Culturologists call the Middle Ages a long period in the history of Western Europe between Antiquity and Modern Times. This period spans more than a millennium from the 5th to the 15th centuries.
Folk culture of this era is a new and almost unexplored topic in science. The ideologists of feudal society managed not only to push the people away from the means of recording their thoughts and moods, but also to deprive researchers of subsequent times of the opportunity to restore the main features of their spiritual life. “The great dumb”, “the great absentee”, “people without archives and without faces” - this is what modern historians call the people in an era when direct access to the means of written recording was closed to them cultural values. The folk culture of the Middle Ages was unlucky in science. Usually, when they talk about it, they mention at most the remnants of the ancient world and epic, the remnants of paganism.
Early Middle Ages - from the end of the 4th century. The “great migration of peoples” began. Wherever the rule of Rome took deeper roots, “Romanization” captured all areas of culture: the dominant language was Latin, the dominant law was Roman law, the dominant religion was Christianity. The barbarian peoples who created their states in the ruins of the Roman Empire found themselves either in a Roman or Romanized environment. However, it should be noted the crisis of the culture of the ancient world during the period of the barbarian invasion.
High (classical) Middle Ages- at the first stage of late feudalism (XI-XII centuries), crafts, trade, and city life were poorly developed. Feudal landowners reigned supreme. During the classical period, or high Middle Ages, Western Europe began to overcome difficulties and revive. The so-called knightly literature emerges and develops. One of the most famous works is the greatest monument of the French folk heroic epic - “The Song of Roland”. During this period, the so-called “urban literature” rapidly developed, which was characterized by a realistic depiction of the urban everyday life of various segments of the urban population, as well as the appearance satirical works. Representatives of urban literature in Italy were Cecco Angiolieri and Guido Orlandi (late 13th century).
Late Middle Ages continued the processes of formation of European culture that began during the classical period. During these periods, uncertainty and fear ruled the masses. Economic growth is followed by long periods of recession and stagnation.
In the Middle Ages, a complex of ideas about the world, beliefs, mental attitudes and systems of behavior, which could conventionally be called “folk culture” or “folk religiosity,” was in one way or another the property of all members of society. The medieval church, wary and suspicious of the customs, faith and religious practices of the common people, was influenced by them. The entire cultural life of European society of this period was largely determined by Christianity.
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European culture as such began to take shape precisely at the moment when the cultural tradition of antiquity was stopped (or?) and precisely in the same geographical region. In many ways, medieval culture was determined by the very concept of Christianity, which was a form that met the cultural and ideological needs of society. At the origins of European culture were the church fathers, who laid the foundations of Catholicism, since in the Middle Ages culture was predominantly religious. Moreover, for a long time only the clergy was the most educated layer of Europe. The Church could not go through those elements of secular education that it inherited from antiquity and without which Christianity itself, adopted from antiquity, would simply remain incomprehensible. The Bible and the works of church writers were available to the Western Middle Ages only in Latin. The first attempt to bring together all the elements of ancient knowledge, which the church considered necessary to use for its own purposes, was made back in the 5th century. African writer Marcian Capella. In his book “On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury,” he gave a brief summary of those subjects that formed the basis of education in the ancient school and were known as the “seven liberal arts,” i.e. grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. In the VI century. Boethius and Cassiodorus divided these seven arts into 2 parts - the trivium - (the crossroads of the three paths of knowledge) - grammar, rhetoric, dialectic and quadrivium - the rest. The trivium was considered the first stage of education, the quadrivium the highest. In this form, these items were included in all medieval textbooks and were preserved until the 15th century. Rhetoric was viewed by representatives of the Christian Church as a subject that teaches church eloquence, dialectics (or rather, formal logic) as a handmaiden of theology, helping to defeat heretics in disputes; arithmetic - as a subject that facilitates the religious and mystical interpretation of numbers found in the Holy Scriptures; geometry - description of the earth (“And here are the deserted deserts (in Ethiopia), and the inhuman faces of monstrous tribes. Some have no nose, the whole face is smooth and flat... Others have fused mouths, and through a small hole they suck food with an ear of oats... But the Moorish Ethiopians , have four eyes, and this is for the sake of accurate shooting." "In the Ganges there is a worm that has two claws, with which it grabs an elephant and dives with it under the water."); music was needed for church chants; astronomy made it possible to determine the dates of church holidays. According to the teachings of the church, the earth is a disk floating in water, and the sky is a vault supported by four pillars, the center of the earth is Jerusalem. The greatest attention was paid to grammar - the queen of sciences. In the images, the grammarian was shown in the form of a queen with a bunch of rods in her left hand, and with a knife for erasing texts in her right. Corporal punishment flourished in medieval schools. A French monk wrote a grammar manual called “Watch Your Back.” The expressions “being in training” and “walking under the rod” were synonymous. The works of ancient authors studied during the trivium were cut down as the clergy considered necessary. The same was done with works for the quadrivium. Therefore, many works of ancient authors were irretrievably lost in the early Middle Ages. They could have written on them (palimpsest). In the early Middle Ages, authors appeared whose works were also later used as the basis for medieval education. Master of the Office of the Ostrogothic King Severinus Boethius (480-525). His treatises on arithmetic, music, works on logic and theology, translations of Aristotle's logical works became the basis of medieval philology and education. He is sometimes called the father of scholasticism. He was accused and thrown into prison, where he wrote the treatise “Consolation of Philosophy” before his execution. Quaestor and Master of the Offices of the Ostrogothic King Flavius Cassiodorus (490-585) - wanted to create the first university, but failed. His work "Varii". On his estate he founded the monastery Vivarium = cultural center, school, scriptorium, library, which became a model for Benedictine monasteries. Visigothic Spain gave the world an educator - Isidore of Seville (570-636) - the first medieval encyclopedist. “Etymology” - 20 books, collected everything that has been preserved from antiquity. In the second half of the 7th century. the cultural life of Western Europe fell into decline, except for Ireland, where pockets of education glowed in the monasteries, from there this education went around the world - the Venerable Bede “Ecclesiastical History of the Angles”, Alcuin and others. But in the early Middle Ages, chronicles began to appear - “Getica” by Jordan, “The History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Sueves” by Isidore of Seville, “The History of the Lombards” by Paul the Deacon, “The History of the Franks” by Gregory of Tours. The rise of Western European culture dates back to the reign of Charlemagne, hence the name Carolingian Renaissance. Under Charlemagne, various copies of the Bible were compared and its single canonical text was established for the entire Carolingian state. The liturgy was reformed and became uniform according to the Roman model. Around 787, the “Capitulary on Sciences” appeared, according to which schools were to be created in all dioceses, at every monastery, where not only clergy, but also children of lay people studied. A reform of the writing was also carried out - minuscules and majuscules. Textbooks appeared. The center of education is the court academy in Aachen. Alcuin was discharged from Britain. His most famous student is the encyclopedist Hraban the Maurus. The heyday of education did not last long. And in the 9th century. Ferrières abbot Servat Lupe († 862) wrote, “For anyone in our time to move from grammar to rhetoric, and then in order to other sciences is unprecedented.”
As cities developed, they experienced an ever-increasing need for educated, especially literate, people. This need gave rise to new, non-church schools, which differed in both their program and student composition. These schools were a special phenomenon in intellectual life medieval society. A specific feature of the non-church school of the 12th century. was that it was a private school, i.e. a school which was not maintained by the church, and whose masters subsisted on fees collected from the students. Especially many such schools arose in Northern France. The most famous schools in the middle of the 12th century. there were the Parisian schools of Guillaume of Conches and Pierre Abelard. The grammarian and dialectician Guillaume was famous for the thoroughness of his lectures and his love for ancient authors. Being a follower of Democritus and Epicurus, Guillaume tried to explain to his students the teaching of Democritus about atoms and sought to find a natural explanation for all natural phenomena, denying supernatural explanations. Guillaume's treatises attracted the attention of the church and were condemned by it. One of the brightest representatives of urban culture was Abelard (1079-1142), who by birth belonged to the knighthood, but became first a wandering schoolboy and then a master of liberal arts. He founded one non-church school after another. Was extremely popular. But the church is not in honor because of its philosophical views. He entered into a dispute with the head of the cathedral school of Paris, Guillaume of Champeaux, on the issue of the so-called. "universals" or general concepts. The dispute centered around the question of whether general concepts real existence, or are they just simple names for a whole series of individual phenomena. Medieval nominalists considered general concepts - universals - words or names (nomina), arising only on the basis of reality (universalia post rem). Medieval realists viewed universals from a purely idealistic point of view, as certain things (res) existing before the real world and independently of the latter (universalia ante rem). Abelard took a position close to nominalism (conceptualist), Guillaume of Champeaux was a realist. Abelard was condemned at the Council of Sens in 1140. He himself burned one of his best treatises. His studies with Eloise led to emasculation and sending both of them to a monastery, where the brethren did not like him and intrigued against him.
In the 12th century. in the West, a higher school - a university - begins to take shape (from the Latin universitas - totality). This was the name given to associations of teachers and students. The first university in Europe was considered to be Bologna, which arose at the end of the 11th century. based on the Bolognese school, where the famous expert on Roman law Irnerius taught. Gradually, the Bologna school turned into a “general” school (stadium generale), and then into a university. The oldest uni in Europe was the uni of Salerno, which arose from the Salerno medical school (811-1811). A typical medieval university was the University of Paris, which received the first royal charter with the legalization of its rights in 1200. The University of Paris united both students and teachers. Those who were involved in its maintenance (booksellers, scribes, messengers, pharmacists and even innkeepers) were also considered members of the university. All university teachers were united in special organizations - faculties (from Latin - facultas - ability, i.e. the ability to teach a particular subject). Subsequently, the faculty began to be understood as that department of the university in which a certain branch of knowledge was taught. The University of Paris had 4 faculties - artistic, where the seven liberal arts (septem artes liberalis) were studied (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) and 3 senior ones - medical, theological, legal, to which students were accepted only after graduating from the artistic faculty. Those. the artistic faculty provided an educational base, after which one could study further. Only those persons who had bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees could be teachers. They chose their head - the dean. Students (from the word studere - to study diligently) united into community corporations, provinces, and nations. In the Parisian uni there were 4 nations - Norman, English, Picardy, Gallic. At the head of each nation was an elected person - the procurator, and all 4 nations elected the head of the uni - the rector. The Uni was subordinate to the Chancellor of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Pope. All students and teachers were clerics, took a vow of celibacy, and wore dark dresses. True, doctors (medical doctors) were allowed to marry. The faculties differed sharply from each other in their numbers. The most numerous was the artistic department, the completion of which gave the student a Bachelor of Arts degree and the right to teach the latter outside the walls of the uni. (A degree obtained at one uni was not immediately recognized at others. The first departure from this discrimination was made in Toulouse - the papal bull of 1233 gave everyone who received a degree there the right to teach everywhere. The first incidents related to the awarding of academic degrees date back to this time. Thus, the Paris uni, which was on bad terms with the Dominican Order, denied Thomas Aquinas a doctorate for five years.) Therefore, they sought to obtain a license to teach at the uni and become a Master of Liberal Arts. The legal department was in second place in terms of number. Only one third of all those entering uni left with a bachelor's degree, and only 1/16 with a master's degree, all the rest left uni, content with the knowledge they acquired at a lower faculty. To become a bachelor, master, or doctor (the doctorate was first awarded in 1130 in Bologna), one had to give a speech and take part in a debate before worthy people who tested the candidate’s knowledge. Then there was a party to be had. "Aristotle's Feast" We studied for a long time. It was expensive. Therefore, in the letters: “I appeal to your parental soul and beg you not to leave me in a difficult situation. After all, you yourself will be pleased if I successfully complete my studies in order to return to my homeland with glory. Do not refuse to send money, as well as shoes and stockings, with the bearer of this letter.” Training – lecture, debates. During the lectures, the teacher (who came to the scholars) (the salaries of the teachers were paid by both the city and the scholars themselves) read and commented on books that were studied in a particular department. The participants in the debates achieved great skill. Thus, Duns Scott, participating in a dispute organized by the Paris Uni, listened to 200 objections, repeated them from memory and then consistently refuted them. The topic – theses – arguments was brought up for debate. The respondent and the opponent participated. It was necessary to monitor speech and avoid indecent expressions. The entertainment was a debate about anything (disputatio de quodlibet). At the theological faculty, the main debate took place during Lent. Those who survived the Lenten debate received the title of bachelor and the right to wear the red kamilavka. At the Paris Uni, the degree of doctor (a symbol of doctoral dignity - a beret, a book, a ring) was first awarded in 1231. Study sessions were designed for an entire academic year, only from the end of the 15th century. a division into semesters appeared - a large ordinary academic period - (magnus ordinaries) - from October (St. Remy's Day - October 1 (15), or as at the Paris Uni in the three higher faculties from mid-September to Easter, with a short break for Christmas, and the small ordinary educational period (ordinarius parvas) - from Easter to July 25 (St. Jacob). Classes began around five in the morning and lasted four hours, followed by evening classes. The lectures were ordinary and extraordinary. The differences are based on what books were read, when and how. During ordinary lectures, listeners could not interrupt the lecturer with words or questions, but during extraordinary lectures this was allowed. At Paris Uni, dictation was prohibited; it was assumed that the lecturer should present the material fluently and without a cheat sheet. If this was not observed, then a fine followed - they could be suspended from teaching for 1 year, in case of relapse - for 2, 4 years. Repeating the text was also not allowed, except for particularly difficult passages. From the 14th century uni received the epithet alma mater (as the Romans called the mother of the gods Cybele). Textbooks - grammar was studied according to a short course by Donatus, then by Priscian, rhetoric was taught by Cicero, dialectics by Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine, etc., doctors - Galen, Hippocrates, jurists - their own authorities.
Colleges began to be built to accommodate students. Although the students rented apartments from the townspeople, there was a rule that the townspeople were not to increase the rent arbitrarily. The first person to take care of the students' lives was Robert de Sorbonne, confessor and physician to the French king Louis IX. A specialization appeared at uni Salerno, Montpellier - medicine, Bologna - law, about the Faculty of Theology in Paris - “all the knots can be untangled here.” Therefore, students often continued to listen to a course of lectures on a particular discipline at different universities from the most famous teachers, undergoing a kind of internship. Therefore, vagantes and goliards, wandering students, appeared. Authors of student poetry. The most famous collection of works by vagantes of the 13th century. "Carmina Burana", composed by an unknown amateur from southern Bavaria, consisting of over 200 works, mainly of Vagant origin. They are arranged in sequence - moral-satirical poems, love poems, wandering songs, drinking songs, religious hymns and liturgical dramas. Those who did complete their studies and received a doctorate were expected to receive honor and recognition at best, a good position at court and in society, and at worst, whatever happens. In the Middle Ages there were doctors who received epithets for their learning - Francis of Assisi (Giovanni Francesco (del Moricone) (1181-1226) - Doctor of Mariinsky (Marianus), i.e., who dedicated his activities to the Virgin Mary; Albert the Great, Cologne (1198 and 1206 -1280) – doctor comprehensive (Universalis); Roger Bacon (1214-1294) – doctor Amazing (Mirabilis); Henry of Ghent (1217-1293) – triumphant (Solemnis); Bonaventura (Giovanni Fidanza) (1221-1274) – seraphic (seraphicus); Aquinas (1225-1274) - angelic (angelicus); Raymond Lullius (1235-1315) - enlightened (illuminatus); Aegidius of Rome (1257-1316) - most thorough (fundatissimus); – refined (subtilis); William of Ockham (1285-1349) – invincible (invicibilis); John Charles Gerson (1363-1429) – most Christian (christianissimus); Dionysius the Carthusian (1402-1471) – enthusiastic (extaticus) (Shevelenko A.Ya. . Doctor Mariinsky and Doctor Comprehensive // VI. 1994. No. 9. P. 170.) Members of the uni corporation had their own privileges - they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the city authorities, were exempt from mutual responsibility for debt obligations, and had the right to secession. Although scholars often get into fights with townspeople, they are judged by their superiors.
Medieval university science was called scholasticism or “school science” (from the Latin schola - school). Its characteristic feature was the desire to rely on authorities and a complete disregard for experience. The ability to freely operate with the concepts of formal logic was considered the main thing among the scholastics. The positive thing about the activities of the scholastic logicians was that they introduced compulsory study of a number of ancient authors into all uni programs, tried to pose and solve important problems of knowledge, and introduced Western Europe to the works of Arab scientists. In the 12th century. in Cordoba Ibn Roshd (1126-1198) (Averroes) taught, whose teachings were developed in the teachings of Amaury of Ben († 1204), David of Dinan, Siger of Brabant (killed in prison).
An important part of medieval culture are epic tales, which can be considered as collective memory and the custodian of history. At first, the epic was sung by jugglers and shpilmans. Later they were written down, in addition, the heroic epic became an integral part of knightly culture. Epic works are based on real events, but with a touch of the fantastic. The recording of the Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf" dates back to 1000. It is about Beowulf (nephew of the ruler of the Geats), who, together with his 14 comrades, offered his services to the ruler of Denmark Hrothgar, who decided to build a huge banquet hall, but the noise disturbed the monster Grendel, who every evening appeared in the hall and destroyed several of Hrothgar's comrades. Beowulf managed to defeat Grendel in battle, and he crawled away to die in his swamp. But the next evening a new monster appeared - Grendel's mother, who decided to avenge her son. Approaching the swamp, the knights saw snakes, dragons, water nyxes, Beowulf sank into the pool to the bottom and defeated her (Beowulf's sword - Hrunting). Beowulf returned home and became a good king. But soon snakes began to visit Beowulf's possessions. The snake guarded the treasures in the cave for 300 years, and after a certain man stole a cup from him, the snake decided to take revenge on the people. Beowulf (now aged) went to fight the serpent to keep his country safe. The serpent was killed, but Beowulf also died, receiving a mortal wound.
The Scandinavian sagas consist of 12 songs from the Elder Edda, composed in the ancient North Germanic (Scandinavian) dialect. According to the content of the songs, they are divided into tales about gods and tales about heroes. Some songs set out the concepts of the ancient Scandinavians about the universe and all 9 worlds, the constituent parts of the universe. One of the songs tells how the god Frey wooed the giant's daughter Gerda. In another, how the god Heimdal came to earth to establish classes and establish mutual relations between people. It tells about episodes of Odin's wanderings through the land, about the Aesir (light gods), the Jotungs (giants), the death of the Aesir and the whole world is predicted, about dwarfs, about Valkyries. Songs about heroes tell about two families - the Welzungs and the Niflungs. In the 13th century “The Younger Edda” by Snorri Sturluson appeared - a manual on how to compose skaldic tales. The ancient Scandinavian tales of the Edda about the Niflungs, their treasure, Sigurd about his fight with Fafnir, about Gudrun and Brünnhilde were not exclusively Scandinavian tales. They belonged to all Germanic tribes, and a little later these legends became the basis for the poem in Middle German “Songs of the Nibelungs”. But unlike the Edda, the Nibelungenlied has a god and religious rituals are observed. Brunnhilde is a girl of wondrous beauty. Sigfried is the son of the Dutch kings. The Abelungs and Nibelungs die in the battle, the treasure was not found (Hagen did not say). The Song of Roland is based on the battle in Roncesvalles with the Basques, while the Song of My Cid is based on episodes of the reconquista. The stories were extremely popular and everyone knew them.
A separate page of medieval culture was knightly culture. It took shape by the 11th-12th centuries. The creator and bearer is the knightly class. It is based on the code of conduct of the ideal knight. Loyalty, courage, nobility, good manners, etc. One of the sources of the Western European knightly (courtly - the term was coined by Gaston Paris (1839-1903) to denote the form of relations between a man and a woman that develops among gentlemen) was the Celtic epic about King Arthur and the knights Round table. (The story of Tristan and Isolde). In the knightly culture, the cult of the lady arises, constituting a necessary element of courtliness. From the end of the 11th century. the poetry of the troubadours flourishes in Provence, the poetry of the trouvères in the north of France, and the minnesingers in Germany. The most famous authors chivalric novels were Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue (knight) (1170-1210) (“Poor Henry”), participant in the Third Crusade. In 1575, Michel Nostradamus's brother Jean published biographies of troubadours, who could also be people of noble origin, for example. Thibault of Champagne, and grandfather of Alienor of Aquitaine.
From the 11th century Cities become centers of cultural life. The genres of urban literature are fabliaux, schwanks, farces, and soti. A satirical epic is also taking shape - “The Romance of the Fox”. The main character, the Fox Renard (a wealthy townsman), defeats the Wolf Isengrin, the Bear Brenn, deceives the Lion Noble, the Donkey Baudouin. By the 13th century. refers to the origins of urban theatrical arts. City games - “The Game of Robin and Marion”, etc. Then secular plays appear. Adam de Al (from Arras, nicknamed “The Hunchback” (1238-1286), who lived in Paris in 1262-1263, at the court of Count d'Artois (from 1272) and Charles of Anjou (from 1283) was author of the first secular plays in in native language"Games under the leaves", "Games about Robin and Marion". “The Game of Robin and Marion” was one of the most famous. The characters are Marion (peasanka), Robin (paisan), Knight. Marion says that she is in love with Robin, who bought her a scarlet dress and a belt, and that he is wooing her. Then the Knight returning from the tournament appears and tries to seduce her. Marion doesn't give in, and then Robin appears and they coo sweetly. Pastoral games were popular - scenes between a knight and a shepherdess, a shepherd and a shepherdess. An example is Thibaut of Champagne’s poem “The King of Navarre”: “These days, Thibaut narrates, I met between the grove and the garden a shepherdess who was singing, her song began like this: “When illness attracts me, love.” Hearing this, I went to her and said: “darling, God bless you, have a good day.” To this she answered me with a bow. She was sweet, fresh, rosy, that I wanted to talk to her again. “Darling, I am looking for your love. I will give you a luxurious headdress!” “Knights are great deceivers, I prefer my shepherd Perren than rich scoffers.” “Beauty, don’t say that. Knights are very worthy people. Only knights and people of the highest circle can have a girlfriend according to their desire. And the love of a shepherd costs nothing. Let's go..." “Sir, by the Mother of God, you wasted your words. Knights are greater deceivers than the traitor Ganelon. I would rather return to Perrin, who is waiting for me and loves me with all his honest heart. And you, sir, stop chatting.” I realized that the shepherdess wanted to get away from me. I asked her for a long time and in vain, but when I hugged her, the shepherdess screamed: “Perinet, treason.” They responded from the forest, and I left her. Seeing that I was leaving, she mockingly shouted to me: “Oh, brave knight!” (La Barthe. Conversations...P.168-169).
An indispensable attribute of urban culture were processions, which could be arranged for any reason. In England, as well as in other European countries, processions of corporations and the ceremonial entry of the Lord Mayor of London into the City were common.
From the processions in Italian cities, as well as in other European countries, trionfo arose - i.e. a costumed procession, partly on foot, partly on carts, which, being originally church-based, gradually acquired a secular meaning. Processions for the feast of Corpus Christi and carnival processions here stylistically merge, and the ceremonial entries of sovereigns soon join this style.
Carnival- was held in the week preceding Lent, on Maslenitsa - either on Broad Thursday or on Fat Tuesday. First carnesciale (meat eater), carnevale. It got its name either from carrus navalis - ship, cart, carne vale - meat eater, flesh. An exclusively urban phenomenon. It acquired a variety of forms by the 15th century. It included processions, games, acrobatic and sports displays, and masks. Perhaps masks are an attribute exclusively of the Venetian carnival. The first mention of masks is found in a Senate decree of 1268. It was a ban on wearing masks when organizing certain categories of games, but the Venetians... In 1339 the decree was repeated. Then workshops for mask manufacturers appeared. Over the years, the carnival has become wild, lush and fun. The opening carnival was accompanied by a church service and speeches from the authorities. So-called entertainment companies appear. Compagnie delle Calze, whose members wore symbolic emblems decorated with pearls and precious stones, ladies on their sleeves, men on their stockings. In the 15th century the carnival becomes diverse - fortune tellers, astrologers, soothsayers, sellers of all-healing ointments, ointments, insect repellents, against female infertility, against bullets, against bladed weapons. Then, as an addition to the carnival, and then as an independent component, the commedia delle arte appeared, i.e. folk comedy. There were over 100 masks. 2 quartets - northern - Pantalone (Venetian with his own dialect, old man - merchant, rich, stingy, sick, frail, sneezes, coughs, considers himself smarter than everyone else, but most often becomes the object of pranks, womanizer, merchant who has grown old), Doctor (Bolognese scientist, spouts, misinterpreting Latin quotes, lawyer, sometimes a doctor (the attribute in this case is klystyre), loves to drink, womanizer, the most complex mask - comedy), Brighella (smart servant, complex and responsible mask, since it is he who starts the intrigue), Harlequin = Truffaldino (stupid servant, often gets beat up), (both come from Bergamo, the homeland of Italian fools); southern - Coviello (southern parallel of Brighella), Pulcinella (southern parallel of Harlequin - consistently stupid), Scaramuccia (boastful warrior, coward), Tartaglia (appeared in Naples around 1610 - Tartaglia in Italian. stutterer, the character of the Spanish servants, preventing people from living ), + Captain (a parody of the Spaniards), Lovers (ladies - 1. powerful, proud, 2. soft, gentle, submissive; gentlemen - 1. cheeky, optimistic; 2. timid, modest. speak the correct literary language), Fantesca (Serveta = Columbina - maid, in Goldoni - Mirandolina), etc. Masks = role.
Since laughter was banished from official life, that is why "Feast of Fools", which were held on New Year's Day, the Day of the Innocent Infants, Epiphany, Midsummer's Day. There were few such holidays. What could cause laughter? Buffon tricks = lazzi (lazzi = l "atto, action, i.e. buffon trick. Lazzi with a fly - Zanni makes a gesture with his hand, as if catching a fly in the air, then with facial expressions shows that he tears off its wings, legs and throws it at mouth to yourself. Or lazzi with pasta - a plate of pasta that is eaten either with the hands or with the mouth. The actors are tied with their backs, one bends over, the other dangles his legs in the air;
In many cities the townspeople were organizing in neighborhoods for public performances. These include the performance of hell on stages and barges standing on the Arno (Florence) (05/1/1304), during which the Alla Caraya bridge collapsed under the audience. One of the specific features of the performances in Italy was the use of machines - they carried out ascent into the air and descent. Florentines already in the 14th century. maligned when the trick did not go smoothly. Famous artists took part in organizing the holidays. For example, Brunelleschi invents for the Feast of the Annunciation in Piazza San Felice an apparatus depicting a celestial globe framed by two garlands of angels, from which Gabriel descended to earth in an almond-shaped machine. Cecca also develops mechanisms for such celebrations. The most solemn holiday was the Feast of Corpus Christi. It was celebrated magnificently in 1480 in Viterbo. The holiday was organized by Pope Pius II. Here is the suffering Christ, surrounded by angelic boys; The Last Supper, where Thomas Aquinas was present, the struggle of the Archangel Michael with demons, a spring gushing with wine, the Holy Sepulcher, the scene of the Resurrection, on the cathedral square - the tomb of Mary, which, after a solemn mass and blessing, was opened, and the Mother of God in a host of angels soared into the paradise, where Christ placed a crown on her and led her to the eternal Father. Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI) organized similar holidays, but he was distinguished by his passion for cannon cannonades. S. Infessura wrote about the holiday that Pietro Riario organized in 1473 in Rome on the occasion of the passage of Eleanor of Aragon, the bride of Prince Ercole of Ferrara. There were also mysteries, and pantomimes on mythological themes - Orpheus surrounded by animals, Perseus and Andromeda, Ceres, who was attracted by a dragon, Bacchus, Ariadne with a panther; there was a ballet of love couples of prehistoric times, all this was interrupted by the invasion of robber centaurs, whom Hercules Pri defeated. During all the festivities, people depicting statues stood in niches and on columns, while they recited and sang. In the halls of the Riario there was a boy completely covered in gold, spraying water from a fountain. Vasari in his “Biography of Pontormo” described how such a child in 1513. On one Florentine holiday, he died due to overexertion or gilding. The boy represented the “golden age.” In Venice, the arrival of the princess from the house of Este (1491) was celebrated with a gala reception with the “Bucentaur”, a rowing competition and the pantomime “Meleager” in the palace of the Doge’s Palace. In Milan, Leonardo da Vinci took care of the festivities of the Duke and other nobles. One of his machines represented on a huge scale the celestial system and all its movements; whenever one of the planets approached the young Duke's bride, Isabella, the corresponding god appeared from the ball and sang the verses of the court poet Bellincioni (1489). From Vasari we know what kind of automata Leonardo invented to greet the French king, who was entering Milan as a conqueror.
In addition, there were holidays that were celebrated only in one city or another. For example, in Rome they organized running competitions: donkeys, horses, buffaloes, old men, young men, Jews. In Siena they organized a paleo (on horseback). In Venice - regattas, the betrothal of the Doge to the sea. Torchlight processions are popular. So, in 1459, after the Congress of Mantua, Pius II was waited in Rome with torches, and participants in the torchlight procession formed a ring near his palace.
City entertainment - walks around the city, in the park, “sports” - fist fights, various competitions, in England - curling, etc. Trips to the resort, visits to drinking establishments, in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands - ice skating, visits for reasons (or not?).
Religious holidays. 4 holiday cycles - Yuletide (winter), (Maslenitsa), Easter (spring), Trinity (summer), Theotokos (autumn), or December birth, April crucifixion, June Ascension, August death of the Mother of God and her September birth.
Winter holidays began on November 11 - St. Martina, or Martin's Day, is the time of pouring new wine and slaughtering livestock. Expression - Martyn's pig, Martyn's goose. Disease of St. Martina - to be drunk. The day of hiring workers, settlement with owners, the day of rent payment. They ate and drank (Grimmelshausen - St. Martin's Day - then we, the Germans, begin to feast and revel until Maslenitsa. Then many, both officers and townspeople, began to invite me to visit to taste Martin's goose), and had fun. In the Netherlands there was a game of cat - a cat was put in a barrel, which was tied to a tree, and they tried to get it out of there with sticks. In Italy, on Martin's day they ate pasta, pork, poultry, sweet pretzels and drank new wine.
November 25 was celebrated as St. Catherine and the Christmas period began. Christmas was preceded by the “dead weeks” of Advent (4 Sundays before Christmas (candles are lit before Christmas, a candle every Sunday).
December 6th – St. Nicholas, in the Netherlands on this day children (good and small) are given gifts and placed in stockings (bad and grown-up children are given coals). Later St. Nicholas turned into Santa Claus (1822). The prototype of Santa Claus was Bishop Nicholas of Myra, who lived in the 4th century, who first gave gifts to three sisters who dreamed of getting married, but did not have a dowry (he tossed a wallet with money to each, the youngest - the wallet ended up in a stocking, which she hung up to dry at the hearth after washing).
December 25 – Christmas. Roman proverb: “Spend Christmas with your own people, and Easter where she finds you.” Then Christmastide came until January 6 (until the day of the Three Kings. The Bean King. (A bean or some inedible object was placed in the pie; whoever got the wrong piece was the Bean King, who fulfilled all wishes). The first 12 days of the new year were determined all year, January 1 - January, February 2, etc. “Whoever counts coins on the first day of the year, counts them all year round. Befana walks around Italy either on a donkey, or it is brought by the stars.” and gives gifts to children. The custom of putting up a Christmas tree came from Germany. It was first erected in the 16th century (after the Reformation) in Strasbourg on the day of remembrance of Adam and Eve on December 24. A tree decorated with red apples was placed in the room, representing the tree of good and evil. , or a triangular pyramid, on the shelves of which there were gifts, and the top was decorated with the Star of Bethlehem (Champagne began to be drunk in 1668 - in Italy they throw old furniture out of the window, at midnight - whoever eats the most grapes wins the most). will be prosperous all year, food is prepared from lentils (resembles coins), eggs; in Spain - they eat a grape and make a wish; in England - when midnight strikes, they open the back door of the house, letting out old year, and with the last blow, open the front door, letting in the New Year. They drink punch - grape wine, vodka (rum), tea, sugar, lemon juice (2 alcoholic components for 3 non-alcoholic), boil in a silver pan.
January 17th – St. Anthony, blessed domestic animals, lit bonfires - “the fires of St. Anthony" - with cleansing properties, the extinguished brand was stored as a remedy for lightning.
End of winter - Meeting on February 2. – In Italy it’s Candelora’s holiday. (candles). It is believed that on Candelora a bear crawls out of its den to see what the weather is like. If it is cloudy, it makes 3 jumps - winter is over; if it is clear, it returns back to the den, saying that it will be cold for another 40 days. The culmination of the holiday is the blessing of candles.
Spring - On March 14, a ceremony was held in Rome called mamuralia - a man dressed in the skin of “old Mars” was driven out of the city with sticks.
March 15 is the holiday of Anna Perena - the goddess of the Moon or water. At this time, a carnival was held. Carts (carrus navalis - (chariot - ship), carne vale - long live the flesh), processions, masks, games. The last Thursday (Tuesday) before the carnival is Fat Thursday, the apogee of the holiday. Lent began with Ash Wednesday, which followed Fat Tuesday.
Palm Sunday, Easter.
April 30 - (Walpurgis Night - Witches' Sabbath) night walk in the forest behind a tree. In all countries of Western Europe there was a custom to celebrate the “day of renewal of nature” - May 1st. Young people went out of town to “bring May.” They returned with flowers, fragrant herbs, and leaves that decorated the doors and windows of houses. In France and Belgium, the homes of lovers were decorated with flowering rosehip branches. This was called “planting May.” In the Middle Ages, at the courts of the lords, a special “May ride” was organized, with the May count or the May king at the head of the cavalcade. On the May holidays, young people led round dances and sang. They built a maypole, from the top of which gifts (ham, sausages, sweets, poultry, etc.) were hung. The holiday ended with a competition to see which of the guys could climb the tree the fastest. The winner is the King of May + Queen of May.
Summer cycle holidays began with the Feast of Corpus Domini and was celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Introduced by Pope Urban IV on September 8, 1264 in memory of the Bolsena miracle (when, during a service in one of the churches in Bolsena, the blood of Christ appeared on a wafer). The holiday ritual is a procession. The city was always decorated with carpets and flowers; the pavements were decorated with carpets of fresh flowers. Holiday - carpet demonstrations.
June 24 – St. Day John the Baptist. Fires were lit. On the eve of the holiday they told fortunes. At night they put 2 beans under the pillow - black and white, in the morning they took them out at random, if they pulled out the black one, the girl would get married within a year, if the white one - not. They also wondered about the wealth of the future husband. If they pulled out peeled beans, they were poor; if they were unpeeled, they were rich. June 24 is the day of Florence, since St. Giovanni is the patron saint of the city. So, just like every city has its own heavenly patron, in whose honor a holiday was always held.
August 15 – Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In Italy, “buon Ferragosto” means good August holidays. The season ended with a big summer festival. In Rome, Navin Square was flooded with water. They organized a competition - a paleo (palio) horse racing competition. Dante wrote about a similar competition near Verona, the winner received green cloth, the last - a rooster. They shot from a crossbow.
From August to October, holidays began throughout the Mediterranean, dedicated to the harvesting of grapes, figs, and the ripening of leaves on mulberry trees (Murcia). The grape harvest season is a time of revelry, fun and extravagance.
Autumn. A wine fair was held in Seville from October 5 to 15. On the third Sunday of October in Germany, fairs began in many lands, where they held the so-called. kirbaum resembled a maypole, + lunch.
(October 30 - Halloween in English-speaking countries), preceded November 1 - All Saints' Day. Introduced in 610, it first fell on May 13, in the 9th century. postponed to November 1st.
November 2 is the day of remembrance of all the dead. November 1 was spent in the church, November 2 - in the cemetery, and then they had a meal. (In Italy, beans are a funeral food).
There were annual holidays for schoolchildren. They were celebrated either on St. Nicholas, or on the day of innocent babies (December 27). On this day, in all major cathedrals, a boy was elected bishop, who led the religious holiday and delivered a sermon. The second holiday of schoolchildren is Penitential Tuesday (during Maslenitsa week) on this day the students brought fighting cocks and had cockfights. On the same day they played ball.
In addition, all regions of Europe had their own local patronal holidays. In German and Dutch countries it was called kermes (kirmes).
The concept of “Middle Ages” arose in the 15th century. among Italian humanists to designate the period that separated their time from antiquity. Ancient learning and antique art were perceived by humanists as an ideal and role model. From this point of view, the time that separated the Renaissance and the ancient world was seen as a break in the traditions of books, as a decline in the arts.
This evaluative attitude towards the Middle Ages, reflected in the term itself, persisted for several centuries. Negative and even disparaging statements by enlighteners regarding this period are known.
This situation changed only in the 19th century. First, the romantics created their own image of the Middle Ages. Noble knights chanting beautiful ladies and those performing feats in their honor, mysterious castles and feelings far from everyday life - all this Romanism contrasted with contemporary reality.
From the middle of the 19th century. New approaches to the Middle Ages are being formed within the framework of historical science. The emergence of the concepts of “civilization” and “formation” made it possible to consider the Middle Ages systematically. The civilizational approach made it possible to see medieval Europe as a community of people living in a certain territory, connected by the unity of religion, customs, morals, way of life, etc. The formational approach presented the Middle Ages as a certain stage in the development of society, which was based on the feudal mode of production and corresponding production relations.
A look at the Middle Ages as one of the stages in social development made it possible to subsequently transfer the concept of the Middle Ages to non-European cultures. For supporters of this approach, medieval Europe and Rus', the medieval Arab-Muslim world and the medieval Far East in their diversity they are typologically united.
The most important typological features of the Middle Ages are the following. From a socio-economic point of view, the Middle Ages are the time of the formation, establishment and flourishing of feudalism, although its specific historical variants differed significantly. The ethnocultural foundations of this historical stage can be represented as a synthesis of the cultures of peoples who had centuries-old traditions of statehood and peoples who were at the stage of decomposition of the tribal system.
An extremely important feature of medieval cultures is the universal role of religion. It was a system of law, a political doctrine, a moral teaching, and a methodology of knowledge. Also, artistic culture was almost entirely determined by religious ideas and cult.
Consistent with the crucial role of religion in many medieval cultures great importance had its institution - the church. As a rule, it was a vast, ramified, powerful organization that practically merged with the state apparatus and controlled almost all aspects of human life and society.
Another characteristic of the Middle Ages is that from that time on it became possible to talk about world religions, something that the ancient world did not know. Buddhism and Christianity, which arose within the framework of ancient cultures, turned into religions on a global scale in the Middle Ages. Islam emerges and spreads during the Middle Ages.
Typologically similar features of medieval cultures were realized in various forms; each of these cultures went through its own path, individual and unique.
Among the cultures of the Middle Ages, the culture of Byzantium should be called the first in terms of formation.
While the culture of the Eastern Roman Empire entered its first period of prosperity, the Western Roman Empire found itself in a period of cultural lull. This period is sometimes called the “Dark Ages” because the early European Middle Ages left quite few events, facts and phenomena that could become the property of cultural history, especially in comparison with the Eastern Christian Middle Ages. The content of the process that took place in Europe during the early Middle Ages should be considered the formation of European culture proper in the collision of the ancient world with the world of “barbarians”, in the combination of the achievements of Mediterranean culture, Christian ideas and tribal cultures of the peoples of northern Europe.
The most common periodization of medieval culture reflects its three states. From the 5th to the 10th centuries, the formation of cultural foundations took place; this time is called the early Middle Ages. The 11th-11th centuries - the mature Middle Ages - the period of greatest prosperity, the most vivid manifestation of all the features of this culture. The 14th-16th centuries are considered the late Middle Ages, although in the south of Europe, already in the 14th century, the culture of modern times began to take shape, giving rise to a very bright period in European culture - the Renaissance. The late Middle Ages are characterized by an increase in crisis phenomena in traditional culture and the flourishing of urban culture, which prepared the secular culture of modern times.
Christianity became the basis of medieval culture. Despite the fact that this religion arose within the confines of antiquity, it was significantly different from most religions of the ancient world. The most important features of Christianity were that the new religion placed ethical values in the first place and proclaimed spiritual life as genuine in contrast to “material” life as transitory and sinful. The idea that justice can be achieved only in life after earthly death once again emphasized the imperfection and vanity of earthly life and justified the need to be guided by ideal values that reflect true and eternal life.
Despite the fact that Christianity was the stronghold and core of all medieval culture, it was not homogeneous. Quite clearly it split into three layers, which were later joined by a fourth. Already in the 11th-12th centuries, European medieval self-consciousness imagined its modern social structure in the form of three groups: “those who pray,” “those who fight” and “those who work,” that is, clergy, warriors and peasants. With the formation of urban culture as a result of the growth and strengthening of cities during the mature and late Middle Ages, another social force appeared - the townspeople, the burghers. Each of these four social groups The Middle Ages created its own cultural layer, connected with others by a commonality of ideological and practical attitudes, but at the same time realizing this commonality in different forms, reflecting different aspects of the Christian worldview.
The medieval peasantry became the main carrier and exponent of folk culture. This culture took shape gradually on the basis of a complex and contradictory combination of the pre-Christian worldview with Christian ideas. Despite the fact that the Christian Church struggled with manifestations of paganism, folk culture retained many elements of pagan ritual, symbolism and imagery.
The formation of the military class occurred gradually and unevenly in different parts of Europe. As a result of the establishment of a hierarchical system of vassal-seigneurial connections and the securing of a monopoly on military affairs to secular feudal lords, the concepts of a warrior and a noble person merged in the word “knight”.
Chivalry arose as a community of warriors - from the poor to the very top of the government. The heyday of knightly culture occurred in the 11th-12th centuries, and in the 11th-14th centuries, knighthood essentially turned into a closed aristocratic military caste, access to which from the outside was extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. With the strengthening of the role of the city militia and the spread of mercenary warriors in military operations, the role of chivalry begins to decrease. In parallel with this, knightly culture is declining, being replaced by new cultural phenomena.
The culture of chivalry was based on a special ideology. An important concept for the system of knightly values was the idea of courtliness (from the French “courteis” - courteous, knightly) as a special behavior of noble people. The concept of nobility became key to knightly behavior. The code of knightly honor was called among necessary qualities knight's generosity, compassion for the weak, loyalty, desire for justice and much more, combining Christian virtues with military virtues in a special way.
The medieval clergy was, on the one hand, very united and organized - the church had a clear hierarchy, on the other hand, it was a rather heterogeneous class, since it included representatives different levels society - both the social “lower classes” and aristocratic families. In accordance with the decisive role of Christianity, the clergy largely regulated culture - both ideologically and practically: at the level of, say, canonization artistic creativity. In this sense, we can talk about a certain influence of clerical culture on folk culture and the culture of secular feudal lords. At the same time, it is necessary to note the independent value of the culture of the clergy - a number of its phenomena were of exceptional value both for the medieval culture of Europe and for the destinies of European and world culture as a whole. First of all, we are talking about the activities of monasteries, which preserved and reproduced many cultural values.
Monasticism, which arose in the East in the 3rd-4th centuries as a hermitage and withdrawal from the world, changed its character in medieval Europe. As a result of this, monasteries arose, based on the principle of community life with a common household and common cultural tasks. Medieval European monasteries acquired the character of the most important cultural centers; their role, especially in the early Middle Ages, can hardly be overestimated. A significant part of the ancient heritage was preserved in monastery libraries despite the negative attitude of the Christian Church towards pagan antiquity. As a rule, each monastery had a library and a scriptorium - a workshop for copying books, and in addition to this, also schools. In some periods of the Middle Ages, monastery schools represented practically the only centers of education.
Speaking about the medieval church, one cannot fail to mention the split of Christianity into Western and Eastern directions, or Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The fairly autonomous development of Christianity in Western Europe and in the east - in Byzantium - determined the ritual and dogmatic differences that led to the final demarcation in 1054.
The fourth cultural layer of the Middle Ages, the latest in terms of its formation, should be called urban culture, noting, however, the fact that the townspeople were a heterogeneous mass in the social sense. Nevertheless, urban culture can be considered in a certain integrity as, so to speak, a crucible in which the foundations of the culture of modern times were smelted, combining traditional Christian values and ideas with realism and rationalism, irony and skepticism in relation to established authorities and foundations.
For the formation of medieval culture, the ancient tradition turned out to be very important, giving the initial impetus to the development of various areas of culture. This is also true of philosophical and theological thought, which has mastered the important ideas and principles of ancient philosophy. This also applies to art, which sometimes, obviously, turned to ancient experience, as was the case in Romanesque architecture, in other cases, it was formed in polemics with ancient tradition, in opposition to it: this is how medieval depiction took shape.
For the formation of the education system in medieval Europe, cultural continuity turned out to be essential: the basic principles of the ancient school tradition and, above all, academic disciplines were adopted. The “Seven Liberal Arts,” as they were called, were studied in two stages. The initial level - "trivium" - included grammar, dialectics and rhetoric. Grammar was considered the “mother of all sciences”; it provided the foundations of education. Dialectics introduced people to the principles of formal logic and philosophy, and rhetoric helped them express their thoughts beautifully and convincingly. The second level involved the study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, and music was understood as the study of numerical relationships on which world harmony is based.
The principles borrowed from the ancient school system, naturally, gave the basis only to the formal side of medieval European education, and its content became Christian teaching. Everything that did not relate to religious issues, in particular mathematical and natural science information, was studied haphazardly and inconsistently. In addition, non-religious knowledge was not only presented in a small volume, but quite often it was very far from reality and represented or was based on delusions.
The first significant period for medieval school education was the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th centuries - the Carolingian Renaissance, the reign of Charlemagne and his closest followers. Charlemagne saw the need to create an education system and ordered the opening of schools in every diocese and in every monastery. Along with the opening of schools, textbooks on various disciplines began to be created, and children of the laity were given access to schools. However, after the death of Charlemagne, his cultural endeavors gradually faded away. Schools were closed, secular trends in culture faded, and education for some time became confined to monastic life.
In the 11th century school affairs a new rise has emerged. In addition to monastic ones, parish and cathedral schools spread - at church parishes and city cathedrals. The growth and strengthening of cities that occurred during the mature Middle Ages led to the fact that non-church education became an important factor in culture. Basically, education in urban schools - guild, municipal and private - continued to be Christian in its ideological foundations, but it was not under the jurisdiction of the church, which means it provided more opportunities. Elements of a new worldview and free-thinking, the beginnings of natural scientific knowledge and observations of the surrounding world - all this became an important component of urban medieval culture, which, in turn, prepared the culture of the Renaissance.
In the 12th-13th centuries, the first universities appeared in Europe - higher educational establishments, which get their name from the Latin word "universitas", which means "totality". The university consisted of a number of faculties: artistic, where the “seven liberal arts” traditional for the Middle Ages were studied, legal, medical and theological. Universities were given administrative, financial and legal independence by special documents.
The significant independence of universities played an important role in preparing the ground for those changes that subsequently led to the formation of modern culture. The affirmation of the value of knowledge and education, the development of natural scientific ideas, the ability to think independently and unconventionally, to conduct a discussion and convincingly present one’s ideas - all this undermined the foundations of medieval culture and prepared the foundations of a new culture.
Nevertheless, throughout almost the entire period of the Middle Ages, it was Christianity that determined the specifics of knowledge and the forms of its existence, and determined the goals and methods of knowledge. Medieval knowledge was not systematized. Theology or theology, in accordance with the general character of medieval Christian culture, was central and universal knowledge. Essentially, theology included other areas of knowledge that periodically went beyond its scope and returned to it. Thus, quite complex relationships existed between theology and philosophy. On the one hand, the goal and objectives of medieval philosophy were to comprehend the divine and comprehend Christian dogmas, on the other hand, quite often philosophical reasoning led to a rethinking of the traditional catholic church view of the world. This happened with the ideas of Pierre Abelard, whose famous comparison of faith and reason, decided in the spirit of rationalism - “I understand in order to believe” - caused a sharp rebuff from the official church, and his views were condemned by councils in 1121 and 1140.
The mature Middle Ages are characterized by a rather rapid development of thought for a traditional, authority- and continuity-oriented culture. During this period, scholasticism was formed and developed, so named from the word “school”, which existed in both Greek and Latin. This type of religious philosophy is characterized by a combination of traditional theological tasks and rationalistic, formal-logical methods. Despite the fact that the humanists of the Renaissance later opposed scholasticism, it turned out to be extremely useful and important for the Middle Ages. The clash of different points of view, rationality and logic, doubts about seemingly unshakable foundations - all this has become an invaluable intellectual school.
Within the framework of scholasticism, interest in the ancient heritage arises. Little-known or completely unknown works are beginning to be translated into Latin, for example, the works of Aristotle, which played an important role in medieval religious philosophy, the works of Ptolemy, Euclid. In a number of cases, the ideas of ancient authors were adopted and translated from Arabic manuscripts that preserved and revised the ancient heritage. It can be considered that, in a certain sense, the interest of the Middle Ages in ancient authors prepared the movement of humanism, which became the basis of the culture of the Renaissance.
The mature Middle Ages made some contribution to the development of natural science knowledge. It was still extremely imperfect, since natural scientific methods of cognition had not been developed, and besides, the line between the real and the unreal was quite precarious, shining example what - medieval alchemy. However, we can talk about some attempts to develop physical, in particular mechanical, concepts, astronomy and mathematics. Interest in medical knowledge arose, and within the framework of alchemy, the properties of various substances were discovered, some chemical compounds were obtained, and various devices and experimental installations were tested. The heritage of antiquity and the Arab world played a significant role in the formation of natural scientific ideas of the Middle Ages.
An important figure in increasing knowledge about the world around us was Roger Bacon, an English philosopher and natural scientist of the 13th century, a professor at Oxford. He believed that knowledge of nature should be based on mathematical and experimental methods, although he saw one of the ways to acquire knowledge in internal mystical insights. Bacon also expressed a number of ideas that anticipated many later discoveries; in particular, he considered it possible to create devices that independently move on land and water, flying and underwater structures.
At the end of the mature Middle Ages and in the late period, quite a lot of geographical works appeared - descriptions compiled by travelers, updated maps and geographical atlases - the ground was prepared for the Great Geographical Discoveries.
A significant figure at the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was the 15th century thinker Nicholas of Cusa. One of the predecessors of the ideas of Copernicus, the author of mathematical works, the forerunner of experimental natural science, he developed ideas that were not consistent with traditional Catholic ideas about the world around him. Having had a significant influence on the formation of natural philosophy of the Renaissance, in a certain sense it can be considered the completion of the development of medieval thought about the universe.
Historical ideas of the Middle Ages were reflected in various chronicles and biographies. Descriptions of deeds and, of course, in the heroic epic. The medieval epic, which was a phenomenon of verbal creativity, at the same time reflected the most important collective ideas: the perception of time and space, basic values, behavioral principles, aesthetic norms. The European medieval epic was genetically connected with the mythologies of the so-called barbarian peoples and reflected their characteristic way of life and picture of the world.
Questions about the formation of the heroic epic, about the relationship between the mythological and historical principles in it, about the degree of presence of authorship in it have always been debatable and can hardly be resolved unambiguously. What is reliably known is that the earliest records of epic works date back to the 8th-9th centuries. It is obvious that the epic also developed in the era of the mature Middle Ages. The characters gradually changed - the images of heroes, rooted in myths and legends, are brought into line with knightly Christian ideals. The most famous are the Anglo-Saxon epic “The Tale of Beowulf”, the German epic “The Song of the Nibelungs”, the Spanish - “The Song of My Sid”, the French - “The Song of Roland” and the Icelandic sagas.
The poetic creativity of the Middle Ages, having begun to take shape in epic works, was subsequently closely connected with knightly culture. Lyrical and laudatory songs, poetic expositions of certain exploits of a knight served, so to speak, as a poetic school of the Middle Ages. The poetic tradition began to take shape in the early Middle Ages, but most clearly manifested itself in the mature period. Then, in different parts of Europe, a passion for the work of poet-knights arose, who were called troubadours in the south of France, trouvères in the north of France, and minnesingers in Germany.
Within the framework of knightly culture, prose literature also began to form in the 12th century. The knightly novel quickly gained popularity and became an important part of medieval non-religious culture. Many novels were based on the events of the Celtic epic about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The well-known story about tragic love Tristan and Isolde is also based on epic stories.
Romances of chivalry were created in different European languages and had, so to speak, an ornamental structure: the adventures of the heroes were, as it were, “strung” on top of one another; The characters' characters had no development. By the 14th-15th centuries, the genre of the knightly novel had fallen into decline, and parodies of the knightly novel began to appear within urban culture - the picaresque novel ironically set out the exploits traditional for heroic knights.
Urban culture becomes the basis for the formation of a number of new genres of literature. First of all, these are satirical and parody genres. The emergence of irony and parody - this is especially clearly seen in the example of traditional cultures - indicates a rethinking of the most important cultural foundations. Essentially, this suggests that the previous picture of the world needs to be revised, that it no longer corresponds to cultural reality. The rationalism and practicality of the emerging urban culture came into conflict with established values and way of life. In art, this manifested itself in satirical and parody tendencies. Rapidly developed at the end of the mature Middle Ages and in the late period. The poetry of vagants - wandering schoolchildren and students - became a bright page of satirical and parody creativity.
At the boundary between the poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is the work of the 15th century French poet Francois Villon. His work also reflected scenes from the life of the Parisian “bottom” and irony towards hypocrisy and asceticism; the motives of death were replaced by the glorification of the joys of life. The humanism of his poetry and the desire for a full sense of life allow us to see in Villon’s work a prototype of Renaissance art.
And one more name cannot be ignored when speaking about medieval literature. This is Dante Alighieri, the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times, as he is sometimes called. Poet " The Divine Comedy" Written by Dante belongs to the best achievements of world culture. The passion, emotionality, and drama with which the poet paints generally traditional medieval images and plots take Dante’s work beyond the scope of medieval literature. His figure, which emerged in European culture at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries, can rightfully be considered the beginning of the formation of Renaissance art.
The spatial arts of medieval Europe were represented mainly by architecture and sculpture. It is often possible to reduce how architecture is called the leading form of medieval art. This is not entirely true. Indeed, among the most striking phenomena of medieval culture are buildings of the Romanesque and Gothic styles. But it is important to remember that their construction was not an end in itself. Architecture, especially temple architecture, was supposed to play a service role: it created a closed, symbolically rich environment for holding services. Architecture, in fact, only created the conditions for the main thing - carrying the “word of God”.
Quite often attention is paid to the synthesis of architecture and sculpture as one of the important characteristics of medieval European culture. But perhaps it would be more accurate to talk about the synthesis of a number of arts in the Christian church. In the European Middle Ages, architecture and sculpture came to the fore within this synthetic whole.
The Romanesque architectural style appeared in Europe in the 10th century and was distinguished by its severity, simplicity and severity. An essential characteristic of the Romanesque style was its versatility - this style characterizes both secular and religious buildings. Churches, castles, and monastery complexes were located on hills, dominating the surrounding landscape. Thick walls and narrow windows that let in a little light emphasized that a Romanesque building, regardless of its purpose, was first and foremost a fortress. Indeed, often during military operations the walls of a church or monastery served as reliable protection.
A completely different image of the relationship between the earthly and the divine arose when looking at Gothic buildings. The Gothic style, which emerged in the 12th century and spread throughout Europe, embodied architectural lightness, airiness, grace, and upward aspiration. Gothic buildings seemed to break through earthly space, embodying the aspiration to values of a different order. The frame arched system and numerous windows decorated with stained glass made it possible to create special interiors filled with light and air in Gothic buildings. Most often, city cathedrals were built in the Gothic style, but there were also secular buildings - town halls, shopping arcades and even residential buildings.
Along with the significant development of sculpture, fine art itself hardly developed in European medieval culture. Painting was represented mainly by altar paintings and book miniatures. Only at the end of the Middle Ages did easel portraits appear and secular monumental painting began.
It is impossible not to say a few words about the theatrical performances of medieval Europe, refuting the widespread opinion that theatrical art ceased to exist during the Middle Ages. Chronologically, the first to appear were theatrical performances accompanying church services - liturgical and semi-liturgical drama, which explained and illustrated the events of Holy Scripture. In parallel with this, in the work of traveling performers, the beginnings of secular theatrical art were formed, which subsequently, in the late Middle Ages, was realized in the genre of public farce.
Religious and secular lines were united in a special way in three theatrical forms of the Middle Ages: morality, miracle and mystery. The allegorical figures of morality plays and the miraculous stories of the miracle had a pronounced didactic character, and although these genres were not directly related to Christian subjects, they reflected the main Christian ideas about good and evil, about virtue and vice, about divine providence that decides the fate of man. The pinnacle of theatrical experiences of the Middle Ages should be considered the mysteries - grandiose performances that took place on the days of festivities, in the preparation and creation of which almost the entire city participated.
Medieval art, like all medieval culture, was based on loyalty to tradition and the inviolability of authorities. Anonymity of artistic creativity, adherence to canons, existence within the framework of given themes, plots and images are important typological characteristics of medieval artistic culture.
Despite the fact that medieval culture was represented by several cultural layers and different periods of its existence, however, the Christian worldview turned out to be a very significant ideological framework that ensured the unity of Christian medieval culture. In essence, it was the last holistic type of culture in the history of culture.
The Middle Ages became an extremely important period in the history of European culture - the time when all its foundations were formed. In the collision of different pictures of the world, in the interaction of peoples who are not similar to each other, a cultural community, a cultural synthesis, was formed. And despite the fact that European culture subsequently attacked the Middle Ages with criticism, this is the era of its birth, and only for this reason can the Middle Ages be valuable. But in addition, medieval European culture has its own cultural significance. This is a fairly long period of cultural history, which has its own logic, its own ups and downs. This is a unique fusion of the ideal and the real, the spiritual and the material, the divine and the earthly. Gothic architecture and epic poetry, populous mysteries and the severity of monastic life, knightly deeds and scholastic wisdom - these are the unique faces of this culture.
The Arab-Muslim medieval world is the result of the spread of Islam, Muslim conquests and the creation Arab Caliphate. Caliphate in the 9th-10th centuries. broke up into a number of states united by close trade ties, language and culture. Nevertheless, within this community, each culture acquired its own characteristics and found its own path.
The culture of the Arab-Muslim world was based on earlier, pre-Islamic cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. But it acquired its essence and most important features thanks to the emergence and spread of Islam, which determined all aspects of culture and human life.
The socio-economic basis of the Arab-Muslim Middle Ages, in comparison with other medieval societies, had a number of features. The most important thing for culture was the fact that the hierarchy typical of feudal society was combined in the Islamic world with very high social mobility. The service could raise a person from the “bottom” to significant social heights. The middle urban strata were very influential. Not only the clan nobility, but also the military and officials were in power.
Compared to medieval Europe, cities were of great importance in the Muslim Middle Ages. The countryside played a service role. The Muslim medieval world did not know such economic and cultural centers as monasteries and knightly castles in Europe. The status of the townspeople was very high, and their position was stable. Trade was a particularly revered activity.
The most important feature of the medieval Islamic world can be considered that it did not have the institution of the church as a mediator between the earthly and divine worlds. The clergy in Islam was part of a single state apparatus, an element of the political and administrative system.
The material culture of the medieval Middle East was represented by a variety of tools, irrigation structures and various devices in the water supply system, as well as buildings for various purposes. A number of buildings, as well as most of the handicraft products, such as carpets, fabrics, dishes, weapons, can be considered borderline phenomena, equally belonging to material and artistic culture.
Many facts of culture are located on another “border” - between spiritual and artistic culture. Religion widely and variedly used artistic forms of verbal creativity, and knowledge was also clothed in artistic forms.
Despite the fact that spiritual culture, like culture as a whole, was determined by Islam, one can find phenomena that go back to ancient traditions. In particular, in the philosophy of the medieval East one can see the development of some ideas and principles of ancient philosophy. This same ancient tradition obviously determines the close relationship between philosophy and natural science knowledge - medical, physical and chemical, mathematical and astronomical.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the field of science and philosophy, the Arab-Muslim Middle Ages far surpassed other medieval cultures. In particular, Europe has repeatedly turned to the Middle Eastern heritage as a source of wisdom and learning, using in it the processed antiquity and the eastern itself.
Since the spread of Islam, i.e. from the 7th century until the 12th century. we can talk about the flowering of the artistic culture of the Arab-Muslim Middle Ages. It clearly demonstrated all the most essential characteristics of medieval artistic culture. These are tradition and canon as the main guidelines of artistic creativity, imitation of models and predecessors as the most important creative methods, didacticism of art and much more.
Nevertheless, special features also appeared in Muslim medieval artistic culture. First of all, this is the great role of the personal and authorial principles in creativity. The inseparability of the spiritual and the secular, the earthly and the divine, characteristic of Islam, led to the fact that medieval Muslim art, to a greater extent than Christian art, paid attention to the “earthly” problems of man and touched upon everyday and everyday themes and subjects.
All this, together with greater freedom in the use of ancient heritage compared to Europe, allows a number of researchers to talk about the “renaissance” of medieval Arab-Muslim culture.
The perception of the Koran as a model of perfection led to the fact that the style of this holy book had a special impact on the entire artistic culture. As is known, the most important stylistic feature of the Koran is the juxtaposition of elements that are difficult to combine or cannot be combined at all: reasoning about the divine is combined with everyday comparisons and commercial concepts, speculative ideas with completely realistic images. The same features characterize the language of literature of the Arab-Muslim Middle Ages.
One of the most important features of Muslim art is the tendency towards independence of individual parts and elements of a work of art. Prose texts often present cleverly combined but independent plots. Poetic works consist of separate parts that have meaning and are structurally complete. Within a large poetic work, they are quite autonomous and can change their places without essentially changing the structure of the text as a whole.
Works of architecture face the outside world with blank walls, while decorative and functional elements are located inside. Thus, the architectural work seems to be closed in on itself and completely completed.
The ornament consists of individual repeating completed forms. At the same time, the next most important characteristic of Arab-Muslim medieval culture can be found in ornamentation. It can be formulated as a desire for extension, repetition, a desire to flow from one form to another, from one state to another. A musical work is built on one melody in its different variations; in literary works, individual completed parts are, as it were, strung on top of each other.
The ban on the depiction of living beings led to the fact that the visual arts did not receive significant development in Arab-Muslim artistic culture. art turned out to be within the framework of artistic craft and in a service role.
But we can observe a different form of representation in Arab-Muslim artistic culture. She is in admiring a fragment, an element, a detail - a sound, a phrase, a word, an element of ornament.
This property, along with the special veneration of the word in medieval Muslim culture, led to the special position of calligraphy. Letters became not just signs to express any content, but also acquired artistic value. The inscriptions on various objects and buildings were essentially meaningless - the information that could be extracted from them was trivial. Their meaning was different - they visibly embodied the artistic power of the word and its divine nature. They served as a reminder of the word of God - the Koran.
The art of the book is associated with reverence for the divinity of the word and attention to its form. Quite traditional for any medieval culture, the art of handwritten books of the Arab-Muslim Middle Ages contributed its page to world culture.
A feature of the artistic culture of the medieval Middle East can be considered the fact that creativity there was almost always a professional activity, although it was also possible to combine different occupations.
The most revered among artistic pursuits was literary. This led to the fact that poets were very influential in society, in addition, the income that their creativity brought them was so high that they often provided writers with a comfortable existence.
Performers of literary works were considered respected people, but still their talent and skills were valued lower than the talent of a writer.
From a formal point of view, the creativity of singers, musicians and dancers, or more precisely, dancers, was not considered worthy of respect. And yet, their performances were watched and listened to with pleasure everywhere - both in bazaars and in palaces.
The work of a craftsman was quite honorable. Moreover, arts and crafts, just like architecture, was not anonymous - quite often you can find the names of the authors of certain works of art.
It so happened that artistic crafts formed an essential part of the artistic culture of the medieval Arab-Muslim world. The acquaintance of other peoples with the culture of the Muslim Middle Ages was also most often associated with works of applied arts - weapons decorated with calligraphy and ornaments, carpets, clothing, and dishes. Now we can say that both the Koranic legends and poetic works, and philosophical ideas, and architectural structures and much more - the invaluable and unique contribution of the Arab-Muslim Middle Ages to world culture.
General characteristics of the culture of the Middle Ages Some consider the beginning of the era of medieval culture to be the division of the Roman Empire in 395 into two states - eastern and western. Others believe that this is the year 476 - the fall of the Roman Empire. There is also an art history term “medieval culture” - from the adoption of Christianity by the Emperor of Rome Constantine as the official religion in 313 and through the 17th century.
When studying the topic, it is necessary to pay attention to the following questions: 1. The Middle Ages includes 3 periods - 3 stages of the development of feudalism (formation, prosperity and decline) The Early Middle Ages dates back to the V - X centuries Mature feudalism - X - the end of the XV century Late Middle Ages - XV - XVII century 2. The spirit of the era: the movement of peoples, the creation of new states, the expansion of trade and cultural ties between Europe and North Africa, the Middle East, the emergence of the first parliaments and constitutions, inventions, European languages. 3. Contradiction in the worldview of the Middle Ages: man is the crown of nature, man is God’s servant. Historical point of view Historical point of view
4. A special place in culture is occupied by such genres of art as architecture and painting. The language of science and the church is Latin. The art of “language in stone” is destiny common people. 5. The role of the church and its influence on the culture of the Middle Ages is very great. The church is the main customer of works of art and serves a religious cult. The plots of the works are of a religious nature: they are images of the other world, the language of symbols and allegories. There is no portrait genre, since it is believed that an ordinary person is not worthy of being depicted. The main genre of painting is the icon. Subjects - lives of saints, images of the Mother of God, Jesus Christ. When studying the topic, you need to pay attention to the following questions:
Comparative characteristics of the worldview of man in antiquity and the Middle Ages: Antiquity Middle Ages 1. General harmony of the world 1. Imperfection of the world 2. The special role of space 2. Denial of eternity, the main role the creator - the original being 3. Human intelligence and knowledge of the world are welcomed 3. The original sinfulness of man. Atonement for the sins of mankind by Jesus Christ 4. The search for justice 4. Faith and loyalty are the main qualities of man 5. The opportunity to become like gods 5. Fear of Judgment and God's punishment Cultural point of view Cultural point of view
7 Romanesque architecture is accessible to a wide range of feelings. It can be harsh and formidable, pressing on a person with its stone weight. And at the same time, slender, full of air and light, tender and cold. It is characterized by a desire for complete integrity, rigor and simplicity, the absence of decoration and ornament. Its characteristic element is the arched shape of door and window openings.
Features of architecture Romanesque style Term " Roman style" - appeared in the 19th century from the concept - "Roman languages." They are based on Latin - the language of the ancient Romans. The period that covers the Romanesque style is the X - XII centuries. This is the first great style in art. Stages of development of Romanesque art: - Pre-Romanesque century - Romanesque century Main types of buildings: - feudal castle - monastery ensemble - temple
The main features of the construction of castles: - the castle is a product of the feudal era, the period of fragmentation, wars, raids. For self-defense purposes, the castle was built as a fortress. - heavy, gloomy grandeur - jagged top - three-story towers - moat - huge gates on chains - bridge - Donjons - high rectangular towers, under which there were underground storerooms, quarters for servants and guards. Choice of construction site: hill or elevated place, river slope.
Gothic style "Gothic" - the term was introduced by Renaissance humanists, who considered everything that was not antique to be negative and barbaric. The Goths, who dissolved as a people among the Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, have nothing to do with the name. Gothic style is the second great style of the Middle Ages. It originated in France and dominated from the 12th to the 16th centuries.
A Gothic church (cathedral) can be immediately recognized by its pointed arches (pointed upward), window arches, and doorways. Churches no longer look like fortresses; they easily rise to the sky, as if they were not made of stone at all. The windows are lined with colored glass - stained glass and take up so much space that there are almost no walls left. The vaults are supported by pillars covered with semi-columns, resembling bundles of stems.
In late Gothic, drawings of stained glass windows, sculptures, “stone” ornaments, and ceiling carvings became increasingly more complex. They often resemble complex lace patterns. I can't even believe that all this is made of stone.
Features of the applied art of the Middle Ages The artistic craft was the most developed. They richly decorated even household items. Wicker patterns were used especially generously. It consisted of an endless strip, the interlacing of which filled the entire surface of the object. Between the weavings were images of animals and people, distorted and simplified, or stylized.
At that time, painting occupied a special place in the book. In monasteries, monks copied the Bible and other sacred books. They were written on parchment - specially treated skin of lambs and kids. Copying one book could take a lifetime. These books were considered of great value and were kept in the monastery treasuries. The pictures in the books are called miniatures due to the use of “minimal” red paint and their small size.
The main forms of painting are monumental temple painting - mosaics and frescoes, icon painting, book miniatures. Mosaic is a complex technique of folding a picture from multi-colored pieces of smalt (an alloy of glass with mineral paints). Here the angle of incidence of light was precisely calculated, the surface of the mosaic was made slightly rough. Mosaic is a complex technique of folding a picture from multi-colored pieces of smalt (an alloy of glass with mineral paints). Here the angle of incidence of light was precisely calculated, the surface of the mosaic was made slightly rough. Stained glass is a picturesque canvas made of pieces of multi-colored glass; the angle of incidence of light played a special role. The color gave a unique color to the entire room of the temple. We used blue, red, yellow colors. The image was flat, without shadows, themes on religious subjects, which were instructive in nature. Stained glass is a picturesque canvas made of pieces of multi-colored glass; the angle of incidence of light played a special role. The color gave a unique color to the entire room of the temple. Blue, red, yellow colors were used. The image was flat, without shadows, themes on religious subjects, which were instructive in nature.
Features of medieval sculpture Medieval sculpture has its own characteristics - images of saints are devoid of a canon, simple faces, images of real people, fantastic creatures, forces of evil (asps) decorated temples. The reliefs depicted biblical events and legendary scenes from the lives of saints. In addition to decorating churches, the reliefs had another purpose. Simple people in those days they were illiterate, for their enlightenment they created a “bible of the poor” from stone.
From the history of medieval theater, the theatrical action was called a mystery. The action began with a prologue. The priest read the prologue. Climbing onto the wooden stage, he addressed the noisy audience that filled the city square, asking them to shut up and listen to the pious story. The priest solemnly told the biblical legend, then praised God and promised to pray for those who would listen carefully and not interfere with the actors doing their job. The theatrical action was called a mystery. The action began with a prologue. The priest read the prologue. Climbing onto the wooden stage, he addressed the noisy audience that filled the city square, asking them to shut up and listen to the pious story. The priest solemnly told the biblical legend, then praised God and promised to pray for those who would listen carefully and not interfere with the actors doing their job.
On the stage of a medieval theater: God came onto the stage and performed his miracles one after another, Adam and Eve appeared in paradise, the Serpent crawled out, seduced the ancestors with a forbidden apple, then a formidable angel came out with a sword, expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise, the devils dragged them in hell. Writer GodAdam EveSnake Devil
The spirit of knowledge lived, hidden in a secret elixir, Singing healingly the muddy darkness of centuries. Let life be a continuous struggle of enemies, Let the sword ring in battle and in the tournament, - Let the sword ring in battle and in the tournament, - The alchemist was looking for the stone of the sages, The alchemist was looking for the stone of the sages, The mind became refined in discussions about the vampire, The mind became refined in discussions about the vampire , The theologian tried to know the Creator, The theologian tried to know the Creator, And thought shook the world’s weights... And thought shook the world’s weights... V. Bryusov V. Bryusov Raphael Santi spoke about the Middle Ages like this: “... when Rome was destroyed and burned by the barbarians, it seemed that this fire and this sad devastation, along with the buildings, burned out and destroyed the art of construction itself. … This cruel and merciless storm of war and devastation has given rise to a manner of painting, sculpture and architecture that is beyond all measure bad and has no value.” “...when Rome was destroyed and burned by the barbarians, it seemed that this fire and this woeful devastation, together with the buildings, burned out and destroyed the art of construction itself. … This cruel and merciless storm of war and devastation has given rise to a manner of painting, sculpture and architecture that is beyond all measure bad and has no value.”
“There was an extraordinary architecture, Christian, national for Europe - and we left it, forgot it, as if it was alien, neglected it as clumsy. as clumsy and barbaric. and barbaric. N.V. Gogol N.V. Gogol
Drawbridges, deep ditches, dips, Steep staircases and vaulted halls, Where the wind rustles and groans in the heights, Tells me about battles and feasts... And immersed in a dream of the past, I see again The greatness of chivalry and the splendor of the Middle Ages. Théophile Gautier Théophile Gautier
University
Chivalry
Carnival
Brief outline of the culture of the Middle Ages (V-XV centuries)
Lecture 4
Medieval culture: phenomena of carnival, chivalry, university
The culture of the Middle Ages powerfully and visibly expressed itself in architecture in the emerging artistic styles - Romanesque and Gothic. This topic is presented in detail in textbooks according to the course, so students will be able to study it on their own, paying special attention to the periods of development of the Romanesque and Gothic styles in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.
The Middle Ages in Europe were defined by Christian culture. Feudalism was established with the rural community and man's dependence on it and the feudal lord. Many European countries have become self-determined and strengthened; the center of cultural improvement is not a collection of city-states or one Roman Empire, but the entire European region. Spain, France, Holland, England and other countries are coming to the forefront of cultural development. Christianity, as it were, unites their spiritual efforts, spreading and establishing itself in Europe and beyond. But the process of establishing statehood among the peoples of Europe is far from completed. Large and small wars arise, armed violence acts as both a factor and a brake on cultural development.
A person feels like a community member, and not a free citizen, as in ancient society. The value of “serving” God and the feudal lord, but not oneself or the state, arises. Slavery is replaced by circular communal guarantee and subordination to the community and feudal lord. Christianity supports feudal class, subordination to God and master. The Church extends its influence to all major spheres of social life, to family, education, morality, and science. Heretics and all non-Christian dissent are persecuted. With the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire (325), it rigidly subjugated the entire life of European society, and this continued until the Renaissance.
Thus, the defining feature of medieval culture, the essence of the cultural phenomenon of the Middle Ages, is a worldview based on Christian doctrine. The theological system of Christianity covered any of the cultural phenomena, in turn, each of the phenomena had its own specific hierarchical place. Hierarchical ideas are embodied in public life(lords - vassals; ethics of personal service), in the spiritual sphere (God - Satan).
However, it would be wrong and one-sided to evaluate the culture of the Middle Ages only negatively. She developed and achieved success. In the 12th century. A loom without a mechanical engine was invented in Flanders. Sheep farming is developing. Italy and France learned how to produce silk. In England and France they began to build blast furnaces and use coal in them.
Despite the fact that knowledge was subordinated to the Christian faith, religious and secular schools and higher educational institutions appeared in a number of European countries. In the 10th-11th centuries, for example, philosophy, mathematics, physics, astronomy, law, medicine, as well as Muslim theology were already taught in higher schools in Spain. The activity of the Roman Catholic Church and the non-compliance of its ministers with the norms of morality and religious worship often caused discontent and ridicule among the broad masses. For example, in the 12th-13th centuries in France, the movement of vagantes - wandering poets and musicians - became widespread. They sharply criticized the church for greed, hypocrisy and ignorance. The poetry of minstrels and troubadours emerges.
The poetry and prose of chivalry develops, masterpieces are recorded folk epic(“The Song of the Nibelungs”, “The Song of My Sid”, “Beowulf”). Biblical and mythological painting and icon painting are widespread. In the spirituality of people, Christianity affirmed not only obedience, but also a positive ideal of salvation. By following the commandments of God and honoring him, a person can achieve his desired state and the state of the whole world, which is characterized by overcoming all lack of freedom and evil.
Since the 14th century, European Catholicism has been experiencing an acute crisis, generated by the internal struggle of popes and other hierarchs for religious and secular power, the non-compliance of many clergy with moral standards, their desire for wealth and luxury, and the deception of believers. The crisis of the Catholic Church worsened significantly as a result of the Inquisition and the Crusades. The Catholic faith was losing its status as the spiritual basis of European culture. Orthodoxy functioned more smoothly in Byzantium and other countries of Eastern Europe.
Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire, arose in 325 after the split of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern. In 1054, the Christian Church was also divided. Orthodoxy is established in Byzantium.
Byzantine culture existed for 11 centuries, being a kind of “golden bridge” between Western and Eastern culture. In its historical development, Byzantium went through five stages:
First stage (IV - mid-VII centuries). The independence of Byzantium is affirmed, power, military bureaucracy, and the foundations of the “correct” faith are formed based on the traditions of pagan Hellenism and Christianity. Outstanding monuments of the mid-V-VI centuries. – Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna; Hippodrome; Temple of Sophia (Anthimius and Isidore); mosaic paintings of the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna; mosaics in the Church of the Assumption in Nika; icon "Sergius and Bacchus".
Second stage (second half of the 7th - first half of the 9th centuries). The invasions of Arabs and Slavs are repelled. The ethnic basis of culture is consolidated around the Greeks and Slavs. There is an alienation from Western Roman (European) cultural elements. The Church is victorious over secular power. The orthodox-conservative foundations of Orthodoxy are strengthening. Culture is becoming more and more localized, acquiring originality, and gravitating towards eastern cultures.
Third stage (second half of the 9th - mid-11th centuries). "Golden Age" of Byzantine culture. Schools, universities, and libraries emerge.
Fourth period (second half of the 11th - beginning of the 13th centuries). In 1071, Byzantium was defeated by the Turks; in 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade subjugated it. The resulting Latin Empire loses the authority of power. The Orthodox Church assumes protective and unifying functions. Cultural development is significantly slowing down.
Fifth stage (1261 - 1453). After liberation from the power of the Latin knights, Byzantium was unable to restore its former greatness due to internal unrest and civil strife. The following are being developed: religious and literary creativity, theology, philosophy, miniatures, icons, fresco painting.
After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Byzantium ceased to exist.
Features of Byzantine culture are:
· Orthodoxy as an orthodox-conservative version of Christianity as a spiritual basis
· low degree of losses on the part of the conquerors in comparison with Western Roman culture
· cult of the emperor as a representative and exponent of secular and spiritual power
· protection of the power of the emperor, preservation of the unity of the state through the efforts of the Orthodox Church
· traditionalism and the canon of the creeds of Orthodoxy
Since 622, a new religion arose first in Mecca, then in Medina on the Arabian Peninsula - Islam (submissive to God). The spiritual foundations of medieval Arab-Muslim culture have some common features with Christianity in terms of ideas about God and monotheism, in the relationship between God and being, God and man.
The establishment of Christianity and Islam as monotheistic religions contributed to general development culture of many peoples, the formation of its historically new types.
The lecture reveals in more detail the phenomenal phenomena of medieval culture: carnival, chivalry, university - which will make it possible to comprehend both the universalism and the depth of the contradictions of medieval culture, the features of which were preserved in culture until the 21st century.
Questions for self-control
1. Give a brief description of the culture of the European Middle Ages.
2. Explain what the essence of medieval culture is.
3. What, in your opinion, is the uniqueness of Byzantine culture?
4. Describe the most famous monument Byzantine architecture – Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
5. What are the features of Byzantineism?
6. Give the realities of modern life that can be considered the heritage of the Middle Ages (institution, symbols, architectural monument, custom, tradition, clothing, food, drink, spices).
