The significance of the Middle Ages in history. The significance of the Middle Ages in the history of mankind

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By the end of the 15th century, the millennial era of the Middle Ages ended. It is even difficult to list all those achievements in the life of society, in the economy and culture, which mankind owes to the Middle Ages and still uses with gratitude. It was then that many states arose that still exist. Modern peoples with their own languages and national cultures were formed within their borders. The origins of modern urban life and parliamentary democracy, judicial norms and universities date back to the Middle Ages. At the same time, many scientific discoveries and important inventions were made. Machine tools and blast furnaces, cannons and mechanical watches appeared, not to mention such familiar little things as glasses or buttons. The invention of printing has played a particularly important role in the history of mankind.

The era of the Middle Ages was marked by an amazing rise in literature and art. Masterpieces of medieval writers and poets, architects and artists have become an integral part of world culture, influencing you and me.

One of the most important achievements of the Middle Ages was the birth of Europe - not in the geographical, but in the cultural and historical sense of the word. Christianity became the basis of this Europe and the richest culture it created. Having originated in antiquity, Christianity spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. It turned out to be like a bridge connecting the Middle Ages with antiquity even when the brilliant Roman culture was perishing under the blows of the barbarians.

In many countries of Asia and Africa, Islam, the third world religion in terms of origin, played an equally important role. On its basis, the Arab civilization was formed - one of the greatest in the history of mankind. And in some countries of East and Southeast Asia, Buddhism, the oldest of the world's religions, played an equally significant role.

The Middle Ages in Europe ended in a completely different way than antiquity. If the Roman Empire perished as a result of internal contradictions and attacks by barbarians, then the transition from the Middle Ages to the New Time, although it was marked in Europe by strong upheavals, was not accompanied by any economic, social or cultural decline. Medieval Europe, having suffered a lot over its thousand-year history, was still firmly on its feet. Moreover, the transition to a new historical era was associated with its further development.

The ability to constantly improve is the most important distinguishing feature of medieval Europe, which it inherited from modern times, and ultimately to modern times. It was this feature that allowed Europe, which in the early Middle Ages lagged behind the most developed countries of the East, gradually in technical and economic terms, to get ahead, and later use its superiority to establish dominance over other parts of the world. But you will learn about this already from the course on the history of modern times.

§ 1 The concept of "Middle Ages"

One and a half thousand years ago, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new era in world history began. In historical science, it is customary to call it the Middle Ages or the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years, until about the 15th century this period of history was replaced by the New Age.

The Middle Ages is a centuries-old period of the birth, domination and decomposition of feudalism. In European countries it lasted for XII centuries, in Asian countries even longer. It should be noted that the remnants of medieval traditions and customs in some Asian countries have not disappeared until now.

The term "Middle Ages" was first coined by Italian humanists during the Renaissance. From the standpoint of the high achievements of the Renaissance culture, the Middle Ages were seen by humanist philosophers as a period of savagery and barbarism. This position has long been rooted in historical science.

Historians of the 17th-18th centuries have consolidated the division of human history into ancient, middle and new. The history of the Middle Ages covers a long period, full of numerous events that have both positive and negative significance for historians.

The history of the Middle Ages is usually divided into three main periods:

1. The end of the 5th - the middle of the 11th centuries - the period of the early Middle Ages. The feudal system is just beginning to take shape as a social system. This is the time of the barbarian and early feudal kingdoms. Christianity is affirmed, in spiritual life the decline of culture is replaced by an upsurge.

2. The middle of the XI - the end of the 15th centuries - the period of the heyday of feudal relations. There is a massive growth of cities, after a period of feudal fragmentation, centralized states are formed. Commodity-money relations are developing. A new form of state emerged - the feudal monarchy. The ideology of early humanism and the culture of the Renaissance are being formed.

3.XVI - XVII centuries - the period of late feudalism or the beginning of the early modern era. This time is characterized by the processes of decomposition of feudalism and the emergence of early capitalist relations. A type of feudal state is taking shape - an absolute monarchy. The 17th century becomes a turning point in the development of rationalism and natural sciences.

§ 2 Transition to feudalism

In the Middle Ages, most peoples embarked on the path of feudalism, bypassing the slave system. Thus, their Middle Ages begins with the disintegration of tribal relations.

Other peoples, having survived the slave formation, began their history of the Middle Ages with the traditions of class society and the state. Nevertheless, the essence of the new social order remained unchanged. In all countries, the transition to feudalism was associated with the subordination of the peasants to the large landowners, who turned the land into their monopoly property.

It should be noted that feudalism at that time marked the progress in social development. The peasant, allotted with land, was interested in increasing the productivity of his labor. The era of feudalism is marked by the flourishing of small-scale commodity production in cities, which become centers of culture. It was here that manufacture was born and new classes of bourgeois society began to take shape.

§ 3 Development of culture

It should be noted that in the Middle Ages, humanity made significant progress in terms of the development of material and spiritual culture.

It was in the Middle Ages that Christianity became one of the largest world religions, exerting a tremendous influence on the development of medieval European civilization, which is its uniqueness.

Of course, when using the term "Middle Ages", many will remember the fires of the Inquisition, devastating epidemics and manifestations of feudal violence. But, nevertheless, the Middle Ages left in the memory of mankind wonderful poetic works, wonderful monuments of architecture, painting, scientific thought.

Among the galaxy of great people whom the Middle Ages gave us are: scientists - Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Giordano Bruno, Nicolaus Copernicus; genius poets and writers - Omar Khayyam, Dante, Petrarch, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Cervantes; outstanding artists - Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Rembrandt.

§ 4 Summary of the lesson

The further the history of the Middle Ages is studied, the more complex and multifaceted it appears. At the moment, historical science does not represent this period as dark years of violence and ignorance. The medieval world appears before those studying it, not only as a natural stage in the development of society, but also as an original, unique era in the history of Europe with a peculiar culture - both primitive and sophisticated at the same time, undoubtedly capable of spiritually enriching a modern person with acquaintance with it.

List of used literature:

Vainshtein O. L. Western European medieval historiography L., 1994
Korsunsky A.R. The emergence of feudal relations in Western Europe M., 1979
Blok M. Feudal Society M., 2003
Encyclopedia World History M., 2011
History of the Middle Ages, ed. S.P. Karpova M., 2010
Duby J. Middle Ages M., 2001
Le Goff J. Civilization of the Medieval West M., 1997

Images used:

The history of the peoples and states of modern Europe began in the era conventionally defined in the historical literature as the "Middle Ages". Since antiquity, the concept of Europe (from the Semitic root Erebus), identified with the geographical definition of "West", has been contrasted with Asia (root Asu), or the East. The term Europe, indeed, encompasses a certain territorial integrity of peoples and states, the history of which reveals the commonality of economic, socio-political and spiritual development. At the same time, the originality of its western part, which was clearly defined precisely at the stage of medieval history, makes it possible to single out Western Europe as a local civilization existing within the framework of a larger civilizational unity, which is Europe as a whole.

The geographical meaning of the concept of Western Europe does not coincide with the historical one and presupposes a coastal strip at the western end of the Eurasian continent, with a mild maritime climate.

Historical concept of Western Europe at the stage of the Middle Ages includes the history of countries such as England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland, the states of the Iberian and Apennine peninsulas, the Scandinavian countries - Denmark, Norway, Sweden, as well as Byzantium, the successor to the Eastern Roman Empire. The border position of the latter country and its enormous influence on the fate of the entire European civilization predetermined the belonging of its history to both the West and the East.

In the first centuries of our era, most of Western Europe was inhabited by Celtic peoples, partly Romanized and incorporated into the Roman Empire; then, in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples, this territory became a place of settlement of Germanic tribes, while Eastern Europe became a place of settlement and historical activity of mainly Slavic peoples.

§ 1. The content of the terms "Middle Ages" and "feudalism" in historical science

The term "Middle Ages" - translated from the Latin expression medium aevum (Middle Ages) 1 - was first introduced by Italian humanists. Roman historian of the 15th century. Flavio Biondo, who wrote "History from the Fall of Rome", trying to comprehend the reality of his day, called the "Middle Ages" the period that separated his era from the time that served as a source of inspiration for the humanists - antiquity. Humanists evaluated primarily the state of language, writing, literature and art. From the standpoint of the high achievements of the Renaissance culture, they saw the Middle Ages as a period of savagery and barbarization of the ancient world, as a time of spoiled "kitchen" Latin. This assessment has long been rooted in historical science.

In the XVII century. Professor of the University of Gaul in Germany I. Keller introduced the term "Middle Ages" into the general periodization of world history, dividing it into antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times. The chronological framework of the period was designated by him by the time from the division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern parts (ended in 395 under Theodosius I) to the fall of Constantinople under the blows of the Turks in 1453.

In the 17th and especially the 18th century. (the century of the Enlightenment), which were marked by convincing successes of secular rational thinking and natural sciences, the criterion for the periodization of world history began to serve not so much the state of culture as the attitude towards religion and the church. New, mostly pejorative, accents appeared in the concept of "Middle Ages", because of which the history of this period began to be assessed as a time of constraint of mental freedom, the rule of dogmatism, religious consciousness and superstition. The beginning of modern times, respectively, was associated with the invention of printing, the discovery of America by Europeans, the Reformation movement - phenomena that significantly expanded and changed the mental outlook of medieval man.

The romantic trend in historiography, which arose at the beginning of the 19th century. largely as a reaction to the ideology of the Enlightenment and the value system of the new bourgeois world, heightened interest in the Middle Ages and for some time led to its idealization. Overcoming these extremes in relation to the Middle Ages allowed changes in the process of cognition itself, in the ways of comprehending nature and society as a whole by European man.

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. two achievements of a methodological nature, important for the development of historical knowledge, significantly deepened the concept of "Middle Ages". One of them was the idea of the continuity of social development, which replaced the theory of circulation, or cyclical development, coming from antiquity, and the Christian idea of the finiteness of the world. This made it possible to see the evolution of Western European medieval society from a state of decline to an economic and cultural upsurge, the chronological boundary of which was the 11th century. This was the first notable departure from the assessment of the Middle Ages as the era of "dark ages".

The second achievement should be recognized as attempts to analyze not only event and political history, but also social history. These attempts led to the identification of the term "Middle Ages" and the concept of "feudalism". The latter spread in French journalism on the eve of the French Revolution of 1789 as a derivative of the legal term “feud” in the documents of the 11th-12th centuries, which denoted land property transferred for use for the service of a vassal by his lord. Its analogue in the Germanic lands was the term "flax". The history of the Middle Ages began to be understood as the time of the dominance of the feudal or fief system of social relations among the feudal lords - landowners.

A significant deepening of the content of the analyzed terms was provided by the science of the mid - late 19th century, the achievements of which were primarily associated with the formation of a new philosophy of history - positivism. The direction that adopted the new methodology was the first most convincing attempt to transform history into a science proper. She was distinguished by her desire to replace history as an entertaining tale of the lives of heroes with the history of the masses; attempts at a comprehensive vision of the historical process, including the socio-economic life of society; exclusive attention to the source and the development of a critical method of its research, which was supposed to provide an adequate interpretation of the reality reflected in it. The development of positivism began in the 1830s. in the works of O. Comte in France, J. Art. Mill and G. Spencer in England, however, the results of the new methodology in historical research showed themselves later, by the second half of the century. Summarizing the results of the historiography of the 19th century, it should be emphasized that most often, historical thought continued to define feudalism on political and legal grounds. Feudalism was portrayed as a special political and legal organization of society with a system of personal, primarily senior-vassal, ties, conditioned, in particular, by the needs of military protection. Such an assessment was often accompanied by the idea of feudalism as a system of political fragmentation.

Attempts to combine political analysis with social analysis turned out to be more promising. Timid at the end of the 18th century, they acquire more pronounced forms in the works of French historians of the first third of the 19th century, primarily in the work of F. Guizot. He was the first to give a detailed description of feudal property as the basis of senior-vassal ties, noting two of its important features: the conditional nature and the hierarchical structure that determined the hierarchy among the feudal lords, as well as the connection between property and political power. Before the positivists, the social interpretation ignored that layer of direct producers - peasants, through whose efforts the feudal lord realized his property. Historians-positivists began to study such important social structures of feudal society as the community and estates; their analysis, in turn, touched on the problem of the economic and social life of the peasantry.

Attention to economic history led to the spread of a theory that identified feudalism with subsistence farming. The development of market relations in this case was assessed as an indicator of a new, already capitalist economy - an opinion that ignored the fundamental difference between simple commodity and capitalist production and the inevitable change in this type of producer - a small owner for a hired worker. Within the framework of positivism, the socio-economic features of the Middle Ages acted not as defining in the system of feudal relations, but as a given, existing parallel to the political and legal system (feudal fragmentation in the political system, natural economy in the economy). Moreover, attention to socio-economic history did not exclude the recognition of the decisive role of personal ties, which was explained by the psychological characteristics of the people of the Middle Ages. The vulnerability of such ideas was not in their erroneousness, since each of them reflected some side of objective reality, but in the desire of researchers to absolutize them, which interfered with a comprehensive understanding of feudalism.

The development of positivism, with its wide spectrum of vision of the historical process at its economic, socio-political and cultural-psychological levels, as well as the recognition of the laws of historical development, could not fail to direct researchers towards the search for unity in a variety of factors. In other words, positivism prepared the first steps of structural or systems analysis.

One of the results of attempts of this kind was the development by the historical science of the 19th century. the concept of "civilization". Of the two most general parameters of historical development - place and time - it emphasized the territorial delimitation of human communities, which retain their special "face" throughout the entire period of existence. Their internal unity was determined by such characteristics as natural conditions, life, customs, religion, culture, historical fate. And although the concept of civilizations included the idea of their transitory nature, the lifetime of each of them was a time of "long duration".

In the XIX century. in historical science, the structural term "formation" also appeared, associated with the formulation of Marxist methodology. This concept, on the contrary, expanded the boundaries of the human community to the scale of the planet as a whole, highlighting the time division of the historical process, where the mode of production and the form of ownership became the unit of reference. The systemic principle in the Marxist understanding links different levels of social development with a single economic dominant. In the Marxist interpretation, feudalism was one of the modes of production, based on the property of feudal lords on land, realized through the medium of a small producer; the fact of the exploitation of the peasant by the landowner was especially emphasized. The monism of Marxist methodology, which was also highly politicized, was not accepted at that time by most researchers. The rigid determinism of the historical process with its subdivision into primary - basic and secondary - superstructural phenomena, indeed, fraught with the danger of its simplified understanding. In Soviet medieval studies in Russia, this danger was aggravated by the sacralization of the Marxist method, which enslaved science. The absolutization of the method violated the comprehensive vision of the historical process, led to an excessive enthusiasm for sociological schemes, which in a sense replaced the analysis of real life.

Historical knowledge of the 20th century has significantly enriched systems analysis, in particular, in relation to feudal society. A decisive impetus to its development was given by the "battle for history", begun in the 30s by representatives of French historical science, who created their own direction around the journal "Annals". Having adopted the most important achievements of nineteenth-century sociology. and, first of all, the recognition of the systemic nature of the world, existing according to its objective laws of development, they at the same time significantly complicated the idea of the complexity of the historical process. The "feeling of the great drama of relativity" characteristic of these historians (in the words of one of the founders of the direction, Lucien Febvre), led them to recognize the plurality of connections - material and personal - within the social system. This attitude broke the mechanical understanding of causality in history and the idea of one-line development, introduced into historical knowledge the idea of unequal rhythms of development of various aspects of the social process. A more complex interpretation of the concept of "production relations" was given, emphasizing their inextricable connection with the components of inquiry, since relations in the sphere of production are built by people who are guided by their own ideas about them. New approaches have returned to history a person, not necessarily a “hero” or creator of ideas, but an ordinary person with his everyday consciousness.

The synthesis of the achievements of world and domestic historical science of the XX century allows us to give a deeper and more complete definition of the concepts of "feudalism" and "Middle Ages", to the characteristics of which we pass.

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The role of the symbol in the culture of the Middle Ages

Introduction

folk culture symbol

Culture can be viewed from different angles. In my opinion, one of the most promising in modern cultural studies is the value-based approach. Taken in terms of value, culture is a complex hierarchy. Any element of culture can be considered in the value aspect - nature, tools and instruments of labor, the person himself, his words, thoughts, actions, objects created by him, etc. The totality of the most significant values constitutes a system of ideals that are of a concrete historical nature , have a concrete historical expression. So, the most significant ideals of ancient culture are the ideas of Good, Beauty and Truth.

The flip side of the value problem is the problem of meaning. Meaning is the spiritual orientation of a person's being towards the realization of certain socially recognized values. Meaning is a specific form of expression of human activity in accordance with certain values and ideals. Similar to the hierarchy of values, culture is also a specific hierarchy of meanings.

The ways of realizing the values and meanings of culture are language or a system of specific sign means.

In all the variety of sign-linguistic means that culture has at its disposal, one has a special, defining place. His name is symbol. A symbol is the most capacious and significant, productive and concentrated form of expression of cultural values and meanings. The symbol is the most powerful of all the “tools” available in a culture for realizing its spiritual potential.

A symbol is, in fact, a concretely visible embodiment of certain ideas and ideals as the highest values and meanings by which a person lives and which determines the development and functioning of culture. Embodying the highest spiritual strata of culture, the symbol naturally becomes the central defining formation of the entire complex of its sign-linguistic expressions.

Occupying a leading, defining position in the series of symbolic expressions of culture, the symbol, at the same time, with its “force field” encompasses all cultural phenomena and elements. Being a "sensory-supersensible" formation, dialectically embodying the individual and the universal, the finite and the infinite, the concrete and the abstract, the material and the ideal, the symbol is the most complete and at the same time universal form of expression of human existence. The symbolic nature of any formations of culture, thus, can be represented "as the ability of this or that object, property or relationship in its sensually concrete, singularly given appearance to embody a certain human meaning, the entire diverse set of social relations, which, according to the definition of social scientists, constitute the essence of a person.

The symbol finds the fullest manifestation of its essential characteristics and defining properties in art. A symbol in art is a "standard" of symbolic expression as a whole. This "standard" of an artistic symbol in relation to all other symbolic forms is largely related to the role that art plays in culture. This special role of art is connected with the fact that it is nothing more than a model of culture or a way of its self-knowledge.

Art can be described as a kind of artistic portrait of culture. What does culture find in art? The image of its integrity, uniqueness, its socio-historical I AM . Art is capable of portraying culture, isomorphically capturing in its features the specifics of each of its types, as well as the dynamics of its development.

One of the main factors determining the central place of a symbol in the cultural system is its special position in the sphere of epistemology. This is due to the fact that the symbol, in fact, expresses the original and universal side of knowledge. It is nothing more than an expression of the essence of a sensory image as a form of cognition of the world around us. “Even the most primitive and elementary thing, not to mention its scientific representation,” notes A. F. Losev, “is possible only if there is a symbolic function of our consciousness, without which all historical reality disintegrates into an infinite number of discrete and therefore semantic relation of unrelated things "

Representing a fundamental, universal education for the expression of various meanings and values, a symbol in the real existence of culture is revealed in a gradation of symbolic specifications, each of which corresponds to one or another form of public consciousness and its specific expressions, presenting itself as a political, legal, moral, artistic aesthetic, religious, mythological, scientific and other symbols. Accordingly, each of the indicated symbolic specifications can have its own internal gradation, say, symbols in science are subdivided into mathematical, physical, chemical, logical, psychological images and signs, etc.

In each of its specifications, a symbol manifests itself in one or another aspect of its nature, expresses one or another side of its being and at the same time remains in its essence one and the same, namely in an impressive way of visual, visually-figurative embodiment of ideas and ideals, fundamental values and hidden meanings of the aggregate human life.

Chapter 1 The Role of the Symbol in the Study of a Specific Culture

This or that culture can be studied not only in the usual academic version, using concepts, theoretical provisions, mental skills. The initial hypothesis of our research was that cultural studies can be taught through the comprehension of the symbolic nature of culture. It was not about replacing the established forms of education. In this case, the search was carried out for more effective and productive learning tools. The need for such an experiment was dictated by the fact that the modern student lives in a culture where the role of symbols increases, and the symbolic language itself ceases to be forgotten.

If, for example, we take the symbolic images of nature, as they developed in ancient or medieval culture, then we get a fairly significant idea of these cultures as a whole. It is known that in the early stages of cultural genesis, one of the most common forms of visual embodiment of various cosmological and magical ideas about the world were geometric signs (circles, triangles, crosses, swastikas). They were more or less realistically represented in animal figures. The addition of signs into an ornament can be viewed as an expression of certain patterns. This is a kind of attempt to streamline the elements within the framework of a holistic space.

One of the most ancient artistic images of the universe, well known to many peoples, is a composition with the world Tree (or the Tree of Life). The order of placement of animals near the Tree (birds near the branches, animals at the base of the trunk, a little less often in the Greek vase painting depicted fish or chthonic creatures of the lower tier) reflected the tiered structure of the universe. Another "formula" of the universe is the image of the calendar. Its connection with ancient cosmogonic models is clearly captured in the compositions of the outer perimeter of the mosaic from Carthage (probably IV century). There are alternating figures of predators and herbivores, representatives of the earthly layer of the universe, traditional for scenes of torment, and the images of animals are separated by images of plants (Tree of Life). The inner square is inhabited by birds (the element of air, heavenly space). The depiction of months in the inner circle in the form of figures walking one after another is quite comparable with the images of the zodiacal constellations in the ancient astronomical tables.

Ancient peoples in myths explained natural phenomena as close and dear to man. Everything visible around them was perceived by them as an obvious image of a deity: earth, sky, sun, stars, mountains, volcanoes, rivers, streams, trees - they were all deities. Their history was sung by ancient poets. Sculpted their images. The sun is a brilliant god who always fights against the night - a dark deity. A volcano erupting huge streams of lava from its depths is a giant who dared to encroach on the sky. The eruption stopped, because the victor Jupiter threw the disobedient one into the underworld.

The interaction of nature and culture is one of the key themes of cultural studies. If you look at the endless variety of plots associated with this topic, you can see that they gravitate towards two poles. Some culturologists view the relationship between nature and culture as initially hostile, irreconcilable. However, many cultural scientists are looking for opportunities to harmonize these relations. For a long time there was a belief in the existence of an eternal objective order of nature, with which human life must be coordinated and to which must be subordinated.

The mythological attitude includes not only humans, animals, and other lower creatures, but also superhuman beings. The whole world seems to be permeated with mythological forces. Human destiny directly or indirectly depends on their way of acting. In the days of Antiquity, every tree, every river, every hill had its own local spirit guardian. Before cutting down a tree, digging a mountain, stopping a stream, a person was obliged to make a sacrifice, to receive the permission of the spirits.

People and animals are not just bodies, however, to a gaze directed at the world around them, they appear as something corporeally existing and, therefore, as reality, included in the universal space of time. The meaning of mythology of all times, of any era lies in the recognition of the divinity of nature and the reverent communication of man with mysterious, invisible forces. The feeling of Antiquity as a happy pastoral and carefree childhood of European culture, perhaps nothing reflects as accurately as the novel by the ancient Greek writer Long "Daphnis and Chloe". The relevance of "bucolic", "Nile", "garden" motives was substantiated by the texts of the Holy Scriptures. In early Christian art, the images of the Good Shepherd were widely used, the apostles - fishermen, shepherds represented the Old Testament righteous. The ideal garden, in the universal structure of which the features of the ancient Eastern Eden and the pagan “shelter of the blessed,” practically coincide, becomes a symbol of paradise, the Beloved of the psalmist, the Mother of God, and the Church.

However, it should be noted that the "maturation" of civilization brought such collisions of problems that Antiquity could not resolve. And the first of these was the gradual alienation of culture from nature. The Christian tradition has radically changed the way people look at their environment. Christianity inherited from Judaism not only the linear concept of a unique historical time, but also the idea of the successive stages of creation, in particular of the creation of man himself. According to Christianity, man, as it were, rises above the natural-cosmic cycle of times. The spiritual monopoly of man began to assert itself in the natural world. The effectively practical attitude of Western Christianity contributed to the conquest of nature. A holistic and all-embracing understanding of nature, as it developed in ancient culture, began to deteriorate in the following centuries. In general, when the man of Europe switched to intensive tillage, he actually turned into an exploiter of nature.

Initially, man was associated with the earth, with plants and animals. The mysticism of the earth played a huge role. It is known how important plant and animal religious cults were. The transformed elements of these cults entered Christianity as well. According to Christian beliefs, a person left the earth and must return to the earth. The culture during its flowering period was surrounded by nature, loved gardens and animals. People of culture, no matter how far they have gone from natural life, still looked at the sky, at the stars, at the running clouds. Contemplation of the beauties of nature is even predominantly a product of culture. Culture, state, everyday life were understood organically, by analogy with living organisms. The prosperity of cultures and states seemed like a plant-animal process. The culture was full of symbols, in it there was a reflection of the sky in earthly forms, signs of another world in this world were given.

However, gradually this immersion of the spirit in nature began to erode. For the ancient Greek and for the medieval man there existed an unchanging cosmos, a hierarchical system, an eternal order. People of medieval culture believed that nature speaks to people in the symbolic language of divine will and reason. But in the next era - the Renaissance - this view changes. Already in the Middle Ages, a new exploitative attitude towards nature began to be realized. This, in particular, was reflected in the design of the Frankish illustrated calendars of this time. If in the previous calendars twelve months were personified by passive allegorical figures, then in the new calendars they are depicted as plowmen, reapers, lumberjacks, butchers, that is, in the form of human figures engaged in the conquest of the world. Man and nature are divorced here, man acts as the master of nature.

Chapter 2. The oldest symbols

Culture arises as an attempt by a living mind to cognize and comprehend the truths of our world. It is obvious that at the same time we always come into a certain conflict with the culture of the past with other cultures and try to synthesize, generalize various myths and symbols, trying to reduce them to some common denominators, trying to find a single root of these myths.

The "travels" of the Greek Odysseus or the Argonauts, the adventures of one of the most ancient heroes of the East, Gilgamesh, the "space" flights of the great king-magician Solomon in the legends of the Eastern world, the travels of the Arab-Iranian sailor Sinbad, the famous European knights Ozhs the Dane or the knights of the "round table" Arthur - - regardless of whether there were real prototypes of these legends or the heroes were fictional, these stories were enthusiastically received by the audience, be it the nobility of the court or the common people.

Wonderful adventures in real and other worlds that happened to beloved heroes found a response in the soul of every listener, everyone tried them on, as it were, to their own experience and ideas, many pictures and symbols arose that everyone could interpret in their own way and taste, use on holidays or on weekdays.

New discoveries

Legends tell about the rulers of the medieval Khazar kingdom, which stretched from the Urals to the Austrian Alps, that, before choosing a religion, they arranged a dispute between representatives of various confessions and, having listened to everyone, converted to Judaism. Prince Vladimir, to whom the ownership of these lands passed, acted in a similar way and spoke in the 10th century in favor of Byzantine Christianity, which captivated him with the beauty of church services.

Later, the Tatars established themselves in the same space (their "kingdom" stretched from Vienna to the Pacific Ocean), the Hutsul legend claims that the Tatars changed religions depending on the mood of their princes (khans).

Unfriendly critics saw in this a superficial, frivolous attitude towards the worldview truths of religions. At the same time, educated people from the East, with whom the author had a chance to meet after both (1914-1945) world wars, looked at it completely differently: Slavs, Russians, Georgians, Tatars, Kalmyks, Karaite Jews in Crimea talked about their great leaders, scientists, poets, who in the religions and cultures of other peoples, behind various facades, customs, symbols, discovered the common inherent in all.

Indeed, almost all the tribes living on the territory of the aforementioned kingdoms show a great tolerance for other beliefs, a tolerance that at a later time seems almost unimaginable. They say, for example, that the Tatar khans, regardless of faith, had shamans, representatives of the Buddhist religion, Islam, Judaism, Christianity in their environment. In the capital of the Khazar Khanate, there were supposedly special judges for. adherents of each religion, that is, for Christians, and for Jews, and for Muslims, and for pagans.

Astrologers and alchemists of medieval Christianity constantly use Islamic-Arab (and Persian) sources. Muslim scholars constantly admire the deep "magical" knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Hindus. Occupation with symbols and myths convinces us that the sages of all times and peoples created means for mutual understanding and transfer of knowledge from one people to another, despite the borders that separated them.

Renaissance scholar Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Netgesheim begins his work with a dedication to Abbot Tritheim. It is curious that he recalls at the same time how they both had a friendly conversation in a monastery near Würzburg "about chemistry, magic, Kabbalah and other secret sciences."

Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (1493-1541), known as Parazsls, was born near the famous monastery of Einsiedeln, where his highly educated father was still a doctor. The owners of the estates Nettesheim and Hohenheim, to whom we are grateful for the collection and systematization of symbolism in alchemical, astrological and other teachings of the Middle Ages, had much in common: they were closely associated with scientists who have long found refuge in libraries and cells of large monasteries and stored there the knowledge collected for centuries ...

Both of the scientists we have mentioned worked in the era when the creative traditions of the preceding centuries fell into oblivion, in the era when Europe was shaken by wars for power over the laity. Scientists tried to check the information they had gleaned from secret archives and textbooks on magic during their travels both at court and among the common people.

Folk culture in Europe

The 19th century was characterized by the emergence of violent party propaganda that portrayed old castles and fortresses as "witnesses to the oppression of the common people in the Middle Ages"; now they become the scene of dark, gothic-style stories that make the hair stand on end. The cozy chambers of old castles are interpreted as "torture chambers", a whole industry has developed for the manufacture of chains, frontal places, torture benches, chastity belts and other metal rubbish that would testify to the "dark customs of the Middle Ages."

In fact, many medieval fortresses were a repository of the cultural heritage of ancient families and peoples, where for centuries various values accumulated, ranging from customs to political and historical nation".

In his rather autobiographical book "Green Heinrich", published in 1854 in Braunschweig, Gottfried Keller very convincingly conveys how the population of small European cities, artisans, itinerant traders were imbued with the spirit of medieval tradition. He describes in detail the junk dealer's family that lived near his father's house.

Every day curious people flocked here from everywhere. As a rule, these were people who gathered to talk about the strange and unusual, because the craving of people for religion and miracles always found abundant food.

Here they read books about predictions, stories about travels to distant countries and about miraculous heavenly signs, told about peasant families who still have old pagan books, that they were descendants of ancient families whose fortresses and towers were scattered over all over the country. They talked about witchcraft ointments and the Sabbath of witches on Bald Mountain as something obvious. As a child, the writer found tables of symbols of some "crazy charlatan theosophy", and in it - an indication of how to represent the four basic elements, which he later used more than once.

Keller's memoirs, like many other sources, convince us how wrong it would be in the past to separate the educational level of the people from academic scholarship. It was the old lady, who was the center of attraction for the audience, who managed to fuse together fantastic folk legends and stories about other times and foreign countries.

Among the books that constantly passed through her hands, "she had a preference for Nordic, Indian and Greek myths," books published in the last century with large folding engravings. "She was interested in all the gods and idols of old and new pagan tribes, she was interested in their history and how they looked in the pictures ..." - writes Keller.

Popular culture and education of "friends of truth" who were looking for the truth in the secret libraries of castles and monasteries had much in common, and numerous oral and written sources testify to this. The followers of Paracelsus tirelessly searched for hidden meaning in folk legends, the newly discovered myths of the past centuries took root in the folk were and did not exist, giving rise to an almost forgotten belief in the fabulous.

In 1967, the author had a chance to see a peasant wardrobe, completed at the end of the 18th century. The wardrobe is decorated with carvings representing a young man who is about to seek adventure in the East and leaves his girlfriend. We see that two centuries ago there were a kind of "hippies" who hoped to find philosophical revelations in the East.

Youth in search of lost knowledge

The chaos as a consequence of the world wars of the 20th century, the fear of even more terrible conflicts in the future, gave rise to a wide youth movement in the 60s from California to Kathmandu in Nepal. Young people tried to build a bridge to the great cultural traditions of the past. The infamous Irish - American scientist and poet Timothy Leary even saw in the hippie something like a "Celtic Renaissance".

Among the most educated young people in the United States, a country that has done everything since the 19th century to present the Old World as "rubbish and old", Leary's followers began to seriously engage in such eternal things as the gypsy Tarot cards, the worldview of "the wisest and most influential mind "of Europe of Paracelsus. English Buddhist Alan Watte says about the same: "You look at the art of these young people and are amazed: they managed to rediscover the sophistication of a true craft with its colors, abundance, accuracy and interest in detail, truly as if we have returned to the days of Persian and Celtic miniatures." ...

In the 50s and 60s, European "vagabonds" reached out to the gypsies who settled after persecution throughout Europe in the Camargue and the Pyrenees. Amazed, they froze in front of the symbols that had opened to them, which they honored at home as "medieval superstition" and which remained known only to individual specialists. Now they saw with their own eyes that all this is still alive, that in France and Spain (and not only among poorly educated people) the art of predictions and fortune-telling is widespread, that these passes and gestures serve not only as a means of communication for illiterate people, but also as a subculture, as a means to develop your own lifestyle and bring variety to life on which the template of urban civilization lies with a heavy yoke.

These were the first steps of this youth movement. Then came magazines, films, and especially music, which became extremely fashionable in America and India after 1966. Hippies began to gather for their rallies, in particular at the Waldeck fortress in Hunsrück in 1969 and near Ascona in 1978. Almost without any loud announcements from English-speaking countries, up to three thousand young people gathered here (it is difficult to give an exact figure - this is not a concert hall!).

The assembled young people (both in 1969 and in 1978) were characterized by a completely new and at the same time eternal lifestyle, half of them had already walked the paths of ancient vagabonds before in order to get acquainted first-hand with "underdeveloped" Cultures, and The weights were convinced that these cultures had inherent values that have been lost in recent centuries.

Young people were convinced that they had to return to forgotten traditions and return them to their everyday life. They wanted to live together in homes that fit into the green environment. They tried to discover new spiritual values, restoring the ties of European culture with highly developed cultures of other countries and past centuries. If earlier poets were looking for various symbols - from the romantic Novalis to Hermann Hesse, now it has become a hobby of thousands of young people. In such a transitional time, the study of symbols and myths ceases to be an end in itself and the lot of scientists. Repeatedly reinterpreted and updated, we find old symbols in new poetry, in folklore youth art and even on the covers of the most interesting gramophone records, not to mention the media, comics and cinema. The symbolism that came from antiquity seemed to be a relic of the past in the 19th century, but the 20th century convinced us that ancient sacraments have an impact on modernity, moreover, they encourage us to think about the future.

Cross

If we cross both lines - the vertical one, which unites the upper and lower worlds, and the female horizontal, which represents the earth's surface and water surface, we get the simplest picture that exists in the world.

A fourfold image will appear before us, which has always meant the material world - the thing. This is our land with four cardinal points, formed by four elements. Even in pre-Christian symbolism, the cross was also a symbol of suffering, because the root of all troubles is the reality of the world, which must be reckoned with.

In the Byzantine and Orthodox Russian churches and their main sects, they try, if possible, not to show the crucified Christ, because he told us to have fun and overcome the torments of earthly suffering.

In various forms of the cross, one can often see an attempt by artists to present it even more clearly as an instrument of torture.

Mystics and folklore sources often decorate the cross with flowers and leaves, thus transforming it from a symbol of suffering into the trunk of the tree of life, into the personification of eternal growth, spring, and Easter resurrection.

Linga in the yoni vessel.

The Hindu religion represents the male and female elements (active and passive, producing and receiving) in the form of a vertical linga (phallus) - a sign of the vital force of Shiva - and yoga - a bowl, a female womb, a vessel into which the linga is lowered.

When English travelers, in particular Sellon, familiarized themselves with this image and its place in all mythology in India, this led, through Jennings, who, based on this image, interpreted all the symbolism of alchemists and Rosicrucians, to a wave of enthusiasm with which Europeans began to learn secret teachings. There is no doubt that "wells with living water" is a popular motif of medieval literature that arose from similar ideas as a fusion of magical and erotic symbols of the female and male principles. In the images, these wells are often surrounded by a low fence - a hint of a hidden meaning that must be recognized.

In Austria, where allegories have been especially eagerly used since the Renaissance, Mars is often depicted as a figure of fountains, downright overloaded with various military male symbols. “The most popular theme is the standard bearer. This statue is installed in the center of the city and it symbolizes courage, perseverance and courage. Mars sometimes carries only part of the ammunition, but a sword or dagger is always with it. In his right hand he has a standard, a flag or a banner, or else he brandishes a heavy sword. "

Bowl, arc

According to Agrippa Nettesheim, "parts of the circle" in the language of magical symbols mean the goddess Moon, the feminine principle of creation in general.

In Indian poetry, the crescent moon is obviously associated with what in knightly poetry is called the Grail, that is, the container in which the elixir of life "soma" is stored. From the cup, the elixir is poured onto the ground, nourishing and giving strength to all living things. It is collected in sacred plants, and a person can return the vital elixir with the juice of these plants.

An inverted sickle is usually also a symbol of a woman. If there is also a horizontal line under it, then for the gypsies from the south of Russia it is a dead person, peace in a coffin.

In Ukraine, the old gravestones on the mounds are called "women", from the word "woman" - a woman, a grandmother, a midwife. There is a belief that the ancient heroes buried here, who rest in the bosom of mother - earth ("mother - damp earth"), will someday come to life again. That is, in this case, the arc is a symbol of rebirth!

Unicorn

The fabulous creature unicorn, often mentioned throughout the entire space from East Asia to Europe, in Indian mythology is also a symbol of vivifying male energy.

In the songs of troubadours and paintings of that time, the unicorn, "a horse with a strong horn in its forehead," is the most powerful and indomitable animal that becomes meek and falls to its knees only when it sees in front of itself a "beautiful virgin" - chivalrous culture from India to Western Europe deified the feminine principle of the world and made it the destination of all the creative potencies of the masculine element.

A circle

Agrippa of Neptesheim explains that the ancients hid great secrets in their manuscripts, for example, they attributed everything round to the world, the sun, hope and happiness. the circle meant the sky, parts of it (the arc of the bowl) meant the moon.

Zero, this wonderful symbol of our mathematics, came to us in the Middle Ages through the Muslims (and the Russians claim that through the Jewish Khazars), but this is nothing more than a circle that outlines emptiness, nothing. Accordingly, a ring with a dot in the middle in astrology denotes the sun, in alchemy - gold, among the Rosicrucians - imperial power, which in the center bears a creative principle that gives meaning to the entire environment.

The nomads who moved in the foothills of the Alps, that is, in the space between Bavaria, Burgundy and Provence, understood by the circle something completely different, namely, the requirement to move on, to move to other areas. Connoisseurs interpret this image as a simplified picture of a wheel from a gypsy cart, while others see in this sign a symbol of perpetual motion, constant movements of nomads. They are endless, or, in other words, end at the same place from which they began, that is, it is a movement in a circle.

Cross (lotus)

as a display of the world

The mystical geography of the Hindus sees in the lotus a reflection of the earth, which floats like a water flower on the surface of the ocean. The open cup of the flower, located strictly in the middle, is the mountain of the gods Meru (Hindus to this day believe that the mountain really exists and is located somewhere in the Himalayas). Members of theosophical societies established by the followers of Helena Blavatsky, which arose in the dozens in the 19th century in North America and Europe, were convinced that “somewhere in the high mountain valleys between Nepal and Mongolia live immortal beings (the so-called mahatmas) who, with their astral powers, control the destiny the world ".

Other giant mountains rise around this place - like stamens, petals of an open flower, like the four main parts of the world. Some Brahmins see this as a symbol of the four main cultural centers located around the "roof of the world", that is, India itself - in the south, the Greek-European Mediterranean - in the west, the regions ruled by the Tatar-Mongols - in the north and China - - in the east. Other states that surround the main ones with a crown are numerous and of little importance, because they are all influenced by the four main cultures. By the way, the Hutsuls - Carpathian Slavs - see the symbol of peace in a four-lobed clover leaf.

Anchor

In its numerous images, especially those related to early Christianity, the anchor reveals a close relationship with the symbols of the cross and the trident, additionally in it - a hint of a strong "consolidation" of new religious communities (and in the Roman Empire they represented a small minority), of their persistent faith in the chaos of a pagan environment.

The upper part of the image can be viewed as a display of a person (as it was, for example, among one tribe of Bessarabian gypsies) standing vertically and stretching his arms up, that is, to the sky (the points around him are understood as stars, “by which you can navigate at night and find the correct road "). A part of a circle, an arc below, is a sign of the material world, the Earth, which again and again generates a person.

Tree of Life

In the Germanic runes Г, which, according to legend, were invented by the ruler of shamans and the mythical spirit Odin, the rune "man" means a man, a man who raised both hands up, invoking divine powers.

The opposite sign is the Ir rune - a sign of the feminine principle, and in accordance with the ideas of numerous modern researchers, it is also a symbol of the "evil forces" of witches and druids. One cannot agree with such an interpretation, because in ancient times a woman personified Wisdom, and only in later centuries they began to attribute to her a connection with the devil and evil spirits.

Ir, in fact, means yew, that is, one of the sacred trees of the Germanic tribes. In one ritual spell, the "ir" rune is understood as "all-encompassing", in this case the rune points us to the roots, to the "unconscious" knowledge that came to us from our ancestors.

But the combination of both runes gives us a tree of life, feeding on juices from below and above and which is a symbol of eternal existence.

It seems * that flowers on three stems growing in pots, so beloved in peasant folklore, are associated with the rune "man" and other similar ideas.

The same images could be found back in the thirties of our century on old gypsy carts - they were a symbol of fertility, prosperity, success in life and in all endeavors.

Triangle

Like a linga in Indian mythology, the triangle is primarily a symbol of the creative male power, in other words, the creative power of God. And vice versa, a triangle, the apex of which is facing down, is a sign of the feminine principle, a fertile womb. According to Agrippa Netgesheim,

Juno was often designated with a triangle as the personification of a woman.

For European alchemists, an upward triangle meant a tongue of flame, a "male" fire, and a downward pointing triangle meant water that escapes from the mountain peaks, from the clouds down to the Earth.

If both signs are superimposed on each other, for the Hindus it will mean the unification of the creative and generative principles, a sign of the gods' love for everything earthly, and earthly - for the gods, a union from which everything and everything is born forever.

In Europe, this sign was considered to have come from the East, it was known, in particular, as the "Star of David" hexagon was used in popular beliefs (they took a lot from both Jews and Gypsies) as protection from evil forces.

Square

The square is willingly used as a sign of the material world, made up of four elements, which in turn correspond to the four cardinal points. The image of the matter interpreted in this way becomes even more convincing if you inscribe a cross inside the square, in this form it will remind us of the cross on the grave, the window of the prison, that everything passes. The sage said: "Our Earth would be a gloomy crypt if we were not aware of the power of our spirit."

The cross under a square stone is a symbol of the gravity of the earth, the idea that there is nothing total in the world, except! whimsical play of the elements that the world is hell, a hopeless abyss, a dungeon, Tartarus.

On the contrary, the cross over a square stone is a symbol of hope, this is the tree of life that has broken through from the grave, this is the possibility of redemption, resurrection. Often this sign was used to denote the "philosopher's stone", which supposedly can give immortality and eternal youth.

Swastika

The swastika, a cross with perpendicularly bent ends, was also often interpreted as a symbol of the four main forces, cardinal points, and elements. It is no coincidence that the swastika is found in ancient Chinese manuscripts in the designation of concepts such as "region", "country".

At the same time, if the square as a Sign of matter characterizes it as something dead, frozen, opposed to life, then the swastika rather reminds us of a wheel, a circle, movement, the transformation of elements, the change of seasons.

Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich explained in his book, published in 1933, the attractive effect of the swastika on the masses: “It acts on the subconscious emotions of the observer. The swastika is nothing more than an image of people wrapped around each other, schematic, but at the same time quite recognizable. One line means sexual intercourse in a horizontal position, the other in an upright position. It can be assumed that this symbol excites the strings hidden from us in the body, moreover, the more the less satisfied the person, the more lustful he is. If we add the idea of loyalty and honor to this sign, then it will be able to satisfy moral doubts and will be accepted all the more willingly. "

Pentagonal star (pentagram)

The people also called such a star "witch's foot". "Leg" seems to be the mainstay of the witchcraft of witches. Some scholars are trying to see in the word "drude" ("witch") an echo of the word "druid" ("priest among the ancient Celts"). Such magicians as Agrippa Netgesheim, inscribed in the drawing of a star the figure of a conscious person: the four lower rays (triangles) - arms and legs, outstretched as if the person wants to embrace the whole world, and the upper ray is the head. In this case, the pentagram becomes the sign of the "adepts" and the star of the magicians, who believed that, thanks to the knowledge of the laws of the world, which most seem to be four-sided, they can find the way to a happy life.

Levi says about this: “The pentagram, which in the Gnostic schools is called the fiery star, is a sign of omnipotence and spiritual self-control ... The letter G, which free masons inscribe in the center of the fiery star, reminds of two sacred words of the ancient Kabbalah:“ gnosis "and" generation ". The pentagram also means "great architect" - after all, from whatever side we look at it, we see a large letter A. "

We have already seen that plants with five petals (rose, lily, grapes) were a similar sign of the overcoming of matter by the "awakened man". Heraldry argue that the crown, often depicted above the coat of arms of high clans (cavaliers, knights), must certainly have five teeth.

Space snake

The snake that bites its own tail, that is, endless, was the symbol of the cycle of the universe or time in Indian mythology. It surrounds the Earth, which is like a lotus flower in the center of the ocean. The snake can also be seen on the shell of a turtle slowly, relentlessly crawling over eternity.

The Greeks also knew such a snake (Ourboros), they tried to comprehend its meaning through gnosis - a unity that in ancient times was understood as the Universe. Through myths, the image of a snake penetrated the mysticism of alchemists. The snake of eternity is sometimes drawn with four legs. In this case, they should be understood as the four elements. Sometimes he even carried wings, this is a constant movement of the energy of the world.

As a matter of fact, we have almost come to the image of the dragon. The mythical hero's victory over him was thought by mystical philosophers as a symbol of the knowledge of the world and victory as such, because "in knowledge is power."

Among the alchemists or Rosicrucians, the hero can trample the dragon with his feet or even ride it. In knightly poetry, the heroes moved in space on vultures - a hybrid of an eagle and a snake, which in the blink of an eye transported the knight from the family estate to the kingdom of fairies in the East.

In Tantrism, the life force of a person is represented as the power of a snake, here not only the ability of the snake to curl up into a ring, but also to renew itself, changing its skin, which made the snake a symbol of the circulation of energy in the world and man, as well as the change of eras (thereby a symbol of the cycle Sun through the zodiac). This includes the annual movement of the Sun in a circle of constellations or the world, which, as the Brahmins teach, goes its own way through the cosmic ages.

Peacock - the motley variety of the world

The peacock is often made the personification of endless variety, a cheerful spirit with which God created this earth, having fun as he wanted. In Indian mythology, when Krishna and Radha - two hypostases of the god Vishnu - dance and play in the eternal joy of love, peacocks look at them.

There are cult toys, for example: Krishna and Radha swing on a swing, and on the swing posts we again see peacocks. The motley peacock seems to tell us: no matter how hard life is, no matter what unpleasant surprises it brings us, it is inevitable, we must find joy in life and believe that its diversity will always allow us to find a positive edge.

At the Indian court, the peacock always accompanied the image of both deities - Krishna and Radha - and was a symbol of an exemplary life in love and beauty. From here, from the East, came to Europe the image of a peacock or just a peacock feather in a knight's hat as a symbol of his high moral thoughts.

Some contradiction can be seen in the fact that the Indian Mars, the god of war Kartikeya, the son of the wise Shiva, rides a peacock, but in fact there is no contradiction here: if you read the ancient Indian books on the art of war, we will see that wars then were not a means of mass extermination of people, as the wars of the 20th century became - rather, they were tournaments, something similar to knightly competitions in Europe.

They tried to make these competitions as magnificent and spectacular as possible. Often, as if everything proceeded according to a prepared scenario, a bloody fight between representatives of the warring families to death ended suddenly with the betrothal of a young man and a girl from both clans and a holiday that could last for weeks.

Only a gloomy ascetic, for whom the whole world is only a "vale of sorrow" and "debauchery", for whom living in this world seemed in itself a devilish cunning, could see a negative symbol in the peacock.

Even the Gnostics, who, on the threshold of the Middle Ages, tried to uncover the secrets of divine providence (and as a result subsequently almost all turned to heresy), chose the peacock as an expression of their mystical and philosophical revelations. “If you look closely at its plumage, we find 365 different colors. Therefore, this is a cosmological bird, because Basilides can distinguish 365 different heavens (according to the number of days in a year).

Interestingly, the peacock's egg is pale and inconspicuous. And here it is - a miracle! A rainbow is born out of nothing - this seed, hidden in an egg, is looking for a way out.

Just as a peacock's egg becomes bright and colorful, being fertilized with the seed of a peacock - a rooster, so the world needs God's seed to become attractive. "

Chapter 3. The cult of the symbol in the Middle Ages

A cult is an attitude towards a certain symbol, as well as the myths, rituals, and rules of circulation that develop around this symbol. There is no symbol without a cult, there is no cult without a symbol. It happens that a symbol survives its cult and remains a monument to something important but gone.

Myths

The most striking example of the cult of the symbol is myth. Myths are partly reliable, partly invented or distorted popular historical stories, expressing the worldview of the people and their key ideas about themselves. In myths, often not reliable, but fictional carries more information about the mental structure of the people, its general condition, its historical "trajectory" and the most probable future.

"Myths are necessary. Just like human-made disasters. Natural disasters bring people together without a compelling need to invent something. Human-made disasters - wars, conspiracies, scandals, inquisitions, dilemmas of any kind - like myths - must be invented, fueled and, most importantly, must support themselves, because they are simply necessary for the emotional needs of a person. They are drugs. The crowd needs regular doses of scandal, paranoia and dilemmas to avoid the boredom of meaningless existence. (Anton Sandor Lavey. " devil's book ")

Lock

The castle embodies the meaning of privacy, fencing, and a walled and protected city. Usually it contains some kind of treasure or a person imprisoned, or a monster lives in it, a villain who must be defeated in order to receive a treasure or free a prisoner, symbolizing hidden, esoteric knowledge or a spiritual peak.

It usually includes at least one tower, so the symbolic meaning of the tower is, to some extent, inherent in the castle. Some rooms of the castle can be partially or completely cut into the rock that serves as its base, and thus the castle approaches the cave.

Knight

One of the most significant symbols of the Middle Ages was the knight. This is the image of a majestic rider on a magnificent horse (not counting the image written by Cervantes in his famous work). In almost all books, the knight is a positive character.

Knight's attributes: sword, horse, shield, spear, coat of arms, motto, horn, banner, squire, castle.

Horse

Along with the sword, he is a necessary attribute of a knight (there cannot be a knight without a horse). He is loyal to the owner and sometimes even saves him. The knight feels some guilt before the horse for putting him in danger and forcing him to overexert himself.

An important addition to the sword and spear. The shape and painting of the shield have a symbolic function. Shield is a symbol of protection, the word "shield" is a metaphor with the meaning of "protection".

Coat of arms

An image in a frame that repeats the shape of some kind of shield. It is a personal mark of a knight. It can be depicted on the gate of the castle, on the banner, on the carriage, on the personal seal of the knight, on the clothes of servants, on dishes, etc. The elements and colors of the coat of arms have some explanation. When a person of an ordinary family is ordained as a knight (that is, when a new knightly family is founded), the newly-born knight receives from the king a coat of arms and a motto, and sometimes a surname.

Motto

Expresses the rule by which the knight is guided, or the quality that the knight seeks to distinguish himself.

A spear

The weapon with which the battle usually begins. The knight's spear is heavier than the infantryman's spear, although in battle it is held with one hand. The only way to use a spear is to hit the enemy with it at a gallop.

Each horn has its own voice. Each knight has his own way of trumpeting. Thus, by the sound of the horn, you can determine who is giving the signal. The knight arriving at the castle with the sound of a horn notifies the guard to lower the bridge and open the gate. Faced with the superior forces of the enemy, the knight, by means of a signal from the horn, calls for help.

Banner

Squad leader's badge. Clings to a spear. It can be rectangular, bifurcated, triangular (pennant). There is a knight's coat of arms on the banner. The primary purpose of the banner is to show where the center of the position is or where the gathering of scattered fighters is. The collection signal is given by the horn. If the banner is no longer visible, you must surrender, or flee, or accept a heroic death.

Squire

Helper, servant, and possibly apprentice of the knight. In the latter case, of noble birth. There is a common expression: "faithful squire." The squire has lighter weapons than the knight and often takes part in the battle as an auxiliary force - in the second rank. On the campaign, he carries the knight's spare weapon and drives his spare horse.

An important symbol that equates strength and power is the sword. The sword symbolizes dignity, leadership, supreme justice, light, courage, vigilance. On a metaphysical level, he personifies the all-pervading mind, the power of the intellect, insight.

The double-edged sword is an important image of divine wisdom and truth. In the Revelation of John, the sword proceeds from the mouth of Christ as a symbol of the invincible heavenly truth. In Buddhism, the sword is perceived as a weapon of wisdom, cutting off ignorance.

In many mythologies, the sword has a dual meaning, in which life and death are mainly opposed. The sword divides and separates - the soul from the body, the sky from the earth. In some traditions, the sword serves as a bridge to another world (for example, the Chinvat Bridge in Ancient Iran).

And at the same time, consisting of a blade and a handle, the sword is a symbol of union, union, especially if it takes the form of a cross. The award of the sword was accompanied by admission to the knightly brotherhood; putting their hand on the sword, they pronounced oaths that determined life or, in case of their violation, death. The cult of the sword is especially noticeable in the Japanese tradition and among the knights of the Middle Ages.

The sword is invested with magical power to reflect the forces of darkness. Often huge, made of heavenly fire, it serves as a weapon of the sun gods and cultural heroes who use it to fight monsters (Marduk, cutting Tiamat; Archangel Michael, plunging Lucifer with a sword). The sword often protects the virgin from the chthonic monster (Perseus and Andromeda, St. George).

The sword of the Western type, with its straight edge, serves as a masculine, solar symbol due to its shape. The eastern sword, being curved, represents the feminine, lunar principle.

Grave, cemetery

A person's attachment to people close to him is usually so great that it persists even after their death. The dead are almost equal to the living. The way a dead person is treated shows how the person was actually treated when he was alive; how his work is perceived, etc. A grave in a cemetery and a monument on it is a compromise between the desire to respect the dead (to keep it with oneself, to protect it from dissolution in eternity) and rational considerations (hygienic, economic).

Death for a medieval man, a Catholic, meant the last step towards a turning point of his existence: to the summing up of his earthly life at God's judgment. Death in itself, from the point of view of faith, was almost nothing, and it turned out to be undesirable only because it was associated with suffering, caused problems for relatives and made it impossible to do anything else to get a place in paradise.

Medieval man was very eager to die according to the rules: with absolution immediately before the moment of death and with a funeral service after.

The modern funeral ritual in Europe (not only ecclesiastical, but also secular) is mainly a legacy of the Middle Ages.

From the book by Georges Duby "Europe in the Middle Ages" (chapter "Death"): "The main brainchild of the art of architecture in the XIV century is no longer a cathedral or even a palace, but a tombstone. As soon as the family reached a certain level of well-being, its concern became to snatch their dead from a common grave, from these ditches filled with corpses with extraordinary speed, where the remains of the poor were brought on carts.The family ordered a family tomb, following the example of the burials of saints or the royal tomb in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, where the husband, wife, children would lie nearby , cousins. ”In most cases, the tombstone was a simple tombstone. these are knights, or kneeling before the Merciful Mother of God, as in the church - men on the right, women on the left. but it was possible to read their engraved names, their mottos by which they could be identified - the deceased wanted to be recognized. They hoped to remain in memory, so that everyone would know that they are lying here, and will lie until the end of the world, until the resurrection of the dead.

§ 1. The content of the terms "Middle Ages" and "feudalism" in historical science

The worldview of the medieval European and his culture were characterized by such concepts as symbolism and hierarchism.
The Middle Ages created symbolic art and symbolic poetry, defined a rich religious cult and philosophy with extremely complex and subtly developed symbolism, which boils down to comprehending and revealing the symbolic meaning of the surrounding reality. Symbolic acts are accompanied by the registration of legal relations, and most objects of human everyday life are marked with symbolic signs. The hierarchy of society was also symbolic. The entire social order of the Middle Ages is permeated with hierarchism.
According to the ideological guidelines of the Middle Ages, the bodily world has less reality than the spiritual world. It does not exist by itself, it possesses only a ghostly being. He is only a shadow of the truth, but not the truth itself. Salvation of the body is not true salvation. He who is sick in spirit and healthy in body does not have true health. Such health is only apparent: in fact, it does not exist. Things not only can serve as symbols, they are symbols, and the task of the cognizing subject is reduced to revealing their true meaning. For this, after all, creatures were created by God to be symbols and serve to teach people.
This is the sensory foundation on which symbolic perception grows. God has nothing empty, devoid of meaning. This is how a noble and majestic image of the world appears, which is represented by a single huge symbolic system, a collection of ideas, the richest rhythmic and polyphonic expression of everything that can be thought of.
When the era of the Dark Ages ended in the West, the Early and High Middle Ages ended, then the flourishing of sciences and education took place there, fundamental scientific works began to be studied, universities were opened, corporations of scientists arose. With all this, education never played the same role in the Middle Ages as it did in Antiquity. For medieval Christians, the words that the path of education leads to freedom, as it was believed in ancient Greece, would have sounded blasphemous. They knew Christ's call: "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free." But in the same way it was obvious to them that Truth is achieved not by studying Christian doctrine, but by serving God and one's neighbors. God, and in Him and your neighbor, must first of all be loved, and everything else will be added. No matter how much scholarship was revered in the Middle Ages, they always remembered that Christ chose the apostles from among the common people.
Nevertheless, it was the Church that preserved the ancient educational system (trivium and quadrivium), somewhat altering it to fit its needs. So, rhetoric (the art of eloquence), studied in Antiquity to develop thinking, to express one's personality, to achieve a high position in society, in the Middle Ages was a source of legal knowledge and skills in drafting business documents (letters, letters, letters, etc. .) and was not supposed to serve ambitious thoughts. And, for example, grammar, which was also one of the disciplines of the trivium, was necessary not only for reading, interpreting and commenting on the Scriptures or the texts of the authors recognized by the Church, but also made it possible to get to the hidden meaning of words, the key to which they are.
Medieval symbolism, which pervaded the entire life of people, began at the level of words. Words were symbols of realities. Understanding is knowledge and mastery of things. In medicine, a diagnosis already meant healing, it had to come as a result of pronouncing the name of the disease. When the bishop could say about the suspect: "heretic", then the main goal was achieved - the enemy was named, and therefore exposed.
Nature was also seen as a huge storehouse of symbols. Minerals, plants and animals, symbolizing the images and plots of the Bible, were lined up in a kind of hierarchy: some, due to their symbolic meaning, had an advantage over others. In stones and flowers, symbolic meaning was combined with their beneficial or harmful properties. There was color homeopathy, which, for example, treated jaundice and bleeding with yellow and red flowers, respectively. The animal kingdom was most often seen as a sphere of evil. An ostrich laying eggs in the sand and forgetting to incubate them - such was the image of a sinner who does not remember his duty to God.
Symbolism was used exceptionally widely in worship: from temple architecture to chants and from the choice of building materials to the smallest ornaments on utensils. Thus, the round and cruciform shape of the temples was an image of perfection. In addition, the shape, based on the square, indicated the four main directions that symbolized the universe. The octagonal structure, according to the symbolism of numbers, meant eternity. Thus, the structure of the temple personified the microcosm.
The concept of beauty is reduced by medieval thinking to the concepts of perfection, proportionality, brilliance. The admiration for everything that glitters and sparkles is also associated with the decoration of clothes, which in the 15th century. still consists mainly of equipping it with a myriad of precious stones. They even try to highlight the brilliance with ringing, resorting to bells or coins.
Gray, black and lilac colors were widely used in casual wear. Yellow was worn primarily by the military, pages and servants. Yellow sometimes meant hostility. So, a noble nobleman, dressed together with all his retinue in yellow, could walk past his offender, letting him know in color that this was started against him.
In festive and ceremonial clothes, red dominated over all other colors, often in combination with white. These two colors symbolized purity and mercy. Colors also represented a certain hierarchy corresponding to their symbolic meaning.
In general, the brightness and acuteness of life, so inherent in medieval culture, were generated, obviously, by a sense of insecurity. Uncertainty in material security and spiritual uncertainty. This underlying insecurity was ultimately an uncertainty in a future life, a bliss in which no one was surely promised or fully guaranteed by good deeds or prudent behavior. The dangers of destruction created by the devil seemed so numerous, and the chances of salvation so insignificant, that fear inevitably prevailed over hope. It is this fear and the need for complacency that explain the emotions, behavior, and mentality of the people of the Middle Ages. And here the leading role was played by tradition, the experience of the past and predecessors. In spiritual life, Scripture was the highest authority; in theology, they attached special importance to the recognized authorities of the past.
All these characteristic features of medieval thinking and perception of the world - symbolism, hierarchism, adherence to traditions and authorities, the need for complacency and oblivion among bright colors, acute impressions, a craving for exaltation and dreams (dreams and visions are also characteristic phenomena of medieval culture) - all this can be seen in the life of all strata of medieval society from bottom to top, no matter how much they, at first glance, may differ.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC LIST

Main literature

Bitsilli P.M. Selected Works on Medieval History: Russia and the West. - M .: Languages of Slavic cultures, 2006.
Gusarova T.P. Institutions of power and positions in Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern times. - M .: Book House "University", 2010.
Zaretsky Yu.P. History of subjectivity. Medieval Europe. - M .: Academic project, 2009.

additional literature

Boytsov M.A. Greatness and humility. Essays on Political Symbolism in Medieval Europe.- Moscow: Russian Political Encyclopedia, 2009.
V.P. Budanova Goths in the era of the Great Nations Migration. - M .: Aleteya, 2001.
Ivanov K.A. Life of a Medieval City - CD. Producer: New disc, 2007. Issue 9.
Monuments of medieval Latin literature. VIII-IX centuries / under. ed. M.L. Gasparov. - M .: Nauka, 2006.
Huizinga J. Autumn of the Middle Ages. - M .: Ayris-Press, 2004.

When performing tasks on this topic, you need to refer to the materials of the book by S. Samygin, S.I. Samygina V.N. Sheveleva, E. V. Shevelevoy "History": a tutorial for open source software. M .: INFRA-M, 2013, p. 44? 56, 69? 73

1. Define the following terms

2. Give a comparative analysis of the policies of Greece

3. Arrange events in the correct chronological order

A) Peloponnesian War

B) Solon's reforms in Athens

C) the reign of Pericles

D) the reign of Alexander the Great

E) the conquest of Greece by Rome

Write down the answer

6. Arrange events in the correct chronological order

A) Punic Wars

B) the founding of Rome

C) the collapse of the Roman Empire

D) the reign of Octavian Augustus

E) the reign of Guy Julius Caesar

E) the division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern

G) the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire

Write down the answer

7. Read a passage from the work on the history of Ancient Rome and complete the assignments.

“Octavian achieved the same goal as Caesar. He seemed less capable, was unattractive, shy, secretive, he did not have a military talent, like Caesar. The state of affairs itself helped him a lot.

The long war in all areas around the Mediterranean has tired most of the people: many sought peace and crowded with a strong man, keeping hope for his protection ... The inhabitants of the provinces are accustomed to obeying Rome; they did not care whether the Roman Senate sent them a leader or an army ruler from Rome. The population of Rome itself put up with the ruler who was ready to give him the most.

But Octavian achieved power besides this art and his patience. He did not accept the title of dictator, which was reminiscent of the triumph of Sulla and Caesar; he did not want anything in the title or in the setting for something that would look like a king, so as not to anger the concepts of the Romans and old habits.

By the way, he accepted the title of tribune. At the same time, Octavian always repeated that his main concern was to restore the ancient order in Rome. Octavian called himself a princeps, i.e. the first person in the country.

This meant that he was, as it were, considered authorized by the people for his own power.

He decided not to frighten the population of Italy with army forces: the soldiers were taken away and placed along the borders. Finally, Octavin shared with the old gentlemen, the nobles. In important cases, the prince consulted with the Senate, as consuls did before.

It was assumed that, just as before, the Senate would dispose of the ancient provinces: the Senate would send governors from its own environment in that direction. The areas were annexed again, the border areas remained for Octavian ... The troops were subordinated to Octavian, the soldiers took the oath only to him. The old name of the army emperor he appropriated to himself alone; it now meant power to the chief.

Emperorcalled him in the provinces.

In his own areas, Octavian sent his own officers and clerks to manage.

The people stopped calling meetings. But the new ruler also had to please the capital's population, as the people's leaders or the Senate used to do. He only took one at his own expense all the expenses that were previously made for the benefit of the people by various persons. The Princeps took over the entertainment device that the people stubbornly demanded ...

At the time when the new order was established, Octavian also assumed the new title of Augustus, i.e. sacred. This title turned into his name: the ruler quite rightly stood above everyone as a supreme being. "

1) Write out the highlighted words and find their definitions

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2) At the time when Octavian came to power in Rome?

__________________________________________________

3) Why did he manage to strengthen his own power after the victory in the civil war?

4) What are the non-specialized features between the monarchy of Octavian and the power of Augustus?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5) What specific elements of the republican system were retained during the principality and because of what?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lesson 4. Europe in the Middle Ages (V? XV centuries)

When performing tasks on this topic, you need to refer to the materials of the book by S. Samygin, S.I. Samygina V.N. Sheveleva, E. V. Shevelevoy "History": a tutorial for open source software.

M .: INFRA-M, 2013, p. 75? 119.

1. Using the map "Great Nations Migration", write the names of the Germanic tribes who settled in the territory of the Western Roman Empire

2. Mark with a "+" the meanings and essence of the Middle Ages

3. Highlight the main stages in the development of the civilization of medieval Europe

4. Arrange events in the correct chronological order

A) the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe

B) the origin of parliament in England

C) communal revolution

D) formation of the Frankish kingdom

E) the creation of the Main States in France

E) the beginning of the Hundred Years War

G) War of the Red and the White Rose

H) Jacquerie

Write down the answer

6. Mark with a "+" the features characteristic of the feudal aggregate of Europe in the X-XV centuries.

1.forming large land tenure
2.agricultural production was based on the labor of small producers, endowed with soil, tools, livestock, household goods
3. Reduction of acreage
4. Internal colonization
5. The decline in the population due to the plague epidemic
6. The emergence of manufactory production
7. Expansion of the domestic market
8. Decline of overseas trade
9.economic and personal connection between the feudal lord and the peasants
10.the natural temperament of the economy
11.the presence of feudal rent: in the form of natural rent and labor or money
12.Cities and Crafts Growth

7. The correct sequence of the formation of the political organization of feudal society

A) complete monarchies

B) ruthless countries

C) feudal fragmentation

D) estate-representative monarchies

8. Complete the table. Estates of medieval society.

9. Mark with a "+" the main true statements about cities

1. Cities appeared at the intersection of roads, at river crossings, near fortified places
2. Medieval cities were larger than the cities of the Antique era
3. Medieval cities were originally subordinate to secular feudal lords and spiritual
4. The growth of cities was associated with the rise of agricultural, handicraft production, the development of trade
5. Communal displacement was the reason for the liberation of many cities from the power of the lords
6. Most of the medieval cities were subject to the king
7. All residents of the city were considered full citizens, regardless of their property status.
8. Artisans of the same profession united in workshops, and merchants in the guild

10. Correlate the dates and events in the formation of Christianity in Europe

Write down the answer

A	B	V	G

Secrets of Vastu Shastra. Why is it dangerous to find a Christmas tree on your land plot?

By the end of the 15th century. the millennial era of the Middle Ages is over. It is difficult even to list all those achievements in the life of society, in the economy and culture, which humanity owes to the Middle Ages and still uses it with gratitude. It was then that many states arose that exist now, within their borders, modern peoples with their own languages and national cultures were formed. The origins of modern urban life and parliamentary democracy, judicial norms and universities go back to the Middle Ages. At the same time, many scientific discoveries and important inventions were made. Machine tools and blast furnaces, cannons and mechanical watches appeared, not to mention such familiar little things as glasses or buttons. The invention of book printing has played a particularly important role in the history of mankind.

The era of the Middle Ages was marked by an amazing rise in literature and art. The masterpieces of medieval writers and poets, architects and artists, having become an integral part of world culture, have an impact on you and me.

One of the most important achievements of the Middle Ages was the birth of Europe - not in the geographical, but in the cultural and historical meaning of this word. Christianity became the basis of this Europe and the richest culture it created. It arose-nouveau in Antiquity, Christianity during the Middle Ages spread throughout Europe. It turned out to be like a bridge connecting the Middle Ages with Antiquity even when the brilliant Roman culture was dying under the blows of the barbarians. It was in the Middle Ages that the Slavic countries, including Russia, became the most important constituent part of Europe.

The countries of medieval Asia, Africa and America made a huge contribution to the development of the culture of mankind. West and East in the Middle Ages differed in many respects from each other, but there were common features in their development. Their multilateral interaction led to the mutual enrichment of different cultures and contributed to the birth of recognized masterpieces of world literature and art. The medieval East played an important role in the preservation of the ancient heritage, which is so important for the development of Europe. Material from the site

The end of the Middle Ages in Europe was not like the end of the history of the Ancient World. If the Roman Empire collapsed as a result of internal disintegration and under the blows of the barbarians, then the transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age, although it was marked in Europe by strong shocks, was not accompanied by any economic, social or cultural decline. Medieval Europe, having carried over many different shocks during its thousand-year history, was still firmly on its feet. Moreover, the transition to a new historical era was associated with further development.

The ability to constantly develop and improve is the most important distinguishing feature of medieval Europe, which it inherited from modern times, and, ultimately, modernity. Although the East also changed a lot in the Middle Ages, Europe, which had lagged behind it for a long time, gradually managed to get ahead in technical and economic terms, and later used its superiority to establish dominance over other parts of the world.

The significance of the Middle Ages in history. The significance of the Middle Ages in the history of mankind

§ 1. The content of the terms "Middle Ages" and "feudalism" in historical science

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