The High Middle Ages is one of the defining periods in human history. In those distant and dark times, modern civilization was formed. Ancient foundations disappeared and new ones appeared. The population has increased significantly. A cultural revolution has occurred.

Tribes united into peoples who were then destined to create modern European countries. is still the subject of research by historians.

Historical events

The High Middle Ages began with large-scale conquests. The states of the ancient world sank into oblivion, and in their place many new ones appeared. In the eleventh century the conquest of Britain began. Before this, it was controlled by various pagan tribes. The Normans were the first to land in England. The local Britons offered them fierce resistance. But primitive weapons could not defeat steel and iron. Within a few years, England and almost all of Ireland were mastered. Then the conquerors subjugated Scotland.

Northern Europe has also seen major changes. The ancient Viking way of life was destroyed. The population adopted Christianity. The Scandinavian kingdoms were united into one state. The development of the Baltic states began. However, by the thirteenth century, the single power had split into several principalities. Similar processes occurred in the territory of modern Germany and France. The birth of dynasties began, which sat on the thrones for the next centuries

Slavs

The High Middle Ages turned out to be a favorable period for the development of the ancient Russian state. At that time it was one of the largest in the world. Culture and crafts were superior to European ones. This is due to the earlier ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs, who in the fifth century stopped leading a tribal way of life and united into one Russian people. The same processes took place in the Balkans. However, the natural development was prevented by an unprecedented invasion of underdeveloped nomadic tribes - the Mongols. The weakening of the central government prevented the Russian princes from uniting and they all fell under the onslaught of the horde. After this, the process of development of culture, architecture and crafts was greatly slowed down.

Development of Christian culture

The High Middle Ages were characterized by the complete victory of Christianity in Europe. Even in an earlier period, many influential countries switched to monotheism. However, by the eleventh century, ancient pagan beliefs were still strong. In Britain and Scandinavia, the population converted extremely slowly to the new faith. The isolation of these regions contributed to this. The lack of land connections with the mainland made migration extremely problematic.

However, this factor helped to avoid invasions by nomads who, due to their underdevelopment, could not build ships in sufficient quantities.

The new faith had a decisive influence on culture. From now on, strict prohibitions and moral principles appeared, according to which one had to live. Most of all, the lives of Europeans were influenced by changes in the institution of family. By the beginning of this historical period, stable polygamous relationships remained in many places (especially in Scandinavia). Christianity forbade this. The institution of marriage has led to a change in the role of women in society. Solid patriarchal principles determined family relationships. The family itself, consisting of husband, wife and children, destroyed family ties. Power structures in the form of the church had a high influence on the daily life of the population.

Cultural change: development of a hierarchical system

The culture of the High Middle Ages predetermined the division of the people into classes and castes. The castes of rulers, military, clergy, peasants, and slaves were clearly distinguished. The poor and uneducated population has developed a culture of awareness and rethinking of personal freedom. Governance systems are changing in many countries. England and the Holy Roman Empire had their own parliaments. The privileged class had its own traditions and rituals. But similar phenomena occurred in early historical periods. The culture of the High Middle Ages was seriously influenced by scholasticism.

And its guardians were precisely a new class - the clergy.

Painting

In the fine arts, painting received the greatest development. From now on, several directions and methods of painting were clearly distinguished. The Romanesque period of the High Middle Ages was characterized by weak development of painting. This type of art was assigned the role of painting, that is, auxiliary processing of temple walls. But by the beginning of the thirteenth century, attitudes towards artists had changed. Orders of painters were created in France. They decorated thrones in churches and created panels, frescoes, and icons.

Artists began to systematize their skills. New techniques have appeared. For example, the concept of depth and perspective. Giving objects volume and reality became the most difficult task for medieval masters. They never managed to fully master the skill of depth. This contributed to the creation of a generally accepted style that would later be called Gothic. Painting and icon painting gradually replaced frescoes. This type of art was extremely difficult and long. In addition, the creation of one small mural required significant resources. And many orders professing humility and living in poverty simply could not afford this.

Sculpture

The High Middle Ages in Western Europe was marked by dramatic changes in sculpture. While others developed relatively smoothly, sculpture received a real breakthrough. The main motif was biblical scenes. There was a high concentration of sculptors in the territory of modern Italy. The famous sculptures that appeared during the Renaissance were direct successors

During the Romanesque period, bronze and copper products appeared. For example, the doors to Hildesheim Cathedral.

Methods

For the first time, new materials were used for carving. Wood carving has been rethought in Germany. However, due to the specific properties of wood, these works of art have practically not survived to this day. Also, the Germanic peoples were famous for the production of large-scale triumphal arches. They were in a Romanesque style, but with a strong Gothic overtone. In many cities of modern Germany, these works of art still attract tourists.

The concept of relief on sarcophagi and tombs appeared only at the beginning of the twelfth century. In a short time, this processing method has become extremely popular in Western Europe. In all works the spirit of that era was particularly sharply felt. Mysticism and dreaminess, awareness of the frailty and finitude of existence. Of course, this is due to the fact that the High Middle Ages were dominated by scholastic philosophy.

Cultural revolution and early humanism

The early periods of the Middle Ages are usually called “dark”. Religious persecution, insane rulers, wild laws, etc. left a serious mark on the history of mankind. But by the thirteenth century, the old way of life was completely rethought. The huge increase in population allowed the emergence of large cities in every region. Aesthetic forms of entertainment were extremely popular in cities. One of these was the theater. Already by the beginning of the tenth century, small pantomimes were staged at services. Then it grew into a separate art form. The theater began to touch upon everyday themes, thus moving away from Gothic and scholasticism.

The first works appeared on the topic of the value of human life. Philosophers allowed in their reasoning to move away from the scholastic predetermination of existence. More attention has been paid to the role of human choice. These were the first beginnings of humanism. Urban culture was most susceptible to such trends. Personal development has replaced humility and submission.

Architecture

The High Middle Ages in Western Europe was marked by a new Gothic style in architecture.

At that time, temples and churches were the center of knowledge. And any type is inextricably linked with godly motives. After the end of the Romanism era, new methods of stone processing, geometric solutions, and construction tools were invented. The role of the urban sector in economic life is increasing. Workshops and communities of freemasons appeared. The High Middle Ages are the best symbols of the era.

The pomp and scale of construction surprise modern researchers. The construction of the cathedral could take more than a hundred years. And near construction sites, unique workers’ communes appeared, which actually regulated their social life themselves.

Various styles

A classic feature of Gothic architecture is the presence of two elongated towers. Bell towers could be located both inside them and between them. The western façade was lavishly decorated. The entrance was supported by columns. After the development of the frame method, they were only an element of decoration. The classic Gothic style is considered to be the French model. The cathedrals of the High Middle Ages in Germany were distinguished by strict adherence to proportions. There was noticeable perfectionism in the design of the façade.

In Central Europe, the so-called brick Gothic style prevailed. Brick cathedrals bore similarities to the architecture of the Romanesque period. They were installed in squares of large cities. Huge round towers were a distinctive feature. The Cathedral of St. Barbara and the Church of St. James are classic examples of Czech architecture. Dutch Gothic was distinguished by the construction of temples with one high spire tower.

The vaults were made of wood, which introduced a romantic and even earlier atmosphere.

Western European culture of the High Middle Ages

For the first time since the Roman Empire, science began to influence Europe. The development of medicine, geometry, philosophy and other sciences led to transformation into separate branches. The control of the church was too great, so scientists were forced to obey the bulls of the Pope. But at the same time, the ascetic worldview was called into question.

A new feudal culture appeared among the people. Huge closed-cycle farms have emerged. The land was owned by the lord. The feudal lords ruled as governors. The peasants were completely dependent on them. They did not take any part in economic life and could not influence political decisions. Nevertheless, the development of trade relations allowed “ordinary” people to break into elite society.

Institutions of courts appeared in France, England and some areas of Spain. Some pluralism was also allowed among the royal advisers.

Conclusion

The High Middle Ages in Europe had a unique culture and way of life. The development of feudalism affected social relations. Church control began to weaken. If the early High Middle Ages was characterized by a complete lack of development of new trends in art, then by the thirteenth century more than a dozen such trends appeared. Painting and especially architecture had a decisive influence on the figures of the subsequent Renaissance. Population growth has led to the penetration of culture into the poorest strata.

The culture of the Western European Middle Ages covers more than twelve centuries of the difficult, extremely complex path traversed by the peoples of this region. During this era, the horizons of European culture were significantly expanded, the historical and cultural unity of Europe was formed despite all the heterogeneity of processes in individual regions, viable nations and states were formed, modern European languages ​​emerged, works were created that enriched the history of world culture, significant scientific and technical successes were achieved . The culture of the Middle Ages - the culture of the feudal formation - is an integral and natural part of 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 called the “Dark Ages,” putting a certain pejorative connotation into this concept. Decline and barbarism into which the West was rapidly plunging at the end of the 5th-7th centuries. as a result of barbarian 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 during the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. And yet, it is impossible to erase this time from the cultural history of Europe, because it was during the early Middle Ages that the cardinal problems that determined its future were solved. The first and most important of them is laying 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 life activity of many peoples who had inhabited Europe for a long time and those who came again: the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, Slavs, etc. Paradoxical as it may sound, it was precisely the early The Middle Ages, which did not produce achievements comparable to the heights of ancient culture or the mature Middle Ages, marked the beginning of European cultural history proper, which grew out of the interaction of the heritage of the ancient world, more precisely, the disintegrating civilization of the Roman Empire, the Christianity it gave birth to, and on the other hand, tribal, folk barbarian cultures. It was a process of painful synthesis, born from the fusion of contradictory, sometimes mutually exclusive principles, the search not only for new content, but also for new forms of culture, and the passing of the baton of cultural development to its new bearers.

Even in late antiquity, Christianity became the unifying shell into which a variety of views, ideas and moods could fit - from subtle theological doctrines to pagan superstitions and barbaric rituals. In essence, Christianity during the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages was a very receptive (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 of Hippo Aurelius Augustine, whose multifaceted work essentially outlined the boundaries of the spiritual space of the Middle Ages until the 13th century, when the theological system of Thomas Aquinas was created, was of great importance for the Middle Ages. Augustine is responsible for the most consistent substantiation of the dogma about the role of the church, which became the basis of medieval Catholicism, the Christian philosophy of history, which he developed in the essay “On the City of God,” and in Christian psychology. Before Augustine's Confessions, Greek and Latin literature did not know such deep introspection and such deep penetration into the inner world of man. Augustine's philosophical and pedagogical works were of significant value for 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 until recently there was the center of a powerful, universalistic Roman civilization, which could not disappear historically at once, while social relations and institutions, the culture generated by it, continued to exist , the people fed by her were alive. Even in the most difficult time for Western Europe, the Roman school tradition was not stopped. The Middle Ages adopted such an important element as the system of seven liberal arts, divided into two levels: the lower, initial - trivium, which included grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, and the highest - quadrivium, which included arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. One of the most widespread textbooks in the Middle Ages was created by an African Neoplatonist of the 5th century. 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 office work, international communication and culture and served as the basis for the subsequently formed Romance languages.

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

Master of the Office (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, works on logic and theology, translations of Aristotle's logical works became the foundation of the medieval system of education and philosophy. Boethius is often called the “father of scholasticism.” Boethius's brilliant career was suddenly interrupted. Following a false denunciation, he was thrown into prison and then executed. Before his death, he wrote a short 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 activities of the quaestor (secretary) and master of the offices of the Ostrogothic kings, Flavius ​​Cassiodorus (c. 490 - c. 585). He hatched plans to create the first university in the West, which, unfortunately, were not destined to come true. He is the author of “Varia,” a unique collection of documents, business and diplomatic correspondence, which has become an example of Latin stylistics for many centuries. In the south of Italy, on his estate, Cassiodorus founded the Vivarium monastery - a cultural center that united a school and a workshop for copying books (scriptorium), library. The vivarium became a model for Benedictine monasteries, which, starting from the second half of the 6th century. turn into guardians of cultural tradition in the West until the era of the developed Middle Ages. Among them, the most famous was the monastery of Montecassino in Italy.

Visigothic Spain produced one of the greatest educators of the early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville (c. 570-636), who gained the reputation of the first medieval encyclopedist. His main work, “Etymology,” in 20 books, is a summary of what has been preserved from ancient knowledge.

One should not, however, think that the assimilation of the ancient heritage was carried out unhindered and on a large scale. The 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 a small surviving part of the cultural values ​​and knowledge of the previous era. But this was also extremely important for the formation of medieval culture, because what was preserved formed an important part of its foundation and concealed within itself the possibilities of creative development, which were realized later.

At the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century. Pope Gregory I (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 is associated with the development of Latin hagiographic literature, which perfectly met the needs of the mass consciousness of people of the early Middle Ages. Lives of saints have long become a favorite genre in these centuries of social upheaval, famine, disaster and war. The saint becomes the new hero of a man thirsting for a miracle, tormented by the terrible reality of man.

From the second half of the 7th century. cultural life in Western Europe is in complete decline, it barely glimmers in monasteries, somewhat more intensely in Ireland, from where monastic teachers “came” to the continent.

The extremely scarce data from sources does 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. However, it is generally accepted that by the time of the Great Migration of Peoples, in the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the beginning of the formation of the heroic epic of the peoples of Western and Northern Europe (ancient German, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Irish), which replaced their history, dates back.

The barbarians of the early Middle Ages brought a unique vision and feeling of the world, filled with primitive power, fueled by the ancestral ties of man and the community to which he belonged, warlike energy, characteristic of the ancestral feeling of non-separation from nature, the indivisibility of the world of people and gods.

The unbridled and gloomy imagination of the Germans and Celts populated the forests, hills and rivers with evil dwarfs, werewolf monsters, dragons and fairies. Gods and human heroes wage a constant struggle against evil forces. At the same time, the gods are powerful sorcerers and wizards. These ideas were reflected in the bizarre ornaments of the barbaric animal style in art, in which animal figures lost their integrity and definition, 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 also social forces. The head of the German pantheon Wotan (Odin) is the god of the storm, the whirlwind, but he is also a warrior leader standing at the head of the heroic heavenly army. The souls of the Germans who fell on the battlefield rush to him in bright Valhalla to be accepted into Wotan’s squad. When the barbarians were Christianized, their gods did not die; they were 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, formed in the depths of the patriarchal clan society, where special importance was attached to the ideals of fidelity, military courage with a sacred attitude towards the military leader, and ritual. The psychological make-up of the Germans, Celts and other barbarians was characterized by open emotionality and unrestrained intensity in the expression of feelings. All this also left its mark on the emerging medieval culture.

The early Middle Ages was a time of growing self-awareness of barbarian peoples who came to the forefront of European history. It was then that the first written “histories” were created, covering the Acts not of the Romans, but of the barbarians: “Getica” by the Gothic historian Jordan (VI century), “The History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Sueves” by Isidore of Seville (first third of the 7th century), “ History of the Franks" by Gregory of Tours (second half of the 6th century), "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" by the Venerable Bede (late 7th - beginning of the 8th century), "History of the Lombards" by Paul the Deacon (8th century).

The formation of culture in 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 crystallized, the main role in which began to belong to the Christian religion and church.

Carolingian revival. The first tangible fruits of this interaction were obtained during 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 multi-tribal state based on the Christian religion. This is evidenced by the fact that reforms in the cultural sphere began with the comparison of various copies 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 and compliance with the Roman model was established.

The reformist aspirations of the sovereign coincided with the deep processes taking place in society, which needed to expand the circle of educated people capable of contributing to the practical implementation of new political and social tasks. Charlemagne, although he himself, according to his biographer Einhard, was never able to learn to write, was constantly concerned about improving education in the state. Around 787, the “Capitulary on Sciences” was published, obliging the creation of schools in all dioceses, at each monastery. Not only clergy, but also the children of lay people were supposed to study there. Along with this, a writing reform was carried out, and textbooks on various school disciplines were compiled.

The main center of education was the court academy in Aachen. The most educated people of Europe at that time were invited here. The largest figure in the Carolingian Renaissance was Alcuin, a native of Britain. He called not to despise “human (i.e., non-theological) sciences” and to teach children literacy and philosophy so that they could reach the heights of wisdom. Most of Alcuin's works were written for pedagogical purposes; their favorite form was a dialogue between a teacher and a student or two students; he used riddles and answers, simple periphrases and complex allegories. Among Alcuin's students were prominent figures of the Carolingian Renaissance, among them the encyclopedist writer Rabanus the Maurus. At the court of Charlemagne, a unique 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 that he inspired quickly declined, schools were closed, secular trends gradually faded away, and cultural life again concentrated in monasteries. In the monastery scriptoria, the works of ancient authors were rewritten and preserved for future generations, but the main occupation of the learned monks was still not ancient literature, but theology.

Completely apart from the culture of the 9th century. stands a native of Ireland, one of the greatest philosophers of the European Middle Ages, John Scotus Eriugena. Relying on Neoplatonic philosophy, in particular on the writings of the Byzantine thinker Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, he came to original pantheistic conclusions. What saved him from reprisals was that the radicalism of his views was not understood by his contemporaries, who had little interest in philosophy. Only in the 13th century. Eriugena's views were condemned as heretical.

The 9th century produced very interesting examples of monastic religious poetry. The secular line in literature is represented by “historical poems” and “doxologies” in honor of kings, and druzhina poetry. At that time, the first recordings of German folklore and its translation into Latin were made, which later served as the basis for the German epic “Valtarius” compiled in Latin.

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

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

By the 10th century The impetus given to the cultural life of Europe by the Carolingian Renaissance is drying up due to incessant wars and civil strife, and the political decline of the state. A period of “cultural silence” begins, which lasted almost until the end of the 10th century. and was replaced by a short period of recovery, the so-called Ottonian Renaissance, after which in the cultural life of Western Europe there will no longer be periods of such deep decline as from the middle of the 7th to the beginning of the 9th century. and for several decades in the 10th century. The 11th-14th centuries will be the time when medieval culture takes on its “classical” forms.

Worldview. Theology and philosophy. The worldview of the Middle Ages was predominantly theological 1 . Christianity was the ideological core of culture and all spiritual life. Theology, or religious philosophy, became the highest form of ideology, intended for the elite, educated people, while for the vast mass of illiterate, “simple” people, ideology acted 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 that embraced all classes and strata of feudal society.

Medieval philosophy, like the entire culture of feudal Western Europe, from the first stages of its development reveals 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 in patristics - the teachings of the church fathers of the 2nd-8th centuries. The specifics of medieval consciousness dictated that not even the most radical thinker objectively denied or could deny the primacy of spirit over matter, of God over the world. However, the interpretation of the problem of the relationship between faith and reason was by no means unambiguous. In the 11th century the ascetic and theologian Peter Damiani categorically stated that reason is insignificant before faith, philosophy can only be the “handmaiden of theology.” He was opposed by Berengary of Tours, who defended human reason and, in his rationalism, went so far as to openly mock 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 rather indicates the place of its birth than its content. Scholasticism is a philosophy that grows out of theology and is inextricably linked with it, but is not identical to it. Its essence is the understanding of the dogmatic premises of Christianity from a rationalistic position 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 of universals - general concepts. In her interpretation, three main directions were identified:

1 See: Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 21. P. 495.

theories: realism, nominalism and conceptualism. Realists argued that universals exist from eternity, residing in the divine mind. Connecting with matter, they are realized in specific things. Nominalists believed that general concepts are extracted by reason from the comprehension of individual, concrete things. An intermediate position was occupied by conceptualists, who considered general concepts as something existing in things. This seemingly abstract philosophical debate had very specific outcomes. V theology, and it is no coincidence that the church condemned nominalism, which sometimes led to heresy, and supported moderate realism.

In the 12th century. out of the confrontation between various trends in scholasticism, open resistance to the authority of the church grew. Its exponent was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), whom his contemporaries called “the most brilliant mind of his century.” A student of the nominalist Roscelin of Compiegne, Abelard, in his youth, defeated the then popular realist philosopher Guillaume of Champeaux in a debate, leaving no stone unturned from his arguments. The most inquisitive and most daring students began to gather around Abelard; he gained fame as a brilliant teacher and an invincible speaker in philosophical debates. Abelard rationalized the relationship between faith and reason, making understanding a prerequisite 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 a philosophical sense he did not always come to the most radical conclusions, he was often overwhelmed by the desire to bring the interpretation of Christian dogmas to its logical conclusion and in doing so he naturally came to heresy.

Abelard's opponent was Bernard of Clairvaux, who during his lifetime gained the glory of a saint, one of the most prominent representatives of medieval mysticism. In the 12th century. mysticism became widespread and became a powerful movement within scholasticism. It reflected an exalted attraction to the redeeming god; the limit of mystical meditation was the merging of man with the creator. The philosophizing mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux and other philosophical schools found a response in secular literature, in various heresies of a mystical kind. However, the essence of the clash between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux is not so much the dissimilarity of their philosophical positions, but rather the fact that Abelard embodied the 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, and he himself ended his life in a monastery.

For the 12th century. characterized by growing interest in the Greco-Roman heritage. In philosophy, this is expressed in a more in-depth study of ancient thinkers. Their works are beginning to be translated into Latin, primarily the works of Aristotle, as well as treatises of the ancient scientists Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen and others, preserved in Greek and Arabic manuscripts.

For the fate of Aristotelian philosophy in Western Europe, it was significant that it was, as it were, re-appropriated not in its original form, but through Byzantine and especially Arab commentators, primarily Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who gave it a peculiarly “materialistic” interpretation. Of course, it is wrong to talk about genuine materialism in the Middle Ages. All attempts at “materialistic” interpretation, even the most radical ones, which denied the immortality of the human soul or affirmed the eternity of the world, were nevertheless carried out within the framework of theism, that is, the recognition of absolute being, God. Because of this, however, they did not lose their revolutionary significance.

Aristotle's teaching quickly gained enormous authority in the scientific centers of Italy, France, England, and Spain. However, at the beginning of the 13th century. it met with sharp resistance in Paris from theologians who relied on the Augustinian tradition. A number of official bans on Aristotelianism followed; the views of 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 turned out to be powerless against this onslaught and faced the need to assimilate Aristotelian teaching. The Dominicans were involved in this task. It was started by Albert the Great, and the synthesis of Aristotelianism and Catholic theology was attempted by his student Forma Aquinas (1225/26-1274), whose work became the pinnacle and result of the theological-rationalistic searches of mature scholasticism. Thomas's teaching was initially greeted by the church rather warily, and some of its provisions were even condemned. But already from the end of the 13th 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. Essentially, they insisted on the separation of reason from faith. On this basis, the concept of Latin Averroism developed, which included ideas about the eternity of the world, the denial of God's providence and developed the doctrine of the unity of the intellect.

In the XIV century. orthodox scholasticism, which asserted the possibility of reconciling reason and faith on the basis of the subordination of the former to revelation, was criticized by the radical English philosophers Duns Scotus and William Ockham, who defended the positions of nominalism. Duns Scotus, and then Ockham 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, and developed the doctrine of experience as the foundation and source of knowledge. Occamism was condemned by the church, Occam's books were burned. However, the ideas of Occamism continued to develop; they were partly picked up by Renaissance philosophers.

The largest thinker who influenced the formation of 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 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, which dealt a significant blow to orthodox scholasticism, which was mired in formal logical reasoning, increasingly losing its positive meaning, degenerating into a play on words and terms.

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 provided formal logical knowledge, the foundations of philosophy and logic, rhetoric taught how to speak correctly and expressively. “Mathematical disciplines” - arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy were thought of as sciences about numerical relationships that underlay world harmony.

From the 11th century The steady rise of medieval schools begins, the education system is improved. Schools were divided into monastic, cathedral (at city cathedrals), and parish. With the growth of cities, the emergence of an ever-increasing layer of townspeople and the flourishing of guilds, secular, urban private, as well as guild and municipal schools, not subject to the direct dictate of the church, are gaining strength. The students of non-church schools were itinerant schoolchildren - vagantes or goliards, who came from an urban, peasant, knightly environment, and the lower clergy.

Education in schools was conducted in Latin, only in the 14th century. schools teaching in national languages ​​appeared. The Middle Ages did not know a stable division of schools into primary, secondary and higher, taking into account the specifics of children's and youth's perception and psychology. Religious in content and form, education was verbal and rhetorical in nature. The rudiments of mathematics and natural sciences were presented fragmentarily, descriptively, often in a fantastic interpretation. Centers for teaching craft skills in the 12th century. become workshops.

In the XII-XIII centuries. Western Europe was experiencing economic and cultural growth. The development of cities as centers of craft and trade, the expansion of European horizons, and familiarity with the culture of the East, primarily Byzantine and Arab, served as incentives for improving medieval education. Cathedral schools in the largest urban centers of Europe turned into universal schools, and then into universities, received their name from the Latin word universitas - totality, community. In the 13th century. such higher schools emerged 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, and financial autonomy, which were granted to it by special documents of the sovereign or pope. The external independence of the university was combined with strict regulation and discipline of internal life. The university was divided into faculties. The junior faculty, compulsory for all students, was artistic (from the Latin word artes - art), in which the seven liberal arts were fully studied, followed by legal, medical, and theological (the latter did not exist in all universities). The largest university was the University of Paris. Students from Western Europe also flocked to Spain to get an education. Schools and universities in Cordoba, Seville, Salamanca, Malaga and Valencia provided more extensive and in-depth knowledge of philosophy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, and astronomy.

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

Universities accelerated the process of formation of a secular intelligentsia in Western Europe. They were real nurseries of knowledge and played a vital role in the cultural development of society. However, by the end of the 15th century. There is a certain aristocratization of universities; an increasing number of students, teachers (masters) and university professors come from privileged strata of society. For some time, conservative forces gained the upper hand in the universities, especially where these educational institutions had not yet freed themselves from papal influence.

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 - specially treated calfskin. Sheets of parchment were sewn together using thin strong ropes and placed in a binder made of boards covered with leather, sometimes decorated with precious stones and metals. The text written by scribes was decorated with drawn capital letters - initials, headpieces, and later - magnificent miniatures. From the 12th century books become cheaper, city workshops for copying books are opened, in which not monks, but artisans work. Since the 14th century Paper begins to be widely used in the production of books. The book production process is simplified and unified, which was especially important for the preparation of book printing, the appearance of which in the 40s of the 15th century. (its inventor was the German master Johannes Gutenberg) made the book truly widespread in Europe and entailed significant changes in cultural life.

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

The origin of experimental knowledge. By the 13th century. The origin of interest in experimental knowledge is usually attributed to Western Europe. Until then, abstract knowledge based on pure speculation, which was often very fantastic in content, prevailed here. Between practical knowledge and philosophy lay a gulf that seemed insurmountable. 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 artificial and cumbersome, often fantastic abstractions. Alchemy provided a unique example of this. To the medieval man, the world seemed knowable, but he knew only what he wanted to know, and the way this world seemed to him, that is, full of unusual things, inhabited by strange creatures, like people with dog heads. The line between the real and the higher, supersensible world was often blurred.

However, life required not illusory, but practical knowledge. In the 12th century. Some progress has been made in the field of mechanics and mathematics. This caused concern among orthodox theologians, who called the practical sciences “adulterous.” At Oxford University, natural science treatises of ancient and Arab scientists were translated and commented on. Robert Grosseteste made an attempt to apply a mathematical approach to the study of nature.

In the 13th century. Oxford professor Roger Bacon, starting with scholastic studies, ultimately comes to the study of nature, to the denial of authority, decisively giving preference to experience over purely speculative argumentation. Bacon achieved significant results in optics, physics, and chemistry. His reputation as a magician and wizard was strengthened. It was said about him that he created a talking copper head or metal

Russian man, put forward the idea of ​​​​building a bridge by condensing air. He made statements that it was possible to make self-propelled ships and chariots, vehicles flying through the air or moving unhindered along the bottom of the sea or river. Bacon's life was full of vicissitudes and hardships; he was condemned by the church more than once and spent a long time in prison. His work was continued by William of Occam and his students Nikolai Hautrecourt, Buridan and Nikolai Orezmsky (Oresme), who did a lot for the further development of physics, mechanics, and astronomy. Thus, Oresme, for example, came close to the discovery of the law of falling bodies, developed the doctrine of the daily rotation of the earth, and substantiated the idea of ​​using coordinates. Nikolai Hautrecourt was close to atomism.

“Educational enthusiasm” captured various layers of society. In the Kingdom of Sicily, where various sciences and arts flourished, the activity of translators who turned to the philosophical and natural science works of Greek and Arab authors developed widely. Under the patronage of the Sicilian sovereigns, the medical school in Salerno flourished, from which the famous “Salerno Codex” of Arnold da Villanova emerged. It gives various instructions on maintaining health, descriptions of the medicinal properties of various plants, poisons and antidotes, etc.

Alchemists, searching for the “philosopher’s stone” capable of turning base metals into gold, made a number of important discoveries - they studied the properties of various substances, numerous ways of influencing them, produced various alloys and chemical compounds, acids, alkalis, mineral paints, equipment and installations for experiments were created and improved: alembic, chemical furnaces, apparatus for filtration and distillation, etc.

The geographical knowledge of Europeans was significantly enriched. Back in the 13th century. The Vivaldi brothers from Genoa tried to circumnavigate the West African coast. The Venetian Marco Polo made a many-year journey to China and Central Asia, describing it in his “Book,” which was distributed in Europe in many copies in various languages. In the XIV-XV centuries. quite numerous descriptions of various lands made by travelers appear, maps are improved, and geographic 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 viewed as a science or as entertaining reading; it was an essential part of the worldview.

Various kinds of “histories”, chronicles, chronicles, biographies of kings, descriptions of their deeds and other historical works 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 Testaments - was fundamentally historical. Human existence unfolds in time, has its beginning - the creation of the world and man - and the end - the second coming of Christ, when the Last Judgment must take place and the goal of history, presented as the path of salvation of humanity by God, will be fulfilled.

In feudal society, the 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, because it affirmed its universality and regularity in the change of generations, in the world-historical process. This is especially clearly seen in such “classical” works of the historical genre as the chronicles of Otto of Freisingen, Guibert of Nogent, etc.

Such universal “historicism” was combined with a surprising at first glance lack of a sense of specific historical distance among medieval people. They represented the past in the appearance and costumes of their era, seeing in it not what distinguished people and events of ancient times from themselves, but what seemed to them common, universal. The past was not assimilated, but appropriated, as if becoming part of their own historical reality. Alexander the Great was portrayed as a medieval knight, and the biblical kings ruled in the manner of feudal sovereigns.

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; it is based on the events of the Great Migration of Peoples.

Questions about the origin of the heroic epic, its dating, the relationship between collective and authorial creativity in its creation are still controversial 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 war poetry - Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Old Norse - which survives in unique scattered fragments.

The epic of the developed Middle Ages was folk-patriotic in nature, but at the same time it reflected not only universal human values, but also knightly-feudal ones. In it, ancient heroes are idealized in the spirit of knightly-Christian ideology, the motive of the struggle “for the right faith” arises, as if reinforcing the ideal of defending the fatherland, and features of courtliness appear.

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

In Western European epic, two layers can be distinguished: historical (heroic tales with a real historical basis) and fantastic, closer to folklore and folk tales.

The Anglo-Saxon epic, The Tale of Beowulf, dates back to around 1000. It tells the story 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.

The Icelandic sagas are among the famous monuments of world literature. The Elder Edda includes nineteen Old Icelandic epic songs that preserve the features of the most ancient stages in the development of verbal art. "Younger Edda", belonging to the skald poet of the 13th century. Snorri Sturluson is a kind of guide to the poetic art of the skalds with a vivid presentation of Icelandic pagan mythological legends, rooted in ancient common Germanic mythology.

The French epic work “The Song of Roland” and the Spanish “Song of My Cid” are based on real historical events: in the first - the battle of a Frankish detachment with enemies in the Roncesvalles Gorge in 778, in the second - one of the episodes of the Reconquista. These works have very strong patriotic motives, 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 is above all else. The real military-political situation in epic tales acquires the scale of a universal event, and through such hyperbolization, ideals are affirmed that outgrow the framework of their era and become human values ​​“for all time.”

The heroic epic of Germany, “The Song of the Nibelungs,” is much more mythologized. In it we also meet heroes who have historical prototypes - Etzel (Attila), Dietrich of Bern (Theodoric), the Burgundian king Gunther, Queen Brunnhilde, etc. The story about them is intertwined with plots in which the hero is Siegfried (Sigurd); his adventures are reminiscent of ancient heroic tales. He defeats the terrible dragon Fafnir, who guards the treasures of the Nibelungs, and accomplishes other feats, but ultimately dies.

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

Knightly culture. A striking and often romanticized page in the cultural life of the Middle Ages was the culture of knights. Its creator and bearer was knighthood - a military-aristocratic class that originated V the early Middle Ages and reached its peak in the XI-XIV centuries. The ideology of chivalry has its roots, on the one hand, in the depths of self-awareness of barbarian peoples, and on the other, in the concept of service developed by Christianity, which was initially interpreted as purely religious, but in the Middle Ages acquired a much broader meaning and extended to the area of ​​purely secular relations, right up to before serving the lady of the heart.

Loyalty to the lord formed the core of the knightly epic. Betrayal and perfidy were considered the gravest sin for a knight and entailed exclusion from the corporation. War was the profession of a knight, but gradually knighthood began to consider itself generally a champion of justice. In fact, this remained an unattainable ideal, because justice was understood by chivalry in a very unique way and extended only to a very narrow circle of people, having a clearly expressed estate-corporate character. Suffice it to recall the frank statement of the troubadour Bertrand de Born: “I love to see people starving, naked, suffering, not warmed.”

The code of chivalry required many virtues from those who had to follow it, for a knight, in the words of Raymond Lull, the author of the famous instruction, is one who “acts nobly and leads a noble lifestyle.”

In the knight's life, much was deliberately exposed. Bravery, generosity, nobility, which few people knew about, had no price. The knight constantly strived for primacy, for glory. The whole Christian world should have known about his exploits and love. Hence the external brilliance of knightly culture, its special attention to ritual, paraphernalia, symbolism of color, objects, and etiquette. Knightly tournaments, imitating real battles, acquired special pomp in the 13th-14th centuries, when they brought together the flower of knighthood from different parts of Europe.

Chivalric literature was not only a means of expressing the self-awareness of chivalry and its ideals, but also actively shaped them. The feedback was so strong that medieval chroniclers, when describing battles or exploits of real people, did so in accordance with models from chivalric romances, which, having emerged in the mid-12th century, became a central phenomenon of secular culture over several decades. They were created in popular languages, the action developed as a series of adventures of the heroes. One of the main sources of Western European knightly (courtly) romance was the Celtic epic about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. From it was born the most beautiful story about love and death - the story of Tristan and Isolde, which will forever remain 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 whom the most famous was the French poet of the 12th century. Chrétien de Troyes, embodied the highest human values ​​that belonged not to the otherworldly, but to earthly existence. This was especially clearly expressed in the new understanding of love, which was the center and driving force of any chivalric romance. In the knightly culture, the cult of the lady arose, which constituted a necessary element of courtliness. From the end of the 11th century. in Provence, the poetry of troubadours - poet-knights - flourishes. In the 12th century. From Provence, the passion for it spreads to other countries. Trouvères appeared in the north of France, minnesingers appeared in Germany, and courtly poetry developed in Italy and on the Iberian Peninsula.

Loving service has become a kind of “religion” of the highest circle. It is no coincidence that at the same time in medieval Christianity the cult of the Virgin Mary came to the fore. The Madonna reigns in heaven and in the hearts of believers, just as a lady reigns in the heart of a knight in love with her.

For all its attractiveness, the ideal of courtliness was not always realized in life. With the decline of knighthood in the 15th century. it becomes just an element of the fashion game.

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 in contrast to the dominant church Latin-language literature. Her favorite genres are poetic short stories, fables, and jokes (fabliaux in France, schwanks in Germany). They were distinguished by a satirical spirit, crude humor, and vivid imagery. They ridiculed the greed of the clergy, the sterility of scholastic wisdom, the arrogance and ignorance of feudal lords and many other realities of medieval life that contradicted the sober, practical view of the world that was developing among the townspeople.

Fabliau and the Schwanks put forward a new type of hero - cheerful, roguish, smart, always finding a way out of any difficult situation thanks to his natural intelligence and abilities. Thus, in the well-known collection of Schwanks “Pop Amis”, which left a deep mark on German literature, the hero feels confident and easy in the world of city life, in the most incredible circumstances. With all his tricks and 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 strong and reliable. Urban literature castigated vices and morals, responded to the topic of the day, and was extremely “modern.” The wisdom of the people was clothed in it in the form of apt proverbs and sayings. The Church persecuted poets from the urban lower classes, in whose work it saw a direct threat. For example, the writings of the Parisian Rutbeuf at the end of the 13th century. were condemned by the pope to be burned.

Along with short stories, fabliaux 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 Roman of the Fox,” which was formed in France, but translated into German, English, Italian and other languages. The resourceful and daring Fox Renard, in whose image a wealthy, intelligent and enterprising townsman is depicted, invariably defeats the stupid and bloodthirsty Wolf Isengrin, the strong and stupid Bren Bear - they were easily seen as a knight and a large feudal lord. He also fooled Leo Noble (the king) and constantly mocked the stupidity of Donkey Baudouin (the priest). But sometimes Renard plotted against chickens, hares, snails, and began to persecute the weak and humiliated. And then the common people destroyed his plans. Even sculptures were created based on the plots of “The Romance of the Fox” in the cathedrals of Autun, Bourges, and others.

By the 13th century. refers to the emergence of urban theatrical art. Liturgical events and church mysteries were known much earlier. It is typical that, under the influence of new trends associated with the development of cities, they become more vibrant and carnival-like. Secular elements penetrate them. City “games”, i.e. theatrical performances, from the very beginning were of a secular nature, their plots were borrowed from life, and their means of expression were from folklore, the work of wandering actors - jugglers, who were also dancers, singers, musicians, acrobats, and magicians. One of the most beloved city “games” in the 13th century. There was “The Game of Robin and Marion,” the ingenuous story of a young shepherdess and shepherdess, whose love defeated the machinations of a treacherous and rude knight. Theatrical “games” were played out right in the city squares, and the townspeople present took part in them. These "games" were an expression of the folk culture of the Middle Ages.

The carriers of the spirit of protest and free-thinking were wandering schoolchildren and students - vagantas. Among the vagants there were strong oppositional sentiments against the church and the existing order, which were also characteristic of the urban lower classes in general. The Vagantes created a kind of poetry in Latin. The witty, flagellating vices of society and glorifying the joy of life poems and songs of the Vagants 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 Last Vagant" is sometimes called the French poet of the 15th century. François Villon, although he wrote not in Latin, but in his native language. Like the vagantas of former times, he was a vagabond, a poor man, doomed to eternal wandering, persecution by the church and justice. Villon's poetry is marked by a tart taste of life and lyricism, full of tragic contradictions and drama. She is deeply human. Villon's poems absorbed the suffering of disadvantaged ordinary people and their optimism, the rebellious mood of that time.

However, urban culture was not unambiguous. Since the 13th century. didactic (edifying, teaching) and allegorical motifs begin to sound more and more strongly in it. This is also manifested in the fate of theatrical genres, in which from the 14th century. The language of hints, symbols and allegories is becoming increasingly important. There is some “ossification” of the figurative structure of theatrical performances, in which religious motives are strengthened.

Allegorism is made an indispensable condition for “high” literature. This is especially clearly seen in one of the most interesting works of that time, “The Romance of the Rose,” written successively by two authors, Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meun. The hero of this philosophical and allegorical poem is a young poet striving for the ideal embodied in the symbolic image of the Rose. “The Romance of the Rose” is permeated with the ideas of freethinking, glorifies Nature and Reason, and criticizes the class structure of feudal society.

New trends. Dante Alighieri. Crowning the Middle Ages and at the same time rising at the origins of the Renaissance is the most complex figure of the Italian poet and thinker, the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Expelled from his hometown by political opponents and 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 worldview synthesis - “The Divine Comedy” - is the result of the best spiritual aspirations of the mature Middle Ages, but at the same time it carries an insight into the coming cultural and historical era, its aspirations, creative possibilities and insoluble contradictions.

The highest achievements of philosophical thought, political doctrines and natural scientific knowledge, the deepest understanding of the human soul and social relations, melted 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 takes the reader through the fire and icy horror of hell, through the crucible of purgatory to the heights of paradise, in order to gain the highest wisdom here, to affirm the ideals of goodness, bright hope and the heights of the human spirit.

The call of the coming era is also felt in the works of other writers and poets of the 14th century. The outstanding statesman of Spain, warrior and writer Infante Juan Manuel left a large literary heritage, but a special place in it, due to its pre-humanistic sentiments, is occupied by the collection of instructive stories “Count Lucanor”, ​​in which some motives are discernible that are characteristic of Juan Manuel’s younger contemporary - the Italian humanist Boccaccio, author of the famous Decameron.

The work of the Spanish author is typologically close to the “Canterbury Tales” of the great English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), who largely adopted the humanistic impulse coming 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 characterizations, the combination of drama and humor, and the refined literary form make Chaucer's works truly literary masterpieces.

The fact that the people's aspirations for equality and their rebellious spirit are reflected in urban literature is evidenced by the fact that in it the figure of the peasant acquires considerable authority. This is largely revealed in the German story “The Peasant Helmbrecht,” written by Werner Sadovnik at the end of the 13th century. But the quest of the people was reflected with the greatest force in the work of the English poet of the 14th 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 key to the improvement of all people. Thus, urban culture throws off the framework that limited it and merges with folk culture as a whole.

Folk culture. The creativity of the working masses is the foundation of the culture of every historical era. First of all, the people are the creators of language, without which the development of culture is impossible. Folk psychology, imagery, stereotypes of behavior and perception are the breeding ground of culture. But almost all written sources of the Middle Ages that have come down to us were created within the framework of “official” or “high” culture. Folk culture was unwritten and oral. You can see it only by collecting data from sources that provide them in a specific refraction, from a certain angle of view. The “lower” layer is clearly visible in the “high” culture of the Middle Ages, in its literature and art, and is latently felt in the entire system of intellectual life, in its folk origins. This lower layer was not only “carnival-ridiculous,” it presupposed the presence of a certain “picture of the world” that reflected in a special way all aspects of human and social existence, the world order.

Picture of the world. Each historical era has its own worldview, its own ideas about nature, time and space, the order of everything that exists, about the relationships of people to each other. These ideas do not remain unchanged throughout the entire era; they have their differences among different classes and social groups, but at the same time they are typical, indicative of this particular period of historical time. It is not enough to state that medieval man proceeded from the “picture of the world” developed by Christianity. Christianity lay at the basis of the worldview and mass ideas of the Middle Ages, but did not absorb them entirely.

The consciousness of that era in its elite and grassroots forms equally proceeded from the statement of the dualism of the world. Earthly existence was seen as a reflection of the existence of the higher, “heavenly world”, on the one hand, absorbing the harmony and beauty of its archetype, and on the other, representing its clearly “degraded” version in its materiality. The relationship between the two worlds - earthly and heavenly - was a problem that occupied medieval consciousness at all its levels. Universalism, symbolism and allegorism, which were integral features of the medieval worldview and culture, arose from this dualism.

Medieval consciousness strives more for synthesis than for analysis. His ideal is integrity, not multiple diversity. And although the earthly world seems to him to consist of “his”, familiar nearby space and “alien”, distant and hostile, yet both of these parts are fused into an inseparable whole and cannot exist one without the other.

The peasant often viewed the land as an extension of himself. It is no coincidence that in medieval documents it is described through a person - by the number of steps or the time of his labor invested in its processing. Medieval man did not so much master the world as appropriate it, making it his own in a difficult struggle with nature.

Medieval literature and art have no interest in an accurate, concrete, detailed depiction of space. Fantasy prevailed over observation, and there is no contradiction in this. For in the unity of the higher world and the earthly world, in which only the first seems truly real and true, specifics can be neglected; it only complicates the perception of integrity, a closed system with sacred centers and worldly periphery.

The gigantic world created by God - the cosmos - included the “small cosmos” (microcosm) - man, who was thought of not only as the “crown of creation”, but also as an integral, complete world, containing the same thing as the big universe. In iso-

discussions, the macrocosm was presented as a closed circle of existence, driven by divine wisdom, and containing within itself its animated embodiment - man. In medieval consciousness, nature was likened to man, and man to the cosmos.

The concept of time was also different than in the modern era. In the routine, slowly developing civilization of the Middle Ages, time guidelines were vague and unnecessary. Accurate measurement of time spread only in the late Middle Ages. The personal, everyday time of a medieval person moved as if in a vicious circle: morning - day - evening - night; winter spring Summer Autumn. But the more general, “higher” experience of time was different. Christianity filled it with sacred content, the time circle was broken, time turned out to be linearly directed, moving from the creation of the world to the first coming, and after it - to the Last Judgment and the end of earthly history. In this regard, in the mass consciousness, unique ideas about the time of earthly life, death, retribution after death for human deeds, and the Last Judgment were formed. It is significant that the history of mankind has had the same ages as the life of an individual: infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age.

In the Middle Ages, the perception of human ages also differed from those familiar to modern people. Medieval society was demographically younger. Life expectancy was short. A person who had crossed the threshold of forty was considered an old man. The Middle Ages did not know special attention to childhood, deep emotionality in relation to children, so characteristic of our time. It is no coincidence that in medieval sculpture there is no image of babies; they were represented with the faces and figures of adults. But the attitude towards youth was very bright and emotional. It was thought of as a time of flowering, play, a tribute to revelry, and ideas about vital magical power were associated with it. Youthful revelry was legalized in medieval society, which, in general, in its moral principles gravitated towards sobriety, chastity and stability. Entry into “adult” life required young people to renounce such liberties; the energy of youth had to rush into the traditional social channel and not spill over its banks.

In relationships between people, great importance was attached to their form. Hence the requirement for scrupulous adherence to tradition and observance of ritual. Detailed etiquette is also a product of medieval culture.

In the popular imagination of the Middle Ages, magic and witchcraft occupied a large place. However, during the heyday of spirituality in the XI-XIII centuries. magic is relegated to the background into the depths of the lower consciousness, which is inspired primarily by the idea of ​​messianism and lives in hopes of the coming of the kingdom of heaven promised in the New Testament. The heyday of magic, demonology, and witchcraft occurred in the 15th-16th centuries, i.e., during the decline of medieval culture itself.

Artistic ideal. Art and the artistic language of the Middle Ages are multi-valued and deep. This polysemy was not immediately understood by descendants. It took the work of several generations of scientists to show the high value and originality of medieval culture, so different from ancient or modern European culture. Her “secret language” turned out to be understandable and exciting for our contemporaries.

The Middle Ages created its own forms of artistic expression that corresponded to the worldview of that era. Art was a way of reflecting the highest, “invisible” beauty that resides beyond the boundaries of earthly existence in the supernatural world. Art, like philosophy, was one of the ways to comprehend the absolute idea, divine truth. This is where its symbolism and allegorical nature flowed. The plots of the Old Testament, for example, were interpreted as prototypes of New Testament events. Fragments of ancient mythology were assimilated as allegorical allegories.

Since in the minds of medieval people the ideal often prevailed over the material, the corporeal, changeable and perishable lost their artistic and aesthetic value. The sensual is sacrificed to the idea. Artistic technique no longer requires imitation of nature and even, on the contrary, leads away from it to maximum generalization, in which the image first of all becomes a sign of the hidden. Canonical rules and traditional techniques begin to dominate individual creativity. The point is not that the medieval master did not know anatomy or the laws of perspective; he fundamentally did not need them. They seemed to fall out of the canons of symbolic art that strived for universalism.

From the moment of its inception, medieval culture gravitated toward encyclopedicism, a holistic embrace of everything that exists. In philosophy, science, and literature, this was expressed in the creation of comprehensive encyclopedias, the so-called sums. Medieval cathedrals were also original stone encyclopedias of universal knowledge, “bibles of the laity.” The masters who built the cathedrals tried to show the world in its diversity and complete harmonious unity. And if in general the cathedral stood as a symbol of the universe, striving for a higher idea, then inside and outside it was richly decorated with a wide variety of sculptures and images, which were sometimes so similar to the prototypes that, according to contemporaries, “it seemed as if they were caught in freely, in the forest, on the roads.” Outside one could see figures of Grammar, Arithmetic, Music, Philosophy, personifying the sciences studied in medieval schools, not to mention the fact that any cathedral was replete with “stone illustrations” of the Bible. Everything that worried people of that time was reflected here in one way or another. And for many people of the Middle Ages, especially the “simple”, these “stone books” were one of the main sources of knowledge.

The holistic image of the world in that era could be presented as internally hierarchical. The hierarchical principle largely determined the nature of medieval architecture and art, the correlation of various structural and compositional elements in them. But it took several centuries for medieval Western Europe to acquire a fully formed artistic language and system of images.

In the 10th century The Romanesque style emerged, which dominated the next two centuries. It is most clearly represented in France, Italy and Germany. Romanesque cathedrals, made of stone, with a vaulted ceiling, are simple and austere. They have powerful walls; they are essentially fortress temples. At first glance, the Romanesque cathedral is rude and squat, only gradually the harmony of the plan and the nobility of its simplicity are revealed, aimed at revealing the unity and harmony of the world, glorifying the divine principle. His portal symbolized the heavenly gates, above which the triumphant god and supreme judge seemed to hover. Romanesque sculpture adorning churches, for all its “naivety and ineptitude,” embodies not only idealized ideas, but the tense faces of real life and real people of the Middle Ages. The artistic ideal, putting on flesh and blood, was “grounded.” Artists in the Middle Ages were simple and often illiterate people. They introduced a religious feeling into their creations, but this was not the spirituality of the scribes, but popular religiosity, which interpreted orthodox dogma in a very unique way. Their creations convey the pathos of not only the heavenly, but also the earthly.

Not all settlements arose so peacefully, and quite often the new inhabitants expelled or killed the previous owners of the land, the Slavs. The city of Lübeck itself received self-government rights from the emperors Frederick Barbarossa (1188) and Frederick II (1226). Construction of the brick two-tower cathedral began in 1173 and was completed only in the middle of the next century.

In the sparsely populated lands of Europe, immigration enriched both rulers and landowners, who invited new residents and organized the very resettlement of peasants who agreed to this. But for the western regions, even such significant movements of people were not enough to solve the problem of overpopulation. A number of data indicate that by the end of the 13th century. In most of Europe, population growth reached a critical limit, beyond which the limited land areas and the backward, slowly developing technology for their cultivation were no longer adequate. This Malthusian interpretation is not easily supported or refuted. It should be noted that the British economist Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) argued that natural population growth would always outpace food production, a theory that remains relevant today.

Some of the facts known to us indicate that in the first decades of the 14th century. The European economy has stalled, rents and prices have slowed or stopped growing, and the population has stopped growing. One of the reasons for this was crop failures in Northwestern Europe in 1415–1417, which caused great famine and high mortality. This disaster was probably related to the deteriorating climate during the "Little Ice Age"; the consequences, obviously, were particularly severe in the areas of development of peripheral lands, which now took revenge on the arrogant colonists.

Did these developments represent more than just a slowdown in the pace of development that had characterized the previous three centuries? We don’t know this because the economy subsequently failed to develop at a natural pace: in 1346–1349. Europe was shaken by an epidemic of bubonic plague, which led to the death, according to various estimates, from a quarter to half of the entire population. The severity of the losses may have been aggravated by Malthusian circumstances, but the disease itself, the Black Death, originated outside Europe, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

From X to XII centuries. the development of the manor and seigneury provided a sufficient labor force for landowners in a relatively small and stable market for agricultural products. These conditions changed due to population growth, the increase in the number of cities and urban markets, rising prices and under the influence of mass migrations of peasants. Now it turned out to be profitable for landowners to manage with the expectation of an expanding market. There were several ways to do this. The owner of the land could expand his household plot and then cultivate it with the hands of hired tenants, whose labor was probably much more efficient than the labor of serfs. This was most often done in the Netherlands and some areas of France, England and Germany, where the new system led to the rapid disappearance of classical seigneurial relations. It was possible, on the contrary, to intensify the exploitation of serfs and demand more unpaid labor from them, as often happened even in the richest and most economically developed areas: for example, in South-East England. And finally, take advantage of the situation of land shortage and rising rents and simply rent out your household plot on favorable terms; this method, in turn, led to the accelerated erosion of seigneurial relations, since the owner of the land no longer needed the labor of the serfs. Nevertheless, no one deprived him of other seigneurial rights, for example, the exclusive right to keep a mill or brew beer in a given area, and most importantly, the rights of lower jurisdiction. An important type of land lease was crop sharing, where the landowner and tenant literally divided each harvest; This method was used especially often in Northern Italy and Southern France.

In Eastern Europe, cities were still very small, and production for a large market was just beginning. At the same time, local landowners offered relatively favorable conditions to tenants; otherwise, they simply would not have been able to persuade the peasants to move from their old place or prevent them from moving to another estate. These are the reasons why classical seigneury never took root in Eastern Europe.

It took time for all these processes to fully manifest themselves. But already at the end of the 13th century. The former relative uniformity of the agrarian organization was replaced by a variety of relations of land ownership and peasant responsibilities. The inevitable result was increased tension as the interests of landowners clashed with the desire of peasants to protect their ancient customs and social and legal status. According to chronicles, starting from the last two decades of the 13th century. Peasant uprisings took place in a number of places, and between 1323 and 1328 they first engulfed an entire region—maritime Flanders. From this time until the very end of the Ancien Regime, which was brought about by the revolutions in France and Russia, peasant movements and uprisings remained an integral feature of European life. Although the uprisings occurred sporadically and did not always have similar goals, their main reasons remained the same: the impact of economic changes on the traditionally conservative peasant environment. The peasantry resisted change, despite the fact that it was defenseless against legally sanctioned exploitation: from land owners, capital, tax collectors, and princely army recruiters. The common feature of all these movements, up to 1789 in France, 1917 in Russia and 1949 in China, was their fundamental ineffectiveness: they achieved only partial and short-term successes. The ruling classes - landowners and princes - had sufficient strength to maintain their positions, since in this struggle they still had all the strategic advantages - education, religious traditions, respect for the law, the habit of commanding and demanding obedience, and, finally, the main thing - the ability to organize and maintain professional troops.

It is difficult to name reasons that would prevent the employment of crafts in rural areas and villages - as, in fact, this was the case at first. But the growing cities provided natural markets for all types of craft products: textiles, clothing, shoes, all kinds of leather and metal products, and above all for the construction of private houses, city walls, towers and churches. It is quite natural that cities were attractive to artisans. With the exception of brickmakers, masons and representatives of some other professions, others worked from home, often hiring day laborers - apprentices and skilled journeymen. From the 12th century or even earlier, representatives of the same profession began to unite into craft workshops. These workshops were not like modern trade unions, since they included both employers and workers, and the tone was always set by employers - skilled craftsmen. The guilds adopted their charters and compiled written reports on their activities, which is not least why historians often overestimated their significance.

In the XII and XIII centuries. craft guilds were, as a rule, only religious brotherhoods, whose members had common economic interests; These associations returned to people the sense of confidence and security that they had lost when they left the village, and also created much-needed institutions of care for disabled or elderly members of the guilds, for widows and orphans. In any case, a workshop could only be founded in a large city, since in a small city there simply would not be a sufficient number of craftsmen of one profession. In large cities such as London, there were associations of the rarest crafts. The resolution of the workshop of spur craftsmen from 1345 gives a clear idea of ​​the regulation of its activities, the noisy and sometimes dangerous behavior of the townspeople and the constant threat of fires in the medieval city:

Let everyone remember that on Tuesday, the day after the Day of the Shackles of St. Peter, in the nineteenth year of the reign of King Edward III., the articles here signed were read in the presence of John Hammond, the mayor... First of all, none of the spur-makers should work longer than from the beginning of the day until the signal for the extinguishing of the lights from the church of St. Sepulcher , which is behind the New Gate. Because at night no one can work as accurately as during the day, and many craftsmen, knowing how they can deceive in their craft, want to work more at night than during the day: then they can slip in unusable or cracked iron. Further, many spur craftsmen walk around all day and do not practice their craft at all, and when they get drunk and go berserk, they get to work, thereby causing anxiety to the sick and all the neighbors, as well as to the quarrels that happen between them... And when they do this fan the flames so much that their forges immediately begin to glow with a bright flame, they create a great danger for themselves and for all their neighbors... Also, none of the above-mentioned masters should keep a house or workshop to practice their business (unless he is not a citizen of the city)... Also, none of the said masters should invite the apprentice, assistant or journeyman of another master of this craft until the term agreed between him and his master has expired... Also, no foreigner should learn this craft or practice it, unless he has received a city license from mayor, alderman and chairman of the house..."

Gradually, but not everywhere, rules were established in the guilds that determined the conditions for hiring students, hours of work, quality of products and sometimes even prices.

This production system worked well where the sources of raw materials and the market for handicrafts were local, limited and well known. But it stopped working in those places where the production of high-quality goods of narrow demand required imported raw materials or where goods were supplied to a wide market. So, in the 13th century. Both Flemish and Italian clothiers exported high-quality wool from England, and local spinners and weavers had to buy it from intermediaries. Since it was expensive, they were probably forced to take it on credit, finding themselves in debt and dependent on merchant importers. But much more often they took out loans from exporters who sold finished fabric, because by the very nature of their craft they had no contact with the final buyer. In turn, merchants - the only ones who owned capital and the technology of buying and selling - found it convenient and profitable to organize the production of fabrics in accordance with the prevailing market conditions. By the end of the 13th century. this practice evolved into highly developed and well-organized capitalist production under the then advanced "vertical integration".

In the account books of a certain Jehan Boyenbrock from the Flemish city of Douai in the 1280s, it is written that he had agents in England who bought raw wool, which he then distributed successively to carders, spinners, weavers, fullers and dyers, who carried out their work at home, and at the end of the cycle he sold the finished fabric to foreign merchants. The craftsmen he hired had no right to take orders from other employers, even if Boyenbrock did not have enough work for them: the fact is that he also owned the houses of these craftsmen, who undoubtedly had debts to him. Moreover, Boyenbrock and his fellow employers sat on the city council and passed laws and statutes that publicly sanctioned this system of exploitation.

The situation was approximately the same in Northern Italy. In Florence, for example, the production of high-quality fabrics from English wool was controlled by the woolen guild, an association of capitalists involved in the production of fabrics: it gave orders to residents not only of the city itself, but also of the surrounding villages. This system of organizing production is called “distribution”. Employers, naturally, were worried that employees would also create their own organization. Statutes of the Florentine Woolen Guild (arte della lana) from 1317 this was quite definitely prohibited:

In order... that the guild may prosper and enjoy its freedom, power, honor and rights, and in order to restrain those who of their own free will act and rebel against the guild, we decree and declare that no member of the guild and no artisans are independent workers or members of any any guilds - shall not, by any means or legal means, by act or design, create, organize or establish any ... monopolies, agreements, conspiracies, regulations, rules, societies, leagues, intrigues or other similar things against the said guild, against masters of the guild or against their honor, jurisdiction, guardianship, power or authority, under penalty of a fine of 200 pounds of small florins. And secret spies are appointed to supervise these matters; but at the same time, anyone is allowed to make accusations and denunciations openly or secretly, receiving a reward of half the fine, and the name of the informer is kept secret.

In fact, it was a kind of “anti-union law” that introduced a system of penalties for unauthorized associations. Chronicler Giovanni Villani reports that in 1338, the Florentine wool industry employed 30 thousand people, including many women and children, who produced about 80 thousand large pieces of fabric per year. Over the previous thirty years, the cost of production doubled, while the number of manufacturing companies decreased from 300 to 200.

Thus, in Flanders and Northern Italy, a real capitalist mode of production developed, in which workers actually became hired workers for wages, proletarians who owned nothing except their labor, although at that time there were no factories, and workers worked at home and continued to hire journeymen and apprentices. Workers' employment depended on fluctuations in the international market, about which the workers themselves knew nothing and which they could not control. It is therefore not surprising that industrial conflicts - strikes and urban uprisings - began in these two areas. When they coincided or were combined with peasant uprisings, they could, at least sometimes, be very dangerous.

The processes that developed in wool production were also characteristic of other industries. Where production required significant fixed (as, for example, in mining) or working capital (for example, in construction and shipbuilding), entrepreneurs and the capitalist organization they created inexorably displaced small independent artisans. This process proceeded slowly, not everywhere at the same time, and during this period it affected only some areas of Europe and a relatively small part of the working population. But the XIII and XIV centuries. became the watershed between a traditional society, slowly emerging from a combination of late Roman craftsmanship and barbarian customs, and the dynamic, competitive and deeply divided modern society. It was during this era that those stereotypes of economic behavior and organization emerged, with all the accompanying problems of human relations that are characteristic of our days.

If such significant changes took place in craft production, they were even more noticeable in trade. The growth of population, the production of goods and wealth, the development of cities and specialization all led to a huge expansion of trade. It occurred at all levels - from the village market to large international fairs for professional merchants, from the increase in the number of urban groceries to the creation of large international trading companies. There was no sharp break with the processes of previous centuries, but where trade had previously been sporadic, it became organized and regular. The four fairs in Champagne were now constantly in operation for most of the year and created opportunities for regular communication between Flemish and Italian merchants until the 14th century. they were not replaced by the annual voyages of merchant fleets from Italy through Gibraltar to Bruges and Southampton. The people of Bruges, who gave up travel, found that they could live just fine by staying at home and providing their city's warehousing and brokerage services to foreign merchants.

The Venetians, Genoese and Pisans increasingly supplanted their competitors in Mediterranean trade. It was the Italians who developed the most complex forms of trading operations: various types of trading partnerships allowed them to attract significant working capital necessary for the construction and equipment of ships, the purchase of goods and payments to the crew during overseas voyages, which sometimes lasted for months.

The existence of partnerships created the need for regular reporting, which allowed each participant in each trading enterprise to receive his share of the profits or bear his share of losses. This is how the double-entry bookkeeping system arose. And since there was always a danger of becoming a victim of storms and rocks, pirates and military operations, merchants took out marine insurance as a guarantee of their investments. Insurance premiums were high, and many, like Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, even in the 16th century. believed that insurance costs were not worth it. At the same time, almost all merchants used credit. Trade probably would not have increased as much in the 13th century if the pay-as-you-go principle had remained in place: there simply would not have been enough money in circulation, even though Western Europe had returned to minting gold coins for the first time in 500 years: in 1255 Florence issued a gold florin, followed by Venice in 1284 - a gold ducat. It was much more convenient and reliable to buy and sell on credit, issuing debt obligations, rather than constantly paying off significant sums in silver and gold, including by weight. These promissory notes, or promissory notes, could also be used to hide interest on loans and not transfer them in real money. The fact is that the church disapproved of charging interest, since theologians adhered to Aristotle's theory, according to which money was only a medium of exchange and, therefore, something “sterile”, that is, not bringing wealth. However, it was impossible to prohibit the charging of interest on loans; quite often this was done quite openly, and not least by merchants and bankers associated with the papacy.

Banking also expanded, and there were two reasons for this. First, many different coins came into circulation, the relative denominations of which were so difficult to establish that professional money changers were soon required. Secondly, merchants preferred to store available funds in a safe place. When these two functions came together in one hand and the ability to make withdrawals or deposits became possible, modern banking was born.

Italy, especially Genoa and Tuscany, became the birthplace of new commercial operations; here, in Italy, in the XIII-XIV centuries. the first written manuals on banking appeared. Likewise, the first descriptions of foreign ports and trade routes, as well as dictionaries with translations of Italian words and phrases into oriental languages, appeared in Italy. Finally, it was in Italy that young people could learn the basics of commerce not just as apprentices to reputable trading companies, but in schools and universities; For many centuries, residents of northern European countries came to Italy to learn this art.

With the development of new methods of commercial activity, new attitudes of consciousness appeared: rational calculation in the organization of an economic enterprise, digital, mathematical assessments of opportunities, as well as rational, mathematically verified methods of commerce began to be considered a recipe for success. According to Villani, in Florence in 1345, from 8 to 10 thousand boys and girls studied reading, and in six schools, 1000 or 1200 boys (girls, of course, this did not apply) learned to use the abacus and arithmetic. But Florence, Venice, Genoa and several other Italian cities were far ahead of other European cities. The majority of the population, and even the bulk of the merchants, remained traditionalists: they were quite satisfied with the life that their ancestors led. The new attitude to work took root very slowly. The long resistance to the widespread use of Arabic numerals is a clear example of the fundamental conservatism inherent in even the most educated people of the time. Nevertheless, the appeal to rational methods and rational organization of trade, which the Italian urban patriciate contributed to strengthening, gave a powerful impetus to the general desire for rationality, which began to assert itself in almost every sphere of intellectual activity, specifically colored and ultimately determined the entire development of European civilization .

By 1200, the era of the rapid formation of “empires” (vast states) had actually ended, for which there were significant reasons. In the monarchies of Western and Southern Europe, royal power increasingly strengthened its position. The royal councils still remained the body in which the king's largest secular and spiritual vassals (at least those whom he decided to invite) expressed their opinions on issues of public policy. But at the same time, these councils had already begun to turn into a state body in charge of state affairs even in the absence of the king himself. The activities of the councils affected two main areas of politics - justice and royal finances; but differentiation also began to emerge within them. In England, already during the reign of Henry II (1154–1189), a manual on the work of the treasury was created - “Dialogue on the Treasury”. The Court of Common Pleas at Westminster dealt with private cases, and the Court of King's Bench dealt with criminal offenses and cases involving the rights of the crown, from the 13th century. he also began to consider appeals from lower courts. In addition, royal judges traveled throughout the country, collaborated with local jury trials and gradually replaced the feudal courts of the great nobility.

In France, these processes began somewhat later than in England, but proceeded even faster. Thus, until 1295, the Order of the Templars controlled the French royal treasury. But by 1306 the French “chambers of accounts” had more members than the English treasury. At about the same time the Supreme Court of the French Kingdom, the "Parliament of Paris", had seven or eight times as many judges as the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King's Bench combined.

Those in charge of royal affairs in the chancellery, treasury and courts were now mainly professionals; and although on the whole they were, as before, clergymen, the educated laity began to compete with them very successfully. In Germany, kings and territorial princes, dukes and bishops recruited such servants from among semi-dependent vassals, who traditionally “supplied” domestic servants and personal servants. Such employees were called ministeriales. Quite often they were rewarded with land, like other feudal vassals, and they also sought to make their possessions, and sometimes their duties, hereditary. Thus a new class of petty nobility arose, which, according to the customs of the time, was not considered completely free. This fact is another reminder to historians that feudalism was not a “strict” system of social relations, because it included many contradictory forms and phenomena. Only very gradually, during the 13th and 14th centuries, did the Germans ministeriales acquired the status of free knighthood.

The growing complexity and professionalization of the central government, as well as its closer ties with local administration, strengthened the sense of community and stability of political structures. Growing prosperity and widespread education contributed to the formation of small regions into viable political units, in contrast to the 11th–12th centuries. it was now much easier to find professionals capable of solving management problems.

This was one of the main reasons for the regionalization of Europe, as opposed to the universalism of past centuries. However, transnational integration was not completely overcome: rather, two opposing trends came to shape the development of Europe over the next few centuries.

In the 13th century. these processes gave rise to a number of significant innovations. First of all, it became much more difficult for aggressive rulers to conquer new territories; when they did succeed in something like this, it was much more difficult to incorporate the acquisitions into their possessions. Secondly, as power became more centralized and more efficient, it attracted more people to participate in the governance of society. We will discuss these two problems in more detail.

Nowhere was the problem of conquered territories as acute as in France. We can remember that the English king owned most of Western France - from Normandy in the north to Aquitaine in the south, which were considered vassal lands of the French crown. In 1202, King Philip Augustus forced his feudal court to adopt a decree depriving the English King John of all French fiefs. John's French vassals did not support him, since both he and his brother Richard the Lionheart used them for their own ambitious purposes. It is not surprising that John ceded all of Normandy and Anjou to the overlord (1204) (retaining only Guienne in the southwest). In exactly the same way, Henry the Lion in 1180 ceded all his possessions to the overlord Frederick Barbarossa. But if Barbarossa had to immediately divide Saxony between Henry’s largest vassals, then Philip Augustus could annex Normandy and Anjou to his own possessions. True, these provinces retained many local laws and regulations - just like Languedoc, Poitou, Toulouse and other areas annexed by the French crown by seizure, inheritance or purchase during the 13th and early 14th centuries. Until the revolution of 1789, France remained a country of semi-autonomous provinces, over which an increasingly complex centralized monarchical power rose.

Unifying new lands under the rule of the crown turned out to be a more difficult task for the English kings than for the French ones. The British Isles never had a tradition of an all-inclusive monarchy such as that which the Capetian dynasty inherited from its Carolingian predecessors. The English kings claimed dominance over Ireland, but in Ireland itself this intention was taken into account only to the extent that the kings managed to put it into practice. The Anglo-Norman knights who had seized large tracts of land in Ireland during the reign of Henry II were as little inclined to render any services to the king beyond hypocritical expressions of fealty as were the local Gaelic-speaking Irish chiefs.

In Wales the situation was much the same, although the local church was more closely connected with the English one. Only Edward I (1272–1307), the most politically gifted English king since Henry II, managed to finally subjugate Wales: this required a series of military victories and the construction of a complex system of castles. Even so, linguistically, culturally and administratively Wales continued to remain a largely alien and autonomous part of the kingdom.

Those measures that were good for Wales, located relatively close to the center of English royal power, were not suitable for distant Scotland. Edward's intervention in the internal Scottish succession disputes was only partially successful and plunged both countries into a state of hostility for two and a half centuries. In the border regions, this hostility was especially murderous and merciless, and this despite the fact that there was no noticeable ethnic or linguistic difference between the North English and Low Scots populations. As often happens, once enmity has begun it is difficult to stop, because it is fueled by a feeling of resentment passed on from generation to generation.

Moreover, Anglo-Scottish enmity became an inevitable factor in the political struggle in Western Europe, and Edward I was the first English king to face the possibility of a deadly alliance between France and Scotland - an alliance that had become a tradition.

If the responsibility for such a development of events lies mainly with Edward I, then it is worth adding that any strong medieval ruler who had the appropriate capabilities would have acted in the same way, that his contemporaries did not condemn Edward and that he (given the warlike morals of medieval society) was quite was aware of the possible consequences of the disloyal behavior of the Scottish kings. What contemporaries could not forgive was failure. When Edward's inept and weak son, Edward II (1307–1327), suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Scots at Bannockburn (1314), he immediately encountered baronial opposition that ultimately deprived him of his throne and his life (1327).

During this period, the political practice of involving ever wider sections of the population in the management of society arose. It was influenced by a variety of factors: geographical, for example, on large islands such as England or Sicily, common language, but the main ones were the common political traditions that developed within the framework of a common political system, as well as military needs and military experience. As kings expanded their power beyond the purely feudal lord-vassal relationship, their vassals and subjects in turn sought to withdraw from this power or limit it by law in order to make the exercise of royal powers orderly and predictable. Almost everywhere in Europe, kings voluntarily yielded to such demands for the sake of maintaining internal peace and support in external wars; where this was not done voluntarily, kings had to yield to armed opposition. Everywhere, rulers granted self-government to their cities, and Frederick Barbarossa granted the cities of Northern Italy virtual independence even from imperial power. Equally important were the charters, which guaranteed the rights and privileges of the nobility and required the king to uphold the laws of the land. Such were the ordinances of 1118, which Alfonso VIII., king of Leon (one of the Spanish kingdoms), had to issue, or the privileges granted to the ecclesiastical princes of Germany by the Emperor Frederick II in 1220, and extended by his son in 1231; such was the Golden Bull of the Hungarian king of 1222 and, finally, the most famous of all royal charters - the English Magna Carta of 1215.

The immediate cause of the Magna Carta (Magna Carta) served by the heavy taxes imposed by King John of England (1199–1216) in order to recapture Normandy, lost in 1204. As often happens, the personal qualities of the participants in the events also played a role: John was an intelligent and powerful ruler; Therefore, people, not without reason, did not trust him. In his actions he was not too different from his father, Henry II, and his famous brother, Richard the Lionheart. But John lost both the war with France and the civil war with the disgruntled barons; by 1215 he had no room for maneuver and was forced to sign the Charter. The main significance of the Charter was that it asserted the rule of law; Of course, we were not talking about the equality of everyone before the law: it brought benefits primarily to the rich and privileged layers of society, the barons and the church. However, unlike most continental royal enactments, Magna Carta took into account the interests of the common people: it specifically stated that whatever liberties the king granted to his vassals, they should in turn grant to their subjects. Its most famous clause reads: “No free man shall be detained or imprisoned, or unlawfully deprived of property, outlawed or banished, or in any way harmed... except by the lawful decision of his peers, or by the law of the local land.” " The principle of trial by "peers" was at one time widespread in Europe, but usually applied only to the nobility; here it is taken in a broad sense, applying to all free people, and is associated with the establishment of the rule of law. In the next generation, English judges drew the logical corollary from this: “The king is subject to God and the law.”

The true meaning of the Magna Carta emerged after 1215. It was confirmed several times by the great barons and church representatives who were part of the government of regents under the infant King Henry III after the premature death of John. In the XIV century. Parliament interpreted the phrase “court of equals” to mean trial by jury, which extended to everyone, not just freemen.

A committee of twenty-five people was created to supervise the implementation of the Magna Carta, but only Parliament could exercise such supervision at all times; However, the promulgation of the Charter did not lead to the immediate creation of parliament. The history of Parliament will be discussed in the next chapter.

With the death of Emperor Henry VI in 1197, the papacy was freed from its last serious political rival in Italy. It was at that time that the cardinals elected the youngest of their ranks as pope, Innocent III. Among many outstanding medieval popes, Innocent III (1198–1216) stands out for his authority and remarkable political successes. “Below God, but above people,” is how he defined the greatness of his status, and about the relationship between the papacy and the state he wrote: “As the moon receives its light from the sun... so royal power borrows its luster from the authority of the popes.” With consummate skill, Innocent used every political opportunity to realize his vision of papal power. Sicily, Aragon and Portugal recognized him as their feudal overlord, as did the King of Poland and even John the Landless for a time. Innocent forced the French king Philip Augustus to return his wife, whom he had rejected and condemned during a dispute with John over Normandy. But even more effective was the constant intervention of the pope in the civil wars in Germany, where the throne was contested by the Hohenstaufen and Welf candidates (the latter was the son of Henry the Lion). As a result of the Fourth Crusade, even Constantinople expressed its willingness to obey the pope. When Innocent solemnly opened the IV Lateran Council (1215), in the eyes of the entire Christian world, the papacy was at an unattainable height.

However, these successes turned out to be deceptive. Circumstances had changed, and Innocent's successor was far from his brilliant political talent. Now the advantage was on the side of the main enemy of the papacy, Emperor Frederick II (king of Sicily from 1198, Germany from 1212, emperor from 1220–1250). The son of Henry VI, he was the most brilliant representative of the most gifted German dynasty - the Hohenstaufen. Brought up in Sicily, with its multinational, multilingual and multi-religious heritage, Frederick II surrounded himself with a brilliant court of lawyers, writers, artists and scientists, and actively participated in all their endeavors; he had at his disposal a harem of Saracen concubines and an army of Muslim mercenaries, on whose loyalty he could rely in the face of any papal invective.

Having transformed Sicily into a model European state, Frederick tried to restore imperial power in Northern Italy and here, of course, he encountered both the Italian communes - independent Italian cities, and the papacy, which again feared deadly political pressure from the power that controlled both the Southern , and Northern Italy. The struggle between Frederick II and the papacy actually took on the character of an Italian civil war and continued with varying success until the sudden death of the emperor in 1250. After the death of Frederick, the positions of the imperial forces in Italy were irretrievably lost.

The suddenness of this collapse itself indicated that the basis of imperial power had become dangerously narrowed. In the German civil wars of the early 13th century. rival factions squandered the bulk of the imperial property and exhausted the resources of power. Frederick later had to use what was left of them to secure support for his Italian policies. After his death there followed a period of interregnum during which several foreign princes declared themselves kings, supported by various groups of German magnates, but failed to acquire any significant power. Finally, in 1273, the largest German princes, the Electors, came to an agreement and elected an uninfluential German count, Rudolf Habsburg, as king. They hoped that this would put an end to the anarchy of the interregnum, and that the weak king would not have enough strength to restore the central power of the German monarchy.

They were right on both counts. Rudolf I could have had enough support to stop the extreme atrocities of the “robber barons.” At the same time, he quite logically reasoned that his position ultimately depended on his personal possessions, and he himself laid the foundations for the future greatness of the House of Habsburg by taking possession of Austrian lands. The electors, for their part, continued to choose kings from different dynasties, guided mainly by their weakness. These kings often used their position to increase the family fortune, and thereby the prestige of royal power. Some of them even made trips to Italy and were crowned emperors there in order to revive former imperial claims and hopes. But these sporadic raids were only a pale shadow of the great campaigns of the Saxon and Salic emperors, as well as the Hohenstaufens. The German electors had a stranglehold on the monarchy and thereby actually saved Italy and the papacy from German intervention.

So, the papacy seemed to have won its battle with the empire that had lasted three stages and lasted two centuries. But this impression again turned out to be deceptive. During the struggle, the popes themselves, their ideologists and supporters developed a complex theory of papal supremacy both in the church itself and in relations with secular authorities, backing it up with the relevant provisions of canon law. They also created a very sophisticated organization of central control, which allowed the popes to keep local church administration in their hands through the encouragement of appeals to Rome from the ecclesiastical courts, the use of taxes on the clergy, appointments to episcopal and other ecclesiastical offices, and through the new monastic orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, who remained outside the normal jurisdiction of local bishops.

The price of these innovations was very high. The popes who fought against Frederick II - Gregory IX and Innocent IV - used any weapon from the church arsenal to achieve purely political goals: excommunication, interdict, propaganda and simply slander. Even the French king Louis IX (1226–1270), whose holiness and loyalty to the church were beyond suspicion and who was officially canonized before the end of the century, did not approve of the methods of Innocent IV. In Southern Italy, the popes granted the Hohenstaufen Kingdom of Sicily to the French prince Charles of Anjou. But in 1282, the Sicilians killed the hated French during the so-called “Sicilian Vespers” and offered their country to the king of Aragon. All attempts by the popes and Charles of Anjou (who now actually owned only Naples) to return Sicily were unsuccessful. But if this relatively small state, subordinate to the papacy, was able to offer active resistance, then it was even more difficult to imagine that concessions would be made by the large monarchies, which sought to control the church in their territories and who were indignant at the constant interference of the popes in their affairs. If the collision could not be avoided, then, as often happens, it was accelerated by strong personalities. The French king Philip IV (1285–1314) was determined to strengthen his power in the kingdom and expand its borders. In 1296, during the war with Edward I, he taxed the French church, just as Edward in England had taxed the English church. Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) rejected the right of both kings to do so and ordered the clergy of France and England to disobey their kings.

Not since the time of Becket has the problem of conflict of allegiance been so acute in Western Europe. Moreover, both the organizational model and the concept of a sovereign state were so clearly developed by that time that the pope's demands looked like a direct undermining of the idea of ​​statehood. In response, Philip banned the export of money and valuables from France. After a few months, dad had to give in. The French king found a much more effective weapon against the papacy than all the armies of the German emperors. In 1301, he initiated another confrontation by ordering the arrest and trial of a French bishop - in violation of the pope's demand that all bishops be tried only in Rome. Boniface reacted to this very angrily, and more and more facts poured in from both sides, and even fake documents from the French side. In November 1302 the pope issued a bull Unam Sanctam, which contained the most radical statements of papal supremacy ever made: the theory of the "two swords" was here combined with the doctrine of the hierarchy of the great chain of being, and all this culminated in the resounding words: "On this basis we declare, We affirm, decree and proclaim that the indispensable condition of salvation for every creature is submission to the Roman Pontiff.”

Once again, Philip responded with practical action. One of his confidants with a handful of French soldiers, having united with Boniface’s Roman enemies, suddenly descended on the pope’s summer residence in Anagni, captured the elderly pontiff and subjected him to insults and humiliations (1303); a few weeks later dad died.

Boniface's successors had neither the courage nor the means to continue the quarrel with Philip. A few years later, Pope Clement V (1305–1314), a Frenchman, moved to Avignon on the Rhône, a small papal possession surrounded by French territory. Here the popes remained in “Babylonian captivity” until 1376; they were probably not as dependent on the French kings as was sometimes believed, but in the eyes of Europe their independence was in great doubt.

The irony of history is that the papacy, having won the great struggle against the empire, very soon submitted to the force that supported it in the struggle: the staff, as they said then, pierced the hand that leaned on it. But the essence of the matter was not in irony. The first thing that became apparent was the inevitable moral decline that accompanied what was considered a life-and-death struggle, for the people were not inclined to forgive the pope what they would have forgiven the king. Secondly, the struggle changed the ideological orientations of the parties, both politically and intellectually. The emperors took the same position as the papacy: they defended the very nature of universal power, interpreting it in the spirit of the traditions of the former Roman Empire and calling on specifically interpreted biblical texts for help. But the kingdoms of France, England or Castile were far from empires. Their kings declared their sovereignty, but only in the sense that it should be absolute within the limits of their own dominions. In other words, they did not claim supremacy over the whole world, which is exactly what the popes and medieval emperors claimed, although the latter did not have sufficient grounds for this. Ultimately, the more serious force capable of opposing the papacy was a geographically limited force - medieval kings and the idea of ​​​​state sovereignty.

European monarchs also received powerful intellectual and emotional support: at the end of the 12th century. Aristotle’s “Politics” was “rediscovered”, which in the 13th century. Thomas Aquinas adapted it for the needs of Christian orthodoxy. Aristotle considered the origin and goals of the state without any connection with the divine will:

A society consisting of several villages is a completely completed state, which has reached, one might say, a fully self-sufficient state and arose for the needs of life, but exists for the sake of achieving a good life... From all that has been said, it is clear that the state belongs to what exists by nature , and that man by nature is a political being...

Thomas Aquinas formalized these “natural” foundations of the state into a sophisticated theory of natural law, by which he understood the law of universal and human nature, acting without intervention from above. The concept was not new, but in the person of Thomas Aquinas it received a new impetus in the history of European thought, retaining its relevance to this day. At the same time, Thomas Aquinas borrowed from Aristotle the concept of “evolution” and the concept of “real” - not identical to ideal images of reality. From this he concluded that “the law can with good reason be changed if the living conditions of people change and this requires different laws,” thereby recognizing the possibility of improving laws and, accordingly, political and social conditions. During the Renaissance, people began to purposefully use this theoretical opportunity to develop social and political “technologies.”

The concept of natural law was, of course, quite applicable to religious thought, as Thomas Aquinas demonstrated. For him there was no fundamental opposition between nature and grace. “Grace,” wrote Thomas, “does not eliminate nature, but perfects it.” At the end of the XIII - beginning of the XIV century. The publicists of Philip IV, who gave new content to political disputes with the help of the concept of natural law and the Aristotelian theory of the state, were able to undermine the position of the papacy to an extent that previous apologists of imperial power had never been able to do. From now on, the state began to act as a rational and at the same time moral force, completely independent of the papacy, and the church, this “mystical body,” “assembly of the faithful,” could even be considered something completely subordinate to the state.

These ideas took time to develop, and in their most radical versions they did not immediately gain influence. But for the first time since the 11th century, that is, with the beginning of the movement for church reform, the papacy and the church as a whole had to take a defensive position in the intellectual sphere.

In Byzantium, Western Christianity was always considered primitive and crude, suitable only for a backward, semi-barbarian society. And indeed, starting from the 12th century, as Western society grew richer, became more urbanized and educated, new religious trends began to be felt in Europe, which could hardly have pleased the church and the feudalized bishops and abbots drawn into the system of secular power. The Cluny and Cistercian movements were outlets for those who wanted to escape everyday life, and the incredible popularity of pilgrimages and crusades provided an outlet for the aspirations of those ordinary people who could not find an answer from the parish priests. But the matter was not limited to these movements.

In growing cities, new needs gave rise to new religious movements, united by the desire to give religious experience greater personal expression. This could be achieved either by a truly Christian way of life, or, as was suitable for most ordinary people, by observing, imitating and warmly approving of such a way of life.

The most famous of these movements, which very quickly gained wide popularity, was the Franciscan movement. St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2-1226), the son of a rich merchant, renounced all his property and began to live and preach in complete poverty, subsisting on alms. The beginning of St. Francis, approved by Pope Innocent III, despite the opposition of more conservative cardinals, from the very beginning caused a lot of criticism, since the Franciscan brothers lived “in the world,” among the people (unlike other monks who lived in comfortable monasteries).

As soon as it appeared, the Franciscan movement attracted new supporters with exceptional success and achieved popular recognition. Many generations of ordinary people observed with regret the secularization of the church and the craving of the highest clergy, including the abbots of the largest monasteries, for ostentatious luxury. The call to return to the poverty, simplicity and pure spirituality of the early church became one of the most effective propaganda tools that supporters of imperial power used against the papacy. Finally, both men and women united in the ranks of the Franciscans: the women's order of the Mendicant Clarisses was founded by St. Clara, noble lady of Assisi and great admirer of Francis. At the head of the movement was a great saint who lived a truly Christian life: according to stories, Francis developed stigmas, bloody sores in the places where the wounds of Christ were inflicted on the cross. St. Bonaventure, general of the order from 1257 to 1274, wrote about this: “He became like Christ, crucified not by bodily pain, but by the attitude of mind and heart.”

A few years after the death of Francis, a collection of stories about his life and the lives of his followers, entitled “The Flowers of St. Francis."

A typical example of the narratives included is the story of Brother Bernard.

Since Saint Francis and his comrades were called and chosen by God to bear in their hearts and deeds and preach with their lips the Cross of Christ, they seemed and were people crucified in everything that concerns their deeds and harsh life; therefore, out of love for Christ, they were more eager to endure shame and reproach than to accept the honors of the world, or bows, or empty praises. They even rejoiced at insults and grieved at honors, and so walked through the world like strangers and strangers, carrying within themselves only the crucified Christ... It happened at the beginning of the Order that Saint Francis sent Brother Bernard to Bologna, so that there he would bear fruit to God... And Brother Bernard, for the sake of of his obedience... he went and reached Bologna. And the teenagers, seeing him in poor and unusual clothes, subjected him to much ridicule and many insults, like a madman. And Brother Bernard patiently and joyfully endured everything out of love for Christ; even for the sake of greater reproaches, he deliberately positioned himself in the city square... and for many days in a row he returned to the same place to demolish such things...

The rich and wise judge was so fascinated by the holiness of Brother Bernard that he gave him a house for the needs of the order.

And he said to Brother Bernard: If you want to found a monastery in which you could serve God, then I, for the sake of saving my soul, will willingly provide you with a place... The said judge with great joy... led Brother Bernard into his house and then gave him the promised place and at his own expense he adapted it and built it... Then Saint Francis, having heard about everything in order, about the acts of God revealed through Brother Bernard, thanked God, who thus began to multiply the poor and the disciples of the Cross, and then sent some of his comrades to Bologna and Lombardy , and they established many monasteries in various places.

This short story highlights the psychological background of the spread of Franciscanism, but at the same time does not leave aside the fundamental dilemma facing the “mendicant” religious organizations: after all, in this case, the order was donated property. Soon heated debates broke out between two movements of Franciscans - the “spiritual” brothers, who demanded an absolute renunciation of property, and the “conventuals,” who recognized common property, with the help of which one could more successfully engage in scientific research and preaching. At the beginning of the 14th century. The popes spoke out against the “spirituals,” and many of them were even subjected to severe persecution for their views, which, in the not unreasonable opinion of their enemies, could serve as a justification for movements of popular protest.

Around the same time that St. Francis of Assisi founded his order, the Spaniard St. Dominic (c. 1170–1221) laid the foundation for the “order of preachers” - the “Dominicans”, or “black brothers”. Like the Franciscans, they were also mendicant monks who lived on alms, but, unlike the first, they considered their main task to be preaching and fighting heresies, for which they earned the nickname “dogs of the Lord” (lat. domini canes). By the middle of the 13th century. representatives of two mendicant orders - the Franciscans and the Dominicans - occupied the chairs of theology in many universities. The papacy, to which these orders were directly subordinate, found in them a new powerful weapon.

Although the Franciscans and some other orders had sections for women, medieval society, with its ethical stereotypes, was convinced that life in an order with strict rules was attractive only to a very few women, mainly from the upper classes. A specifically female religiosity required a different style, which was embodied by the communities of Beguines - women who lived in relative poverty and practiced prayer, but did not take monastic vows. Beguine communities were especially numerous in the Rhineland and the Netherlands; a fine example of one of the beguinage houses (beguinage) survives in Bruges (modern Belgium).

Despite their efforts to offer the laity a new, spiritually richer model of piety, the new orders were still unable to satisfy all the needs of religious life. The desire for in-depth and personal forms of religious experience began in the 12th century. find expression in heresies. Heresies arose in various parts of Europe and took a wide variety of forms. Quite often it was possible to deal with them by combining persuasion and intimidation. But the Cathars (translated from Greek as “pure”; sometimes they were called Albigenses after the city of Albi in Southern France) turned out to be impregnable. They professed the dualism of “good” and “evil” as two independent principles: the material world was for them the embodiment of evil, and Christ was a simple angel. This teaching completely broke with the traditional foundations of the Christian faith and the authority of the Catholic Church. The Cathars led an extremely strict life, which was nevertheless attractive to many, since not all adherents of the sect had to observe strict fasts and obey marriage prohibitions. In addition, the Cathars were patronized by many rulers in Southern France and Northern Italy.

By the beginning of the 13th century. The Cathar movement acquired such alarming proportions that Innocent III decided to put an end to it. However, the measures that the pope imagined as a new conversion of heretics quickly turned into a crusade, which, due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, united the fanaticism of the masses and the personal interests of the French nobility and the king. The Count of Toulouse and other noble feudal lords of the south lost their property and lands; several cities were destroyed and their inhabitants killed. Although the Cathar heresy ceased to exist as a broad movement, other heresies continued to emerge as the social and psychological conditions that favored their emergence persisted. Worst of all, the Albigensian Crusade left a legacy of religious fanaticism and a policy of destruction justified on religious grounds. Of course, this was characteristic of all crusades to one degree or another, but now they have moved to the heart of Europe.

It must be admitted that the papacy tried to streamline its relations with heretics, even in a civilized form. For this purpose, the Inquisition was created - a church tribunal whose task was to determine whether a person held heretical views. Dominicans especially often acted as inquisitors, who traveled everywhere, looking for heretics, and soon also sorcerers and witches. Among the inquisitors there were many people of high and humane convictions who sincerely sought to return the “lost” to the fold of the church. But the Inquisition also attracted other people - fanatical, self-righteous, greedy and ambitious; therefore, the bad reputation attached to it in most cases was completely deserved.

Probably nowhere were the noted features of the Inquisition more clearly manifested than in the liquidation of the religious knightly order of the Templars, founded in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 12th century. to protect Christian pilgrims and fight infidels. In gratitude, popes and kings granted the Templars extensive ecclesiastical privileges and enormous wealth. The order used these riches to create international banking and trading systems, providing credit and financial services to the kings of France and other rulers. It is not surprising that the Templars made many enemies. Philip IV the Fair decided that by destroying the Templars, he could achieve political popularity and financial gain. Therefore, in 1307, he suddenly ordered the capture of all the Templars in France, and then handed them over to the Inquisition. Under terrible torture, the inquisitors extracted confessions of heretical beliefs, depraved life and ritual murders from the Templars. A well-organized propaganda campaign - the first of its kind since the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire - convinced French society of the Templars' guilt. The order was liquidated; the French crown confiscated his vast property, and the papacy suffered another defeat, since the weak Pope Clement V was unable to protect the order. Needless to say, all the charges were fabricated. However, Philip IV and the inquisitors found a means to stir up latent unrest in European society - unrest that, over the centuries, bore its bitter fruit in the form of persecution of Jews, witches, heretics, and ultimately religious civil wars.

In medieval Europe, Jews were the only religious minority who, at least officially, were allowed to practice a non-Christian religion: popes and Christian theologians made very clear statements about this. But in practice, the attitude towards Jews differed sharply from the established norm and varied depending on the area and time. The barbarians invading Europe were generally very tolerant of Jews, but the Visigothic kings of Spain in the 7th century. issued special laws against the Jews and turned their subjects against them.

The Carolingian era, primarily referring to the boundaries of the Carolingian Empire itself, was much more favorable: Jews at that time performed a lot of useful functions as merchants, financiers and generally educated people, representing a kind of international elite, whose services were widely recognized. In England at the end of the 12th century. There were about 2,500 Jews, that is, 0.1% of the total population. In Southern Italy and Spain the Jewish colonies were much larger. In the XIV century. in Castile, according to modern estimates, the number of Jews ranged from 20 to 200 thousand. In Southern Europe, the cultural role of Jews was especially significant: they acted as intellectual and linguistic intermediaries between Arabs and Christians, thereby increasing their status.

Since the 12th century. The economic development of Europe and the spread of craft skills allowed Christians to take over some of the functions of the Jews, and the Jews, with historical inevitability, came to be perceived as increasingly hated competitors. These sentiments coincided with the spread of new religious aspirations, and Jews were now perceived as enemies of Christ par excellence. In the 12th century. stereotyped charges of ritual murders and other heinous crimes were fabricated; in addition to this, Jews were prohibited from owning land. With rare insight, Abelard put the following words into the Jew’s mouth:

For us, only usury remains, so we support our mortal existence by taking interest from strangers, and this makes us hated by them... Anyone who causes us any harm considers it to be a matter of the greatest justice and the greatest sacrifice before the Lord.

The Christian kings of Europe declared the Jews their property: they used, exploited, but also protected them. However, when mass discontent with the Jews became too strong (in the 13th century, members of the mendicant orders showed particular zeal in fanning such passions, considering the existence of Jews, the “killers” of Christ, an insult to the faith), the kings, without the slightest remorse, handed them over to be torn to pieces. In 1290, Edward I expelled the Jews from England, and the French kings, having expelled the Jews in 1306, readmitted them in 1315, and then expelled them again in 1322.

It is obvious to the modern historian that by 1200 the true spirit of the Crusades, whatever its original defects, had completely died out. But in those days it was not so clear: for almost another hundred years people continued to go on crusades and fought bravely in the Holy Land, and in the middle of the 15th century. and later plans were made in earnest for the return of Jerusalem.

Because of this, the desire of the papacy, which was at the zenith of its power, to regain the initiative in organizing the crusade looked extremely natural. The moment seemed favorable to Innocent III when, after the death of Emperor Henry VI (1197), all the great kings of Western Europe were too busy fighting internal claimants to the throne or wars with each other to think about leading a crusade, as was the case under Barbarossa, Louis VII and Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade. In addition, the First Crusade was led by the Church without the participation of kings, and it turned out to be the most successful of the expeditions to the East. This time, as a hundred years ago, the real command was again taken over by the French, Dutch and Italian nobility, but now the leaders knew that the journey by land was too grueling, and agreed with the Italian port cities to move by sea.

In 1202, most of the crusaders gathered in Venice. There were much fewer of them than expected, and they could not pay the “travel” amount of money that the Venetian Republic insisted on. Then the old and almost blind Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo proposed that, in return for full payment, the crusaders would help Venice recapture the Dalmatian port of Zadar, captured from the Venetians by the Hungarian king in 1186. Part of the clergy began to protest: the king of Hungary was a Catholic and he himself took the cross in his hands. Innocent III hesitated; but when he nevertheless prohibited the operation under pain of excommunication, the crusaders had already taken Zadar and were thus subject to excommunication.

The situation could still be corrected, but then the crusaders were drawn into Byzantine affairs. Ever since Emperor Augustus founded the Roman Empire, succession has been one of the weakest links in the political system. For many centuries, attempts were made to overcome this weakness by establishing dynastic succession or appointing co-rulers under the reigning emperors. However, in most cases such methods were ineffective. For example, during the reign of Emperor Manuel I (1143–1180), a representative of the once brilliant Komnenos dynasty, a series of weak rulers began, civil wars and usurpations of power began. In 1195, Isaac II Angelos was overthrown by his brother Alexios III and then, according to Byzantine tradition, imprisoned and blinded. When the crusaders were in Zadar, the son of Isaac, also Alexei, the son-in-law of Philip of Swabia, the German king from the Hohenstaufen dynasty, came to their camp and asked for help against the usurper Alexius III. As a reward, he promised a huge sum of 200 thousand silver marks (the Venetians demanded 85 thousand for transporting the crusaders), Byzantine participation in the crusade and the subordination of the Greek Church to Rome.

In this situation, part of the clergy, primarily the Cistercians, and some barons opposed the campaign against the Christian city, and almost half of the crusaders chose to go home. But those who remained found Alexei’s proposals unusually attractive. Historians have long debated whether the change in the purpose of the crusade was the result of a conspiracy organized by Tsarevich Alexei, the Venetians and ancient opponents of Byzantium, representatives of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Norman families, or the result of an unforeseen combination of circumstances. But, in any case, Dandolo and the Venetians purposefully pursued the political and commercial interests of their republic, and the pope, torn by conflicting feelings - the hope of a brilliant prospect for the unification of churches and the horror of a possible attack by the crusaders on Constantinople - was again late with his ban.

As soon as the crusaders appeared at the walls of Constantinople, events began to unfold with the fatal inevitability of a classical tragedy. Alexei III fled, and the blind Isaac II and his son, now Alexius IV, were proclaimed emperor and co-emperor. But they were completely unable to either pay the crusaders the huge sum they were promised, or to persuade the majority of the Greek clergy to submit to Rome. According to the stories of the crusaders, the Greek Archbishop of Corfu sarcastically remarked: he knows only one reason for the possible primacy of the Roman See - that it was the Roman soldiers who crucified Christ. Relations between the crusaders and the Greeks rapidly deteriorated. The crusaders remembered, or were prudently reminded, that in 1182 the Constantinople mob captured the Latin quarter of the city: then, according to reports, 30 thousand Latin Christians were killed. In the spring of 1204, open war began, and on April 12 the crusaders stormed Constantinople. At night, some of the soldiers, fearing a Byzantine counter-offensive, began to set fire to houses. Geoffroy de Villehardouin, one of the leaders of the campaign and its chronicler, tells about it this way:

The fire began to spread throughout the city, which soon blazed brightly and burned all night and all the next day until the evening. This was the third fire in Constantinople since the Franks and Venetians came to this land, and more houses were burned in the city than can be counted in any of the three largest cities of the French kingdom.

What didn't burn was looted.

The rest of the army, scattered throughout the city, collected a lot of booty - so much that truly no one could determine its quantity or value. There was gold and silver, tableware and precious stones, satin and silk, clothes made of squirrel and ermine fur, and in general all the best that could be found on earth. Geoffroy de Villehardouin confirms with these words that, as far as he knows, such abundant booty has not been taken in any city since the creation of the world.

The Catholic clergy was mainly engaged in the search for sacred relics. So many of them were brought to France, including the crown of thorns of Christ, that in order to adequately house these treasures, King Louis IX (Saint Louis) decided to build the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. The Venetians, among other booty, received the famous four bronze horses, taken at one time by Emperor Augustus from Alexandria to Rome, and then by Emperor Constantine from Rome to Constantinople. They were placed above the portal of the Cathedral of St. Stamp in Venice.

The French founded the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and a Venetian became its Catholic patriarch. At the appropriate moment, the papal excommunication was lifted from the crusaders and Byzantium. Other Western leaders became kings of Thessalonica, dukes of Athens, or princes of Morea (Peloponnese) - little more than robber states, existing at the mercy of Venice, which exploited them but could not always control them. The Venetians left for themselves Crete, which received the name “Candia,” and a chain of islands in the Aegean Sea that protected trade communications with Constantinople, which from now on completely passed into the hands of the Venetians.

Having taken and destroyed Christian Constantinople, the Catholic “Franks” relatively easily achieved what the German invaders could not achieve in the 4th–5th centuries. and what turned out to be beyond the power of the aggressors of subsequent centuries - the Persians, Arabs and Bulgarians. Innocent III began to regret too late the willfulness and disobedience of the crusaders, their terrible, but quite predictable cruelty and greed in capturing the imperial capital. Now he knew for sure that all chances for a genuine unification of the Latin and Byzantine churches, at least in the foreseeable future, had been irretrievably lost. Modern historians are able to trace the longer-term consequences of these events. The most powerful pope in the history of the Roman Church initiated a well-tested and by then traditional operation for the purely religious purpose of liberating Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher. But almost immediately this movement went out of his control and fell into the hands of people who were guided by a bizarre mixture of motives, mixed to one degree or another with the thirst for enrichment and the desire for conquest, seasoned with a bit of self-confidence characteristic of those who are convinced that God is on their side. And since all these motives were reinforced by the unsurpassed organizational abilities of the Venetians and the perfection of the military art of the French, the crusaders turned out to be irresistible. It was these abilities and skills that ensured the success of the Fourth Crusade, and they were the same in the future - from the end of the 15th to the middle of the 20th century. – the success of Europeans in subjugating or controlling much of the world. But it was no longer the popes and the church who carried out this expansion and reaped its fruits, but the states of New Europe.

In the 13th century. it was difficult to predict future developments. Political and economic activity was not always combined with military qualifications. The new rulers of the feudal states in Greece and Thrace were at war with each other and could not protect their subjects from renewed attacks by the Bulgarians. On the other hand, in Epirus (Western Greece) and Anatolia, parts of the Byzantine Empire survived, now existing as independent states. In 1261, one of their armies suddenly captured Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire was restored under the rule of the Palaiologan dynasty. The trade privileges of the Venetians went to their rivals, the Genoese.

Western Europe did not accept this outcome; One after another, plans arose for the return of Constantinople. The greatest danger to the Byzantines was the expedition of Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX, who defeated the heirs of Emperor Frederick II in Southern Italy and received the crown of Naples and Sicily from the hands of the pope. Charles's preparations were already in full swing when the Sicilians rebelled against the French occupation. On Easter Monday 1282, at the signal of the evening bells, they killed 2 thousand French soldiers in Palermo, and then offered the crown of Sicily to the Aragonese king Pedro III. Although Byzantine involvement has never been reliably established, it is at least as likely as the original Venetian plan to change the direction of the Fourth Crusade. However, whether the Sicilian Vespers were planned or not, it proved to be Byzantium's most effective response to the French, who were embroiled in nearly three centuries of war with the Spanish over Southern Italy. I had to say goodbye to hopes of organizing a campaign against Constantinople.

Nevertheless, Byzantium ceased to be a great Mediterranean power and, as often happens in such cases, was unable to control the forces that it itself had brought onto the scene. In 1311, several thousand Catalan and Aragonese mercenaries hired by the Byzantines captured the Duchy of Athens. The ancient classical buildings of the Acropolis - the Propylaea and the Parthenon - became, respectively, the palace of the Spanish Duke and the Church of St. Mary. Of all the "Latin" rulers of late medieval Greece, the Spaniards were probably the most greedy and, without a doubt, the most organized. The Spanish knights became large landowners and opened up new trade opportunities for merchants from Genoa and Barcelona. As if trying to emphasize its detachment from the previous spirit of the Crusades, the Duchy of Athens in 1388 entered into an alliance with the Florentine banking house of Acciaiuoli. The alliance of land-grabbing barons and capitalist merchants, which had first proved its strength in 1204, again demonstrated the highest efficiency.

If 1204 marked a milestone in the triumph of cynicism and the creation of a new military-commercial alliance, not everyone in Europe approved of this path. It may be recalled that almost half of the participants in the Fourth Crusade abandoned the war against Constantinople. However, some of them, for example Count Simon de Montfort, went on another crusade - against the Albigenses. Moreover, in 1212, crusading fervor gripped the youngest: thousands of teenagers, essentially still children, mainly from the Rhineland and Lorraine, left their homes to follow the equally young preachers. They were taught that they, unarmed and sinless, would succeed where adult warriors had failed or allowed themselves to be diverted from their goal. Church authorities tried to curtail this movement, but due to mass enthusiasm they were forced to retreat. However, no miracle happened. Thousands of children died at sea or were sold into slavery, and those lucky enough to return home became objects of ridicule. It was most convenient to explain this catastrophe by saying that the children were led astray by the devil.

Innocent III also did not remain aloof from the events: shortly before his death (1216), he organized another crusade, the fifth in a row, which was supposed to be under the supervision of the papal legate so that there would not be another “deviation” from the goal. This campaign, directed against the Damietta fortress in the Nile Delta, pursued a strategically sound goal: to defeat the most powerful enemy of Christians - Egypt. The military operations themselves, which lasted from 1219 to 1221, were initially successful, but ultimately failed. Contemporaries spoke with indignation about the excessive interference of the papal legate in military and diplomatic decisions.

Since then, popes have ceased to play a central role in organizing the crusades. In 1228, Emperor Frederick II sailed to Palestine, being under papal excommunication, as he set out very late. The following year, he concluded a treaty for the return of Jerusalem with the Egyptian Sultan. Still excommunicated, Frederick entered the Holy City and assumed the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. What the crusaders failed to do, shedding streams of blood with the papal blessing, Frederick achieved without any war and under the papal curse. But for all his consciously anti-papal position, he was not such a representative of the new era of militant capitalism as Doge Dandolo and his French allies. Rather, the emperor believed that, by virtue of his position, he possessed some kind of divine power, and the newly acquired crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem only strengthened him in this confidence. When the emperor returned to Italy, the local Christian barons were, as they say, “on horseback,” but in 1244 they managed to lose Jerusalem again.

The last two great crusades were organized by the king of France. In 1248, under the leadership of Louis IX, significant military forces moved against Egypt, with the goal of shaking the foundations of Muslim power. But the French were too far removed from their bases; Louis was defeated and captured (1250). It seemed that all was lost, but at that moment the Mamelukes overthrew the Egyptian Sultan. The Mamelukes were an army of white slaves, mostly Turks; the formation of such an army by a ruler who did not have other military forces was fraught with his overthrow and loss of power. The Mamelukes took over Egypt and ruled it until they themselves were conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517. However, in fact, the power of the Mamelukes in Egypt remained until 1798, when the young general Napoleon Bonaparte inflicted a final defeat on them in the “Battle of the Pyramids.” In 1250, Saint Louis used a political coup to negotiate the release of his army. He took her to Palestine and in four years returned not only Jerusalem, but also most of the cities and fortresses that the crusaders had previously owned. In 1254 he returned to France.

Louis IX's crusade was, against all expectations, at least partially successful. But the king's last crusading endeavor ended in disaster. In 1270 he sailed to Tunisia, possibly at the request of his brother Charles of Anjou, who had shortly before become king of Sicily. In Tunisia, the king and most of his army died from the plague. In 1291, Acre, the last stronghold of the Crusaders, surrendered to the Egyptian Mamelukes. The Europeans made their next, and again unsuccessful, attempt to establish themselves in the Levant only at the end of the 18th century.

The only place where Christians managed to prevail over Muslims was Spain. It was here in the middle of the 13th century. Christian arms achieved their greatest victories. The kings of Aragon conquered Valencia and captured the island of Mallorca; The Portuguese occupied the Algravi, and Portugal acquired its modern borders. But the greatest successes were achieved by Castile, which conquered most of the Al-Andalus region (Andalusia, the heart of Muslim Spain) up to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Only the Kingdom of Granada, a relatively small territory in the southeast, remained an independent Muslim state.

For Andalusia and its inhabitants, the Christian conquest turned out to be a real disaster. Under the Muslims, it was a highly developed area with a significant urban population. Now many skilled artisans and farmers were forced to flee or lost their property. The warriors from the north did not know how to make wine or grow fruits and olives, which the Mauritanians successfully did. Over time, significant areas turned into pastures, and a few large feudal lords and military orders of knighthood began to own huge estates. It is these lords who determine the social and political life of Southern Spain to this day.

There was no such population movement in the eastern kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia. Muslim residents remained here; they no longer dominated either the economy or the culture, but largely retained their originality, which was almost impossible to assimilate, even if they formally converted to Christianity. For three and a half centuries this circumstance left its mark on Spanish history; For the Spaniards, it created problems similar to those that ethnic and religious movements of national minorities create for us today.

Christians and Muslims considered each other mortal enemies and equally hated Jews. But these three cultures emerged from the same Hellenistic and Semitic traditions; they all recognized the Bible as a holy book, prayed to one God, and the educated elite sought to expand their horizons by exchanging achievements in humanitarian and technical knowledge. Things were completely different with the Mongols. They had nothing in common with Christian traditions, and it was probably for this reason that the inhabitants of the Christian world did not take them any seriously, except, of course, for those who, by misfortune, found themselves in their path.

The Mongols were the last nomadic Central Asian people to descend upon the agricultural and urban civilizations of Eurasia; but they acted much more decisively and over immeasurably larger areas than any of their predecessors, starting with the Huns. In 1200, the Mongols lived between Lake Baikal and the Altai Mountains in Central Asia. These were illiterate pagans, traditionally exceptionally skilled warriors. A cruel hierarchy was preserved in the social structure: at its top level there was an “aristocracy” (owners of herds of horses and livestock), to which numerous semi-dependent steppe inhabitants and slaves were subordinate. In general, the Mongols were not much different from other tribes that lived in the vastness of Inner Asia. For almost a thousand years, these peoples - from the Huns to the Avars, Bulgars and various Turkic tribes - demonstrated their ability to defeat the armies of more advanced peoples and create vast amorphous empires or possessions, provided they did not stray too far from the familiar geographical and climatic conditions of the Eurasian steppes .

At the very beginning of the 13th century. An exceptionally gifted leader, Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227), managed to unite the Mongol tribes and then spread his power to the east and west. There is no reason to believe that the Mongols began to move under the influence of some climate changes that had a detrimental effect on grazing. Under the command of Genghis Khan there was an excellently organized and disciplined army; it consisted of mounted archers and had exceptional mobility combined with superior long-range weapons. Genghis Khan himself was distinguished by his amazing ability to adapt to unfamiliar conditions and willingly used Chinese and Muslim-Turkic “specialists” in his army. He organized an excellent “informant service”, and a lot of information was brought to him by merchants of all nationalities and religions, whom he encouraged in every possible way. Genghis Khan also succeeded in the cool, thoughtful use of diplomatic measures and military force according to the circumstances. All these qualities allowed Genghis Khan, his gifted sons, grandsons and military leaders to continuously win victories over yet another enemy. Beijing fell in 1215, although it took the Mongols another fifty years to conquer all of China. The Islamic states east of the Caspian Sea with their rich cities of Bukhara and Samarkand (1219–1220) were conquered much more quickly. By 1233, Persia was conquered and, at about the same time, Korea at the other end of Asia. In 1258 the Mongols took Baghdad; At the same time, the last caliph from the Abbasid dynasty died. Only the Mamelukes managed to defeat the Mongol detachment in Palestine (1260), thereby protecting Egypt from the Mongol invasion. It was a victory comparable to the victory of Charles Martel over the Arabs at Tours and Poitiers, for it marked a turning point in repelling the wave of invasion.

Between 1237 and 1241 the Mongols invaded Europe. Their onslaught, as in Asia, was cruel and terrifying. Having devastated Russia, Southern Poland and a large part of Hungary, in Silesia they destroyed an army of German knights (1241) near the city of Liegnitz (Legnitz), west of the Oder River. Apparently, only problems associated with the choice of Genghis Khan's successor forced the Mongol leaders to turn east after this victory.

Meanwhile, the great rulers of Western Europe - the emperor, the pope and the kings of France and England - were busy sorting out relations and, not taking the Mongol threat seriously, consoled themselves with the reassuring thought that Genghis Khan was the legendary John the Presbyter, or made tempting plans to convert the khan to Christianity. Saint Louis even tried to negotiate with the Mongols about joint actions against Muslims in Syria. The Mongols were not particularly impressed and showed no interest. In 1245, the khan declared to the papal envoy: “From sunrise to sunset, all lands are subject to me. Who would do such a thing against the will of God?”

Can we say that Western and Southern Europe simply escaped the Mongol invasion by luck? Probably possible. The Russians were much less fortunate, and for almost 300 years they were forced to bear all the hardships of the Mongol yoke. However, it is also likely that the Mongols had exhausted their conquering capabilities. Their operations in the tropical rainforests and jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia were unsuccessful, and naval expeditions against Japan and Java ended in complete failure. Although the Mongols had very advanced siege technology, their mounted armies were unlikely to be able to gain the upper hand in Western Europe, with its hundreds of fortified cities and castles. This is doubtful to say the least. The first two generations of Mongol leaders and their successors were overwhelmed by a passion for profit and domination. But even for this last purpose a developed administrative organization was needed, and from the very beginning the Mongols had to adopt such an organization from the conquered but more developed peoples and appoint experienced Chinese, Persians, Turks and Arabs to important posts. The religious beliefs of the Mongols could not compete with the great world religions - Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Not surprisingly, they tried not to delve too deeply into this issue: Marco Polo and other Western travelers who visited the court of the Great Khan noted the Mongols' tolerance and open respect for the religion of strangers. However, even those modern historians who weigh the Mongols can hardly find any justification for their conquests, unless the caravan trade between East and West became more secure, and the Mongol subjects lived in conditions pax mongolica– peace that came after the destruction of all real and potential opponents. Indeed, the Mongol conquests were very reminiscent of those of the Romans, about which their British contemporary said: “They turn everything into a desert and call it peace.”

In the XIV century. rulers of various parts of the Mongol Empire adopted Buddhism or Islam; this meant that in fact they were conquered by the cultures in which they lived - Chinese, Persian or Arab. With the decline of the great caravan routes, which gave way to sea routes, and with the development of new military-commercial states, the era of the great continental nomadic empires came to an end. They gave nothing to humanity and left behind a bad memory everywhere. But the indirect results turned out to be enormous: successive invasions of nomads provoked the migration of other, more sedentary peoples, who in turn defeated the previous ancient civilizations. This is exactly what happened in the 4th–5th centuries. happened with the Germanic tribes that destroyed the Roman Empire in the West, and then with some Turkic tribes that finally destroyed what remained of its eastern part.

Most of the nomadic tribes that invaded the Russian steppes for many centuries first of all sought to find lands where they could roam with herds, and only then to conquer other peoples. The Mongols behaved completely differently. Russian chronicler monks exaggerated their number just as much as Western chronicler monks exaggerated the number of Vikings. But the Mongols did not even have nearly the number of people that could populate the captured lands. The Mongol armies were the vanguard of a great empire that stretched across Asia, and their primary interest was in the conquest of peoples. The Mongols dominated the territory from the lower reaches of the Volga and the northern shores of the Caspian and Black Seas to Kyiv, which they destroyed. Outside this steppe zone, they were content to keep their proteges at the courts of the Russian princes to directly collect tribute or to supervise this process.

Almost from the very beginning of the Mongol conquests in Europe, the khan, or ruler of the western part of the Mongol empire, was virtually independent of the great khan, who remained in distant Mongolia or China. The Khan's residence became the city of Sarai in the lower reaches of the Volga, and perhaps the gilded roof of the Khan's palace gave Europeans a reason to call these Mongols the “Golden Horde.” Russian princes were obliged to visit Sarai, and the title of “Grand Duke” depended on the favor of the khan. The Mongols used the infighting between the Russian princes to consolidate their power, and the princes sought the favor of the Mongols in order to defeat their rivals.

Almost immediately after the Mongol invasion, the prince from the Rurik family, Alexander Nevsky (c. 1220–1263), demonstrated all the advantages of cooperation with the Mongols. As the elected prince of Novgorod, he fought against German and Swedish invaders invading Northwestern Rus', and won a famous victory on the ice of Lake Peipus (1242). A few years later, Alexander denounced his brother, the Grand Duke of Vladimir, to the Mongol Khan, and received the title of Grand Duke as a reward. He then proved himself a loyal ally of the Mongols, suppressing uprisings against the collection of Mongol tribute in Novgorod and throughout Northwestern Rus', perhaps wishing to avoid harsh Mongol reprisals. Alexander's descendants became princes of Moscow and subsequently rulers of all Rus'.

Remembering how the Cid's reputation developed in Spain, we probably should not be surprised that this certainly courageous, but also very ambiguous personality became one of the greatest heroic images of Russian literature and political mythology and in one even surpassed the Cid - Alexander Nevsky was officially canonized in 1547. The Russian Church, like Alexander Nevsky, supported Mongol power. The Mongols of the Golden Horde, who converted to Islam at the end of the 13th century, were generally tolerant of Christianity and rightly viewed the Russian Church as a useful ally. In contrast, the papacy tried to force the arrogant and suspicious Orthodox Church to recognize the primacy of the popes and at the same time encouraged attacks by German knights on the lands of Northwestern Rus'.

Previously, it was generally accepted that the Mongol conquest radically changed Russian traditions and turned Russia from a European country into an Asian one. However, most modern historians are inclined to believe that the Mongol invasion, for all its profound impact on Russian history, is unlikely to have significantly influenced the character of the Russian people and their traditions. To a large extent, the features of the national character were shaped by the Russian Church with its traditional orthodoxy and hostility towards everything foreign, especially towards the Latin Christians, who were hated and feared. But what the Mongols could and did teach the Russian princes were those practical skills in which they showed themselves head and shoulders above the Europeans: methods and techniques for squeezing huge taxes from all classes of the population, methods of organizing and protecting routes of communication crossing vast spaces, and the ability to use enemy military equipment for your own needs.

The fate of the 12th century revival was different from the results of the Carolingian Renaissance, which drowned in the disasters of the 9th–10th centuries. People of the 13th century the ancients were revered no less than their grandfathers; moreover, they had more opportunities to imitate the ancients, since they had a significant number of Greek and Latin texts and could rely on the experience of the previous century. It was in the 13th century. the works of the Spanish-Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Spanish-Muslim philosopher Averroes (1126–1192) spread in the West. Of course, some pedants were horrified by such teaching, but the best minds of Christianity not only valued Maimonides and Averroes for their excellent works on medicine and commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, but also - willingly or unwillingly - respected their opinions on metaphysical and religious questions.

Europe became significantly richer and acquired a higher social and political organization than in earlier times. Now she needed a much larger number of educated people and could support them. It should be noted that educated women were still a rare exception.

Primary education, as in previous centuries, was provided by local schools; rich people could hire private teachers. But higher education could now be obtained exclusively at universities. Universities received rights from kings or popes, and their leaders were allowed to create associations that determined the content of courses and degrees awarded. Only at the famous law school of Bologna did the students themselves organize a university and have the right to choose teachers. By the middle of the 14th century. There were at least fourteen universities in Italy, eight in France, seven each in Spain and Portugal, two in England (Oxford and Cambridge) and only one in Central Europe (Prague). Young people from Germany, Scandinavia and Poland had to go to Bologna, Padua or Paris, and many preferred these universities even after the end of the 14th and 15th centuries. similar educational institutions were opened in their homeland.

Almost all universities, with the exception of Paris and Bologna, were very small: they had only a few buildings and, as a rule, did not have libraries. Books were still extremely expensive, and lecturers had to dictate quotations from major works: the Bible, St. Augustine or the Code of Justinian, accompanying them with comments by famous authors and much less often with their own. Questions that arose during the study of texts were discussed in “debates”, where it was necessary to logically build arguments and counterarguments, formulate definitions and draw conclusions. This was the essence of the “school” method, which gave its name, “scholasticism,” to all late medieval philosophy: for outstanding minds this method, the main features of which were rationality and intellectual culture, was an extremely effective means. In the minds of mediocre people, of course, it sometimes degenerated into naked pedantry and dry exercises in logical definitions. This is exactly how the humanists of the 15th century perceived it, contributing to the fact that the term “scholasticism” acquired a negative connotation.

But in the 13th century. scholasticism and the universities spread rapidly and could offer a small elite an intellectual life much richer and more varied than before. Theological and legal degrees were especially valued; but each student studied for three years the seven "liberal arts": grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. These sciences also had their own authorities. In particular, the English Franciscan Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292) extolled mathematics as the only discipline in which truth could be established without risk of error, and gave a visual representation of all sorts of inventions that then seemed something fantastic; Unlike the modern genre of science fiction, which is busy describing the inventions of the future, Bacon, as a rule, attributed them to the ancients.

I now intend to describe the first works of all kinds of craftsmanship and the wonders of nature, and then explain their causes and properties. There is no magic in them, for all the power of magic seems inferior in comparison with these mechanisms and unworthy of them. And first I will say about what was created by the productive and formative power of craft art alone. Devices for navigation on the sea can do without rowers, so that the largest ships ... can be controlled by a single person, and they sail at a much greater speed than if they had many rowers. In exactly the same way, it is possible to make carts that move without animals and with incredible speed, as, one must think, the chariots, seated with the blades of scythes, on which the ancients fought, moved. In the same way, it is possible to make flying machines, where a person sits inside and rotates some kind of ingenious device, through which skillfully arranged wings flap through the air, like a flying bird... It is also possible to make devices for moving along the bottom of the sea or rivers without any danger. According to the stories of the astronomer Ethicus, Alexander the Great used such devices to study the secrets of the ocean. These things were made in ancient times, and in our times too, and this is certain; the exception is perhaps a flying machine, which I have not seen and do not know a single person who has seen.

An outstanding and at the same time typical representative of scholasticism of the 13th century. was Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). This Dominican professor, who taught in Paris and various schools in Italy, conceived, no more and no less, to unite the Christian faith with nature and reason in one comprehensive system:

Evidence based on authority is a method most suitable for a doctrine of faith, where the starting premises are borrowed from revelation... But with all this, the sacred doctrine also uses the abilities of the human mind - of course, not to substantiate faith, for this would eliminate the very merit of belief, but for in order to clarify some issues of revelation. Since grace does not eliminate nature, but perfects it, then natural reason must obey faith, just as natural love obeys divine love. St. Paul says that all understanding is to serve Christ. Therefore, the sacred teaching also relies on the authority of those philosophers who were able to know the truth with the help of natural reason...

Not all of Thomas Aquinas's contemporaries were ready to accept his conclusions. However, it was impossible to ignore them; representing a fertile ground for discussion and even disagreement, they at the same time testified to a further shift in Christian thought towards rationalism - towards recognition of the natural world and the value of studying it.

While all the intellectual debates of the era, all university teaching, and the vast majority of official documents were conducted in Latin, vernacular languages ​​became increasingly common in historical writings and in all genres of poetry. The French chronicler William of Tyre (c. 1130–1185) wrote the best history of the 12th-century crusades of its time. in Latin. But Geoffroy de Villehardouin (c. 1150–1213) composed his eyewitness account of the Fourth Crusade and the capture of Constantinople in French. This first attempt at prose writing in French served as the exemplary beginning of a long series of outstanding French chronicles and histories. The most famous monument of the historical genre of that era was the “History of Saint Louis” by Sir de Joinville, completed in 1310. Probably its best pages are devoted to the description of Louis’s two crusades, in the first of which Joinville accompanied the king. But the most popular description of Louis IX as an ideal king was:

In the summer, after hearing mass, the king often went to the Bois de Vincennes [near Paris] and sat there, leaning his back against an oak tree and inviting us all to sit next to him. Those who had requests or complaints to him could speak to him freely, without any interference from the governor or any other person. The king directly addressed them and asked: “Does anyone have a matter that needs to be resolved?”, and the one who had the request stood up. Then the king said: “And you all remain silent for now; each of you will be heard, one after the other.” Then he called Pierre de Fontaine and Geoffroy de Villette and said to one of them: “Solve this matter for me.” If he saw that something needed to be corrected in the words of someone who spoke on his own behalf or on behalf of another person, then he himself intervened to achieve the desired decision.

For many centuries, the French ideal of monarchy was fueled by the mystical image of royal power, embodied by Louis IX, but this image is unlikely to have acquired such influence if not for the literary gift of Joinville.

Villehardouin's story has often been called a "heroic poem in prose." At that time, many heroic poems and ancient sagas received their final written version; although they talked about the exploits of former times, these exploits were perceived in a modern way, that is, in the spirit of the life style and basic values ​​of European society of the 13th century. It will suffice to mention the poem “The Song of the Nibelungs,” written by an unknown author c. 1200 in Middle High German. The plot outline of the poem - the actions of the dragon slayer Siegfried, his death at the hands of Hagen, the death of Hagen and the Burgundian Gunther at the hands of the Huns - goes back to the German sagas and legends of the 5th century. The main theme of the poem is the glorification of the highest of medieval knightly virtues - personal loyalty. However, this quality was no longer perceived as Roland’s simple-minded and enthusiastic loyalty to Charlemagne: it was burdened with crimes and tragic events in which the conflict of loyalty involved people. Probably, here you can see a medieval analogue of the hopeless situation of the hero of a Greek tragedy, torn apart by the opposing demands of different laws, a classic example of which is Sophocles' Antigone. These sentiments undoubtedly reflected the self-awareness of the 13th century, which was closely faced with the dilemma of loyalty to the church and state, and, in any case, a hidden criticism of the attitude towards women. The murder of Siegfried, the terrible revenge of Siegfried's wife Kriemhild on his brothers were a direct consequence of the terrible situation in which she was placed as a woman - a situation typical of most of her contemporaries.

The troubadours of Southern France expressed their traditional attitude towards women differently: they avoided excessive drama and placed women at the center of their love poetry. Attention to the feelings of an individual - man or woman - made the poetry of the troubadours the first example of European romantic lyrics.

Love has a high gift -
Witchcraft power.
That in winter, in the cruel frost,
She grew flowers for me.
Howling winds, torrents of rain -
Everything became nice to me.
Here are the new song lines
Light-winged wings flutter.
And love is so tender
And love is so clear
Like ice floes, like spring,
Awakened to life.

Such verses soon became widespread, first in Southern France, Northern Italy, Spain (perhaps even at the Arabic-speaking court of Cordoba), and then throughout Europe.

It was in this lyrical tradition that the most famous medieval French poem, “The Romance of the Rose,” was written (between 1240 and 1280), a lengthy allegorical description of courtly love. The second part of the poem is replete with long inserted short stories, which display the hypocrisy of the mendicant brothers and other famous characters of the era, the hypocrisy of the institutions and values ​​of that time. Criticism of social and moral vices became one of the most characteristic features of European society.

The history of architecture shows in detail how the Gothic style (the name “Gothic” itself appeared only in the Renaissance and served as a synonym for the barbarian style) consistently, step by step, developed from new techniques for constructing pointed vaults with intersecting surfaces. In combination with pointed arches, this technique allowed architects to increase the height of the church, but in turn required the creation of arched buttresses that compensated for the pressure of the walls and ceiling and at the same time made it possible to make the walls thinner and the window openings more numerous and larger. These are the characteristic technical features of Gothic. But the Gothic masters are not just highly professional builders versed in mathematics and mechanics; they were artists who, using new technology, created one of the most original building styles in world history. In their hands, supporting structures, pointed vaults and columns turned into an artistic means of organizing internal space. Arched buttresses - structural elements of strengthening the walls - were also deliberately used to highlight the rhythmic three-dimensional dynamics of the building's structure, its upward thrust. This architectural originality was emphasized by the abundance of sculpture, usually human figures, sculpted with an almost classical sense of idealized realism. The huge windows were covered with colored stained glass (their best examples are, perhaps, in the cathedrals of Chartres and Bourges), which created amazing lighting in the interiors with soft, muted colors that changed depending on the time of day. The stained glass windows, whose magnificent color palette could compete even with the amazing Byzantine mosaics, depicted the world of God in a completely realistic manner - with its angels, saints, people, animals and flowers.

It is not surprising that some architects and their patrons, inspired by their successes and somewhat overestimating them, began to demand the impossible from the magical new technology. They raised the ceilings of the naves higher and higher, achieving the best spatial and lighting effects; as a result, ceilings collapsed in some churches in Europe. The most famous disaster is the destruction of the choir of the cathedral in Beauvais (Northern France): the nave, built to a height of 48 m, collapsed in 1284. It took almost forty years to restore it, and since then the masons began to work with great care. In the Cologne Cathedral, the archivolts of the vaults were conceived at almost the same height (45 m), but they were completed only in the 19th century.

Some historians have previously tried to interpret Gothic architecture as an exquisite symbolic language and looked for semantic parallels in it to scholasticism. Now there is no doubt that many details of Gothic buildings, and especially their decoration, were indeed endowed with symbolic meaning. Of course, this is quite difficult to identify on the scale of the architectonics of the entire building; we do not have such comprehensive evidence of that time as we have for Renaissance architecture. But in any case, it is fair to assume that the architects of the 13th–14th centuries. and their church patrons, being educated people, had an idea of ​​the prevailing philosophical belief of the era about the harmony of the universe and all the creations contained in it. Even images of the Creator in the image of an architect have reached us, holding one of the indispensable attributes of this profession - a compass.

The Gothic style quickly spread from France to England, Germany and Spain; only Italy resisted his temptations for some time. Such a rapid spread was primarily explained by the fact that the best architects with their teams, mostly French, participated in the construction everywhere; The international apprenticeship system was also important, attracting promising young people into the lodges of the great masters, just as young scientists sought to join the circle of the best teachers at the major universities. Architects could now learn from drawings or from current collections of “standard” designs, as well as from detailed designs of actual buildings. These projects were worked out so carefully that on their basis in the 19th century. It turned out to be possible to complete the cathedrals in Cologne and Ulm with absolute certainty.

However, a more important reason for the wide spread of the Gothic style and its extraordinary longevity (in continental Europe until the mid-16th century, in England until the 18th century) was its obvious aesthetic and religious appeal. In its various forms, depending on the region and era, the Gothic style continued to satisfy the needs of many generations of believers. Only this circumstance can explain the number and size of Gothic cathedrals and churches built throughout Europe since the 13th century. Indeed, neither the value system nor the priorities of European society underwent fundamental changes compared to the 11th–12th centuries: a significant part of the surplus product still continued to be spent on acts of piety, wars and the construction of cathedrals and castles.

The thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were a time of rapid development. The European population became larger than ever before and continued to grow. The majority still lived in poverty, but in the cities and even in many villages life took on, at least for certain, albeit small, strata, richer and more varied forms. People constantly improved their skills - in the technical, intellectual, military spheres, and these acquired skills quickly spread, which, in turn, was expressed in the growth of local prosperity. This growth, as well as the division of labor, against the backdrop of the development of communications and a much more intensive movement of people and ideas, led to increasing self-sufficiency of individual regions of Europe. Many outstanding works of literature appeared in national languages ​​- in Spain and Iceland, Italy and Germany, and above all in France.

Within the framework of the dominant Gothic style, the architecture of cathedrals and castles increasingly acquired a local flavor. The papacy reached the highest point of its power as an international institution and defeated the Holy Roman Empire, which had the same universal claims, but in turn was forced to yield to national monarchies.

It was at this time that the “international” era of the Middle Ages ended. The outstanding philosopher of history Arnold Toynbee considered this era to be a turning point, when the historical development of European society took a tragically perverse direction, the result of which was almost inevitably bound to be the final collapse of European society. However, apparently, there are much more reasons in favor of the fact that the reason for the departure from universalism lies not in the perverse, but, on the contrary, in the extremely successful development of European society. The universalism of the mature Middle Ages, which, as we have seen, was based on the transnational communication of only a small stratum of educated and qualified people - such universalism could be maintained in Europe only under conditions of economic stagnation and intellectual stagnation. But this would cross out all the dynamic possibilities of the society that arose from the fusion of barbarian tribes with the developed civilization of the late Roman Empire. The merits of the “international sector” of medieval society include economic and cultural growth, which contributed to the regionalization of Europe (and thereby undermined the roots of universalism). In turn, regionalization played the role of a new dynamic element: it expanded the possibilities and intensity of competition, thus forcing the sacrifice of tradition in favor of rationality and ingenuity. It was these processes that by the end of the 15th century. gave Europeans technical, military and political superiority over the indigenous peoples of America, Africa and much of Asia, who were subjugated and partially enslaved. But the Europeans also had to pay for this: they were forced to come to terms with the collapse (during the Reformation) of their cherished ideal of a united Christian world, and the European states, by the inevitable course of events, found themselves involved in wars among themselves (since each of them laid claim to universal dominion, befitting only churches). The successes and tragedies of human history are not so easy to separate.

CharlesMarx(1818-1883). The structure of human society consists of an economic base and a political, legal, cultural superstructure. It is the method of production of material life that determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general, and not the individual abilities or consciousness of a person, which are formed by society. Each stage of development of human history has its own type of economy, and if we know it well, we will be able to correctly characterize the cultural, legal and political relations corresponding to this type of economy. Thus, on the one hand, people’s consciousness depends on social existence and its main part - material production. On the other hand, society and human relationships have been formed over the centuries as a result of human actions and a person is able to change circumstances, is able to change society itself with the power of his consciousness.

The history of human society in Marxism begins with savagery and barbarism, with primitiveness based on public property and collecting technology. Then follows an exploitative civilization familiar with productive technology, which already receives a surplus product and is antagonistic in nature, because in it two classes are at enmity with each other - the exploiters and the exploited. In it, on the basis of such a form of ownership as slavery and the division of people into those who own and those who do not own land, slaveholding and feudal socio-economic formations develop, and on the basis of the capitalist form of ownership of the means of production and control over trade and Through the banking of the bourgeois class, a capitalist socio-economic formation develops. The working class creates surplus product. After the working masses take control of the means of production during the revolution, a socialist socio-economic formation will emerge on the basis of the socialist form of ownership, which should result in a new civilization - communist. It is the completion of the history of human society and is based on the social form of property and the freedom of a universally developed individual, for whom work is a vital necessity.

Labor is vital for a person, it is his essential “ancestral” trait, because in the process of labor the person himself is formed directly, realizing his abilities and qualities. However, during work activity there is alienation of man from nature, since he uses natural forces for the purpose of survival and ceases to feel like a part of it. In the era of capitalism, another type of alienation is added - alienation of labor. The worker does not own the products of his labor. Not only the worker, his personality, but also human relationships are subject to “reification.” Alienation of labor leads to the fact that a person evaluates himself as labor power, which is exchanged for wages and has a certain value in the market. He may perceive his friend as a competitor, and here we are already faced with the problem of a person’s alienation from other people. Further we can talk about the alienation of a person from himself. This happens when a person perceives work as a burden in an exploitative civilization. Man turns into a slave of things, while remaining their creator.

The orientation of a person’s consciousness towards the possession of things, money, any material values, in other words, towards the consumption of material goods, leads to the degradation of a person and makes his spiritual world limited. Marx named private property as the main cause of alienation, the alienation of labor. It does not allow the worker, of his own free will and conscious decision, to keep the product produced, because the means of production are privately owned by the capitalist. Therefore, the only way to eliminate exploitation was recognized to be the destruction of private property and the introduction of state property with the help of a revolution prepared by the working class. In new creative work for themselves, for the benefit of communist society, the proletarians will become creative individuals. This attitude to work will greatly increase its efficiency, which will make it possible to reach a high level of material production, which will provide the vast majority of human needs and will help allocate free time for self-improvement.

Culture is one of the components of the superstructure, together with the state, ideology, and thinking. It is understood as a process and a set of results of human activity in all spheres of existence and consciousness. It is created by a person for whom nature does not genetically lay down his life program. Therefore, a person is formed under the influence of the culture of the society in which he is located, i.e. the culture that he himself creates. In a socio-economic formation, a person can realize himself, his qualities, and abilities in different ways, since social institutions change historically and make different demands on members of society in the process of its development.

Thus, for Marxism, culture becomes not only a problem of spiritual self-improvement, but also a problem of creating all the conditions for human development of culture. However, culture as a process of objective-material and spiritual production, development and use of accumulated experience and knowledge, always takes place in specific socio-historical conditions, the direction of change of which is set by the economic basis. Owning or not owning property divides society and leads to its social stratification. Each social layer and class defends its right to own property in the means of production, one - defending itself as the owner, the other - intending to obtain it on the basis of the redistribution of property in society with the help of their beliefs. Systems of beliefs, ideas, ideas are called ideologies. Ideology reflects the aspirations, goals and social interests of the class in power, its cultural level. The remaining “oppressed”, exploited social strata, supporting state structures of power and control, state ideology, thereby express agreement with reality and its structure.

Based on the doctrine of ideology and its class character, V. I. Lenin (1870-1924) developed concept of two cultures in every national culture that existed in an exploitative civilization. One culture is the culture of the exploiting class, the culture of masters and masters, and the other is the culture of workers who were in an oppressed and humiliated position. This interpretation of culture led to extremes: monuments of palace, park and estate architecture from the era of feudalism and capitalism were not subject to scientific research, since they were considered the legacy of an exploitative society that could not fully meet the needs of the collective and the spiritual development of the individual. It is in culture that the role of the subjective factor is most important and highest; man is the creator of culture.

By the 20th century it was discovered that Mr. property alienates a person from the conditions and results of labor, undermines personal initiative, turning a person into a cog of a state-bureaucratic machine, and society leads to despotism. According to the German philosopher and sociologist M. Weber (1864-1920), in order to understand why social changes occur, one must generally leave the sphere of economics and politics into the broad sphere of human preferences and cultural attitudes. Then it is obvious that the genesis of capitalism lies not in the emergence of private property, but in the Protestant ethnos, in the special cultural and ideological disposition of people that arose in the 16th century. Marxist theory is Eurocentric; it does not work when considering the history of the development of societies of the East and the countries of the North. The periodization of culture raises many objections, since the technological method of production leaves a big imprint on cultural development. One can speak with greater justification about the cultures of agricultural (agrarian), industrial and post-industrial (information and computer) societies than about slaveholding, bourgeois and socialist cultures. Marx also realized this. Recognition of material production as the initial principle for explaining all social and cultural phenomena makes this theory monofactorial and, as a consequence, the historical process unilinear. In Marx's theory, the main attention is devoted to the study of the capitalist formation. Capitalism breaks out of its civilizational context and the civilizational aspect of analysis fades into the background. Marxism's focus on the forces that destroy society has led to an underestimation of the forces of integration, which is especially important when studying national interests in the spiritual world. But civilization at its core is a movement towards integration and curbing destructive social forces.

Non-classical understanding of history. Criticism of Eurocentrism and the idea of ​​comparative morphology of cultures by O. Spengler. Eurocentrism - This is a cultural, philosophical, and worldview concept, according to which Europe is the center of world culture and civilization. She preaches the superiority of European culture over all others and the need to spread it to all regions of the globe. This was seen as the “civilizing mission” of the West, the implementation of which would contribute to the progressive development of all humanity as a whole. Each culture creates its own system of norms and assessments, which allows it to distinguish between culture and lack of culture within it. Historical and graphic data indicate that even in primitive cultures there are achievements, the assimilation of which can enrich European culture.

The development of Europe itself began to cause concern among philosophers and scientists of that time. The course of events did not live up to the hopes that the enlighteners of the 18th century had placed on it. The statement that it is Europe, with its development, that is paving the way for all of humanity leading it to the coming “golden” age, is losing its former obviousness. The ideology of Eurocentrism is criticized and the search for other approaches to understanding the cultural and historical process begins. Concepts are being developed that fundamentally try to embrace culture as an integral organism, understand the laws of its birth, growth and aging, and build a historical typology of cultures. In its most extensive form, criticism of Eurocentrism was embodied in the work of the German philosopher, historian, and cultural scientist Oswald Spengler(1880-1936) “Causality and fate. The Decline of Europe,” published in 1918. Exploring world history, Spengler rejects the established scheme “Ancient World” - “Middle Ages” - “Modern Time,” which, in his opinion, is “incredibly meager and meaningless.” For Spengler, world history represents the alternation and coexistence of different cultures, each of which has a unique soul. Therefore, each culture is an integral organism, all life activities of which are subordinated to a single principle. Each culture lives its own special life. Similar from ­ An efficient human personality, it is born, reaches maturity, grows old and dies. As soon as this happened, Spengler believes, it suddenly becomes numb, its blood coagulates, its strength breaks down - it becomes a civilization and in this form can exist for centuries until it returns again.

The bearers of truly world history are the following 8 great cultures: Egyptian; Indian; Babylonian; Chinese; ancient (Greco-Roman), or “Apollonian”; Arabic, or “magical”; Western European, or “Faustian”; Mayan culture. Spengler identified the “Russian-Siberian” culture as a special type. In their development they go through 3 cycles: pre-cultural, cultural and civilized. The 1st is associated with mythology and religion, the 2nd - with philosophy, science and art, and the 3rd is characterized by the replacement of innovations by the endless replication of once found forms and meanings. The world of culture is always a world correlated with a certain soul . At the heart of this world lies the ancestral symbol, which gives rise to all the wealth of cultural forms; and the culture inspired by it lives, feels, creates. The primordial symbol itself is unrealizable and incomprehensible. The original symbol of Egyptian culture is the road. The road is a symbol of movement not only in space, but also in time. The Egyptian carries with him the memory of the past and concern for the future (the idea of ​​longevity). The primary symbol of ancient culture is material bodies (visible, tangible, existing here and now). They decorated their houses and temples with beautiful statues. The ancestral symbol of ancient culture determines the “Apollonian” artistic style dominant in ancient Greek art. Therefore, Spengler called Greco-Roman culture Apollonian. The ancestral symbol of Arab culture is the cave world. The closed inner world of the “cave” seems full of secrets and mysteries; it excites fantasy and mystical moods. History flows in it cyclically, as if revolving within a given circle. Spengler believed that Arab culture should be called magical. Pre-character zap. culture - infinity, pure boundless space, in which the Europeans’ desire to travel, to search for new lands, new impressions, and new areas of application of strength originates. The desire for infinity is also manifested in the Christian religion. The Christian God is infinite and eternal, infinite wisdom and infinite power. European science is also built on the idea of ​​infinity (Spinoza, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel). The soul of European culture is in a state of dissatisfaction with what has been achieved and constantly strives for the unknown. Spengler symbolically compares it with the image of Goethe's Faust, and therefore calls European culture Faustian. The philosopher also speaks about the peculiarities of Russian culture, defining it as the ancestral symbol of the endless plain.

Spengler was convinced that although culture leaves its mark on history, the use or development of its internal principles is impossible. Cultures are self-sufficient, and therefore dialogue between them is impossible. A person belonging to a certain culture not only cannot perceive other values, but is also unable to understand them. According to Spengler, there is no unity of humanity: there is no single humanity, no single history, no development, no progress. There are only completely dissimilar souls, alien to each other, and the different cultures they create, each of which, having experienced its heyday, fades and, in the end, enters its last stage - civilization.

Spengler contrasts civilization and culture and speaks of the opposition between them. Culture is becoming, and civilization is what has become. Civilization is only the outer material shell of culture. Culture creates diversity, it creates individual uniqueness. Civilization strives for equality, for unification and standard. Culture is elitist and aristocratic, civilization is democratic. Culture is addressed to spiritual ideals and ennobles and elevates the human soul, and civilization provides comfort for the body. What makes a person cultured is his “internal culture,” while a civilized person is a person who has only “external culture,” which consists of observing the norms and rules of decency accepted in a civilized society. Culture is tied to the earth, the kingdom of civilization is the city, since culture is the expression of the soul of a “people fused with the earth,” and civilization is the way of life of the urban population, cut off from the land, pampered by comfort. Culture is national, civilization is international. Culture is associated with cult, myth, religion, civilization. It is created as a result of the transformation of the natural environment and the nature of man himself. Spengler understands culture as creative development, spiritual activity, which he contrasts with civilization as a frozen state of society based on the dominance of material and formal relations.

According to O. Spengler, civilization is a transition from creativity to sterility; the process of attenuation, withering away of culture; her return to oblivion. He argues that civilization seeks to spread to all of humanity, turning the world into one huge city. People's interests are focused on problems of power, violence, money, and meeting material needs; spirituality recedes into the background. Pointing to this, O. Spengler predicts his imminent and inevitable death. A number of aspects of O. Spengler's cultural concept seem problematic. One cannot agree with the thesis about the “impenetrability” of cultures, which asserts that it is impossible to understand other cultures while being in one culture. O. Spengler, a representative of Western culture, describes other cultural worlds, contradicting his statement about their impenetrability. In our time, it has become obvious that a culture that is not in contact with other cultures and does not experience their influence inevitably falls into stagnation. Moreover, his prediction of the approaching fatal end of Western culture in the year 2000 turned out to be unfounded.

The Romanesque style was replaced by a new style, the Gothic, as cities flourished and social relations improved. Religious and secular buildings, sculpture, colored glass, illuminated manuscripts, and other works of fine art began to be executed in this style in Europe during the second half of the Middle Ages. A further cultural stimulus was the growth of cities, centers of trade and crafts. A new phenomenon was urban culture, which gave rise to the Romanesque style. The Romanesque style arose as a strengthening of the authority of the Roman Empire, necessary for royalty and the church. The Romanesque style was best personified by large cathedrals located on hills, as if towering above everything earthly. In their architecture, powerful structures and rational structure, figurative conventions and sophisticated ornamentation are striking.

The attributes of architectural structures made in the Romanesque style are round arches and basilicas, organically connected with towers. Along with the “animal style,” images of humans in biblical scenes are spreading.

Multi-figure sculptural compositions represented the “stone bible” and scenes of the Last Judgment. One of the purposes of Romanesque cathedrals was to intimidate believers. On the portal of one of the cathedrals in France there is an inscription: “Let fear strike here all who are entangled in earthly vices, for their fate is revealed in the horror of these figures!”

In the Middle Ages, architecture occupied a leading place in art. This was caused, first of all, by the urgent need for the construction of temples. The architect had to combine an artist and a highly educated engineer, geometer, and mathematician. Architects were highly respected and highly valued. Outstanding architects, as well as scientists, theologians and philosophers, were called “stone doctors.”

The Gothic style rejects the ponderous, fortress-like Romanesque cathedrals. The attributes of the Gothic style were pointed arches and slender towers rising to the sky. Gothic cathedrals are grandiose structures. Thus, the length of the Reims Cathedral is 138 meters and the height is about forty meters. The vertical composition of the building, the rapid upward thrust of the pointed arches and other architectural structures expressed the desire for God and the dream of a higher life.

Famous Gothic cathedrals still amaze people today; among them, Notre Dame Cathedral, the cathedrals of Reims, Chartres, Lmien, and Saint-Denis are especially famous.

N.V. Gogol (1809-1852) wrote: “Gothic architecture is a phenomenon that has never before been produced by the taste and imagination of man. It contains together: this slender and towering forest of vaults, huge, narrow windows, with countless changes and frames, joined to this terrifying colossality of the masses of the smallest, colorful decorations, this light web of carvings entangling it with its own, entwining it from the foot to the end of the spitz and flying away into the sky with it; grandeur and at the same time beauty, luxury and simplicity, heaviness and lightness - these are virtues that architecture has never, except for this time, contained. Entering the sacred darkness of this temple, it is very natural to feel the involuntary horror of the presence of a shrine that the daring mind of a person does not dare to touch.”

Gothic architecture was a single whole with sculpture, painting, and applied arts subordinate to it.

Particular emphasis was placed on the numerous statues. The proportions of the statues were greatly elongated, the expressions on their faces were spiritual, and their poses were noble.

Gothic cathedrals were intended not only for worship, but also for public meetings, holidays, and theatrical performances. The Gothic style extends to all areas of human life. This is how shoes with curved toes and cone-shaped hats become fashionable in clothing.

Geometry and arithmetic were understood abstractly, through the prism of knowledge of God, who created the world and arranged everything “by measure, number and weight.” The mathematical and physical knowledge required to create grandiose structures had to be of a high level. High practical skills, considerable experience and intuition were also required.

An understanding of the significance of technology is evidenced by the fact that on the reliefs of the facades of Gothic cathedrals an allegorical figure is depicted with attributes symbolizing geometry - a compass, a ruler and a square. The architects were convinced that art without science is “nothing.” The more precise knowledge was required to create an architectural structure, the more it was valued. Artistically, the architects adhered, first of all, to harmony and correct proportions.

Gothic art arose in France around 1140, spread throughout Europe over the next century, and continued to exist in Western Europe throughout much of the 15th century, and in some regions of Europe into the 16th century.

The word Gothic was originally used by writers of the Italian Renaissance as a derogatory label for all forms of architecture and art of the Middle Ages, which were considered comparable only to the works of the barbarian Goths. Later use of the term "Gothic" was limited to the period of the late, high or classical Middle Ages, immediately following the Romanesque.

Currently, the Gothic period is considered one of the outstanding periods in the history of European artistic culture.

The main representative and exponent of the Gothic period was architecture. Although a huge number of Gothic monuments were secular, the Gothic style served primarily the church, the most powerful builder in the Middle Ages, who ensured the development of this new architecture for that time and achieved its fullest realization.

The aesthetic quality of Gothic architecture depends on its structural development: ribbed vaults became a characteristic feature of the Gothic style.

Medieval churches had powerful stone vaults that were very heavy. They tried to open up and push out the walls. This could lead to the collapse of buildings.

Therefore, the walls must be thick and heavy enough to support such vaults. At the beginning of the 12th century, masons developed ribbed vaults, which included slender stone arches located diagonally, transversely and longitudinally. The new vault, which was thinner, lighter and more versatile (since it could have many sides), made it possible to solve many architectural problems. Although early Gothic churches allowed for wide variation in form, the construction of a series of great cathedrals in northern France, beginning in the second half of the 12th century, took full advantage of the new Gothic vault. Cathedral architects have discovered that external thrust forces from vaults are now concentrated in narrow areas at the joints of the ribs, and can therefore be easily counteracted by buttresses and external buttresses. Consequently, the thick walls of Romanesque architecture could be replaced by thinner ones that included extensive window openings, and the interiors received illumination hitherto unparalleled. Therefore, a real revolution took place in the construction business.

With the advent of the Gothic vault, both the design, shape, and layout and interiors of cathedrals changed. Gothic cathedrals acquired a general character of lightness, upward aspiration, and became much more dynamic and expressive. The first of the great cathedrals was Notre Dame (begun in 1163).

In 1194, the cathedral of Chartres was founded, which is considered the beginning of the High Gothic period. The culmination of this era was the Cathedral of Reims (begun in 1210). Rather cold and all-conquering in its finely balanced proportions, Reims Cathedral represents a moment of classical peace and serenity in the evolution of Gothic cathedrals. Openwork partitions, a characteristic feature of late Gothic architecture, were the invention of the first architect of Reims Cathedral. Fundamentally new interior solutions were found by the author of the cathedral in Bourges (begun in 1195). The influence of French Gothic quickly spread throughout Europe: Spain, Germany, England. In Italy it was not so strong.

Sculpture. Following Romanesque traditions, in numerous niches on the facades of French Gothic cathedrals, a huge number of figures carved from stone were placed as decorations, personifying the dogmas and beliefs of the Catholic Church.

Gothic sculpture in the 12th and early 13th centuries was predominantly architectural in nature. The largest and most important figures were placed in the openings on both sides of the entrance. Because they were attached to columns, they were known as column statues. Along with columnar statues, monumental statues standing in victory were widespread, an art form unknown in Western Europe since Roman times. The earliest that have come down to us are the column statues in the western portal of Chartres Cathedral. They were still in the old pre-Gothic cathedral and date back to around 1155. The slender, cylindrical figures follow the shape of the columns to which they were attached. They are executed in a cold, austere linear Romanesque style, which nevertheless gives the figures an impressive character of purposeful spirituality.

From 1180, Romanesque stylization began to transition into a new one, when the statues acquired a sense of grace, sinuousness and freedom of movement. This so-called classical style culminates in the first decades of the 13th century in the large series of sculptures on the portals of the north and south transepts of Chartres Cathedral.

The emergence of naturalism. Beginning around 1210 on the Coronation Portal of Notre Dame Cathedral and after 1225 on the West Portal of Amiens Cathedral, the ripple effect of classical surface design begins to give way to more formal volumes. The statues of Reims Cathedral and the interior of the Sainte-Chapelle Cathedral have exaggerated smiles, emphatically almond-shaped eyes, curls arranged in bunches on small heads and mannered poses that produce a paradoxical impression of a synthesis of naturalistic forms, delicate affectation and subtle spirituality.

Geometry and other exact sciences are making their way into other arts.

Thus, Vietelo in the 13th century introduced the concept of perspective (developed earlier by the Arab scientist Alhazen) in line with the theory of visual perception, isometric and physical optics. In the 13th century, majestic Gothic cathedrals were erected. In architectural structures, size, proportionality, brilliance, luminosity, and precious decorations were valued. Great importance in the aesthetic design of churches was attached to internal decorations: inlays, paintings, stained glass windows.

The architects themselves looked at their own creativity through the prism of philosophical and religious ideas.

They considered the talent of an artist to be a gift from God. In the early Middle Ages, inspiration was considered to be a direct transmission of the divine creative spirit to man. Already in the 12th century, human inspiration was considered an analogue of the divine. It was believed that the artist was characterized by all seven blessings given by the Holy Spirit to the human soul: wisdom, understanding, receptivity to advice, spiritual strength, knowledge, piety, fear of God. The artist, expressing the holy spirit in his work, approached God and came to know God. The artist felt that he took his place in the divine hierarchy and at the same time realized the significance and value of his work for people.

The purpose of art was thought to be that it elevates the human soul, enriches it with divine images, deep experiences, and facilitates the understanding of the divine world order. Art is designed to satisfy those human needs that nature cannot satisfy. Medieval art was essentially esoteric. Behind the external form, medieval people saw deep meaning and higher meaning.

A work of art was the result of the artist's intellect and soul; it reflected his knowledge and worldview. Symbolic and esoteric integrity was achieved in the Gothic cathedral. Every detail in the cathedral had a special meaning. The side walls symbolized the Old and New Testaments. The pillars and columns personified the apostles and prophets carrying the vault, the portals - the threshold of heaven. The dazzling interior of the Gothic cathedral personified a heavenly paradise.

Stained glass windows receive a special symbolic meaning: the light penetrating through them personified unearthly existence. The effects of light and the play of precious stones are often interpreted mystically, as the light of Christian teaching, as a symbol of divine power, or as magical power. Contemplation of light and being in the light atmosphere of stained glass windows leads to a mystical understanding of God.

A specific phenomenon of medieval culture was the creativity of vagans (from the Latin “vagari” - to wander). Itinerant students moved from country to country, from city to city. They composed freedom-loving, bold poems that castigated the vices of society. The style of the poetic form was formed as a reworking of the Latin style and the style of ancient poets. Early Christianity inherited from antiquity an admiration for the products of creativity and contempt for the people who created them.

But gradually, under the influence of Christian ideas about the beneficial, elevating significance of work, this attitude changed. In the monasteries of that time, it was prescribed to combine activities leading to communication with God, to penetration into his essence, such as divine reading, prayers, and manual labor.

It was in the monasteries that many crafts and arts were developed. Art was considered a godly and noble activity; it was practiced not only by ordinary monks, but also by the highest church elite.

Medieval arts: painting, architecture, jewelry - were founded within the walls of monasteries, under the shadow of the Christian church.

In the 12th century, interest in art increased significantly. This is due to the general technical, economic and scientific progress of society. The practical activity of man, his intelligence, and the ability to invent new things are beginning to be valued much higher than before.

The accumulated knowledge begins to be systematized into a hierarchy, at the top of which God continues to remain. Art that combines high practical skills and reflection of images of sacred tradition receives a special status in medieval culture.

The purpose of fine art is that it allows illiterate people to become familiar with sacred history, to perpetuate sacred events and to decorate the interiors of cathedrals with stained glass windows, paintings, and inlays.