to wander for the rest of his life, Dante was an ardent champion of the unification and social renewal of Italy. His poetic and ideological synthesis - "The Divine Comedy" - is the result of the best spiritual aspirations of the mature Middle Ages, which at the same time carries the insight of the coming cultural and historical era, its aspirations, creative possibilities and insoluble contradictions.

The highest achievements of philosophical thought, political doctrines and natural sciences, the deepest comprehension of the human soul and social relations, melted down in the crucible of poetic inspiration, create in Dante's Divine Comedy a grandiose picture of the universe, nature, the existence of society and man . Mystical images and motifs of "holy poverty" also did not leave Dante indifferent. A whole gallery of outstanding figures of the Middle Ages, the rulers of the thoughts of that era, passes before the readers of the Divine Comedy. Its author leads the reader through the fire and icy horror of hell, through the crucible of purgatory to the heights of paradise, in order to gain higher wisdom here, to affirm the ideals of goodness, bright hope and the height of the human spirit.

The call of the coming era is also felt in the work of other writers and poets of the XIV century. The outstanding statesman of Spain, warrior and writer Infante Juan Manuel left a great literary heritage, but a collection of instructive stories “Count Lucanor” occupies a special place in it due to its pre-humanistic moods, in which some motifs characteristic of a younger contemporary are guessed. Juan Manuel - Italian humanist Boccaccio, author of the famous Decameron.

The work of the Spanish author is typologically close to the Cantebury Tales by the great English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), who in many respects accepted the humanistic impulse that came from Italy, but at the same time was the largest writer of the English Middle Ages. His work is characterized by democratic and realistic tendencies. The variety and richness of images, the subtlety of observations and characteristics, the combination of drama and humor, and the refined literary form make Chaucer's writings truly literary masterpieces.

The new trends in urban literature, which reflected the aspirations of the people for equality, its rebellious spirit, are evidenced by the importance that the figure of the peasant acquires in it. This is found in the German story "The Peasant Helmbrecht", written by Werner Sadovnik at the end of the 13th century. But with the greatest force, the search of the people was reflected in the work of the English poet of the XIV century. William Langland, especially in his essay “William's Vision of Peter the Plowman”, imbued with sympathy for the peasants, in whom the author sees the basis of society, and in their work the guarantee of the improvement of all people. Thus, urban culture discards the limits that limited it and merges with folk culture as a whole.

Medieval mentality and folk culture. The creativity of the working masses is the foundation of the culture of every historical epoch. First of all, the people are the creator of the language, without which the development of culture is impossible. Folk psychology, imagery, stereotypes of behavior and perception are the breeding ground for culture. But almost all the written sources of the Middle Ages that have come down to us are created within the framework of the "official" or "high" culture. Popular culture was unwritten, oral. It can be detected only by collecting data from sources that give them in a kind of refraction, from a certain angle of view. The “grassroots” layer is clearly visible in the “high” culture of the Middle Ages, in its literature and art, it is implicitly felt in the entire system of intellectual life, in its folk foundation. This grassroots layer was not only “carnival and laughter”, it assumed the existence of a certain “picture of the world”, reflecting in a special way all aspects of human and social life, the world order.

Each historical epoch has its own worldview, its own ideas about nature, time and space, the order of everything that exists, about the relationship of people to each other. These ideas do not remain unchanged throughout the epoch, they have their own differences among different social groups, but at the same time they are typical, indicative of this particular period of historical time. Christianity underlay the worldview, mass ideas of the Middle Ages.