Biography of the Middle Ages

The Battle of Neva, the Conducting West, “Luke Mudishchev” and Dantes in the armor -wrapping who is a medieval person Medievist Oleg Voskobobonikov about why the saint bit off the hands of Mary Magdalene, when a medieval person had a face and what a sin of her husband, who loves his wife Giotto. Fragment of the painting of the chapel of Skroveni. In a broad sense, they can be a resident of Ancient Rus', and the Byzantine, and the Greek, and Copt, and the Syrian.

In a narrow sense, this is a resident of Western Europe, for which faith speaks in Latin. When he lived on the Middle Ages, the Middle Ages begins with the fall of the Roman Empire. But this does not mean that the first medieval person was born in a year. The process of restructuring of thinking and the figurative world stretched for centuries - starting, I think, from Christ.

To some extent, a medieval person is conventionality: there are characters in which a new European type of consciousness is already manifested within the medieval civilization. For example, Peter Abelar, who lived in the 12th century, is somewhat closer to us than to his contemporaries, and in Pico Della Mirandola Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola--Italian Humanist philosopher, the author of the “Speech about the dignity of a person”, the treatise “On the Acts and One”, “Abstracts on Dialectics, Morality, Physics, Mathematics for Public Discussion”.

Pictures of the world and era, replacing each other, are at the same time intertwined. In the same way in the minds of a medieval person, ideas are intertwined that unite him with us and predecessors, and at the same time, these ideas are largely specific. The search for God, first of all, in the minds of a medieval person, the most important place is occupied by the Holy Scripture.

For the entire Middle Ages, the Bible was a book in which you could find answers to all questions, but these answers were never final. Often you have to hear that the people of the Middle Ages lived on pre -given truths. This is only partly true: the truth is really set in advance, but it is inaccessible and incomprehensible. Unlike the Old Testament, where there are legislative books, the New Testament does not give clear answers to a single question, and the whole meaning of a person’s life is to look for these answers to himself.

Of course, we are primarily talking about a thinking person, about, for example, who writes poetry, treatises, frescoes. Because it is according to these artifacts that we restore their picture of the world. And we know that they are looking for a kingdom, and the kingdom is not from this world, it is there. But what it is, no one knows.

Christ does not say: do this and so. He tells the parable, and then think for himself. This is the key to a certain freedom of medieval consciousness, constant creative search. Holy Denis and Holy Puer. Who guessed to put her pregnant on a horse?! And the son of the King of England Henry I Henry I - - the youngest son of Wilhelm Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy and the king of England Wilhelm Eteling, the only heir, with a drunken team went out on the night of November 25 on the best ship of the Royal Fleet in La Mansh and drowned, breaking on a rock.

The country for thirty years plunged into unrest, and the father in consolation received the beautiful letter of Hildebert Lavvardensky, the poet, theologian and preacher, written in Stoic colors. Dubious consolation for a politician. Earthly life in those days was not valued, because another life was appreciated. The vast majority of medieval people are unknown to the date of birth: why record if tomorrow he dies?

In the Middle Ages there was only one ideal of man - a saint, and only a person who has already passed away can become saints. This is a very important concept uniting eternity and running time. More recently, the saint was among us, we could see him, and now he is at the Tsar’s throne. You, here and now, can be attached to the relics, look at them, pray to them day and night.

Eternity turns out to be literally under the side, visible and noticeable. Therefore, they hunted for the relics of the saints, stolen and saw them - in the literal sense of the word. Bishop of Hugo Lincolnsh Hugo Lincolns near - - the French monk is a Cartesan, a bishop of the Lincoln diocese, the largest in England. When Mary Magdalene’s hand was brought to him in one monastery, the bishop took and bit off two pieces from Kostya.

The abbot and the monks were first dumbfounded, then screamed, but the holy husband, apparently, was not embarrassed: he de “expressed the pure reverence of the saint, because he also takes the body of the Lord inside his teeth and lips.” Then he made himself a bracelet in which he kept particles of the relics of twelve different saints. With this bracelet, his hand was no longer just a hand, but a powerful weapon.

Later he himself was ranked to the face of saints. Of course, people distinguished each other according to the features of the face, but everyone knew that the judgment of God was unpleasant, not the appearance, but the actions, the soul of a person, was suing the Last Judgment. Therefore, there was no individual portrait in the Middle Ages. Somewhere since the XII century, the eyes opened: people became interesting for every blade of grass, and after the grass, the whole picture of the world has changed.

In the middle of the 13th century, in sculptures made for the tombstones of high church hierarchs, portrait resemblance began to appear.Picturesque and sculptural portraits of previous sovereigns, not to mention the individuals less significant, mainly tribute to conventions and canons. Nevertheless, one of the customers of Giotto, the merchant of Skroveni Enriko Skroveni, is a rich Paduan merchant, by order of which at the beginning of the 14th century a house church painted by Giotto was built - the chapel of Screets.

We know that Dante did not wear beards, although his appearance is not described in the “Divine Comedy”, we know about the overweight and slowness of Thomas Aquinas, nicknamed by classmates by a Sicilian bull. Behind this nickname is already attention to the appearance of a person. We also know that Barbarossa Friedrich I Barbarossa is - the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the leaders of the third crusade.

The individual voice of a person, sometimes considered the belonging of a culture of the new time, is also heard in the Middle Ages, but it is heard for a long time without a name. There is a voice, but there is no name. The work of medieval art - fresco, miniature, icon, even mosaic, the most expensive and prestigious art for many centuries - is almost always anonymous. It is strange for us that the great master does not want to leave his name, but for them the work itself served as the signature.

After all, even when all the plots are set, the artist remains an artist: everyone knew how to portray the Annunciation, but a good master always brought his feelings into the image. People knew the names of good masters, but it never occurred to anyone to record them. Conception of Merlin. But for the church, the main thing was not punishment, but repentance.

A medieval person, like us, sinned. Everyone sinned and everyone confessed. If you are a church man, you cannot be sinless. If you have nothing to say in confession, then something is wrong with you. Saint Francis considered himself the last of the sinners. This is the insoluble conflict of the Christian: on the one hand, you should not sin, but on the other, if you suddenly decided that you are sinless, then you have become proud.

You must imitate the sinless Christ, but in this imitation you cannot cross a certain line. You cannot say: I am Christ. Or: I am an apostle. This is already heresy. The system of sins what goodbye, which are unfidelled, which mortals, which are not constantly modified, because they did not stop thinking about it. By the XII century, such a science appeared as theology, with its tools and with its faculties; One of the tasks of this science was just the development of clear landmarks in ethics.

Wealth was wealth for a medieval person, not a goal, because wealth is not in money, but in order to be people around you - but in order to be around you, you must give out and spend your wealth. Feudalism is primarily a system of human relationships. If you stand higher on the hierarchical staircase, you must be a “father” with your vassals. If you are a vassal, you must love your master in fact just as you love the Father or King of Heaven.

Love, paradoxically, much in the Middle Ages was done by calculation not necessarily arithmetic, including marriages. Love marriages known to historians are a rarity. Most likely, this was not only among the nobility, but also with the peasants, but we know much less about the lower classes: it was not customary to record who married. But if I knew the benefit when I gave out my children, then the poor, which was considered every penny, is even more so.

Miniature from Psalter Lutrell. The point is not even a physical component: just if you give your best to your marriage, you are adultery, because the meaning of marriage is not to become attached to any earthly relationship. Of course, this point of view can be considered extreme, but it turned out to be influential. If, as it were, to look at it from the inside, then it is the back side of the courteous love: I remind you that there is never a marriage in marriage, moreover, it is always a subject of dreaming about possession, but not possession itself.

Symbolism in any book about the Conditions you will read that this culture is very symbolic. In my opinion, this can be said about any culture. But medieval symbolism has always been unpertured: it is one way or another correlated with the Christian dogma or Christian history that formed this dogma. I mean the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition, that is, the history of the saints.

And even if some medieval person wants to build his world for himself within the medieval world-such as, for example, by Guilom Aquitaine IX--Count Poitier, Duke of Aquitania, the first famous troubadour. A medieval person is generally a very peculiar way to look at the world. His gaze is directed through the things that he seeks to see a certain world order.Therefore, sometimes it may seem that he did not see the surrounding world, and if he saw, then Sub Specie aeternitatis - from the point of view of eternity, as a reflection of the divine plan, which is both in the beauty of Beatrice passing by you and in the frog falling from the sky, sometimes it was believed that they were born from rain.

A good example of this is the story as St. Bernard of Clairevsky Bernard Clairwo - - the French theologian, mystic, headed the Order of the Cistercians. Antiquity and the Middle Ages are believed that the barbaric invasion is boldly all the achievements of previous civilizations from the face of the Earth, but this is not entirely true. Western European civilization inherited both the antiquity of the Christian faith, and a number of integers and ideas about antiquity, Christianity alien and hostile, pagan.

Moreover, the Middle Ages spoke the same language with antiquity. Of course, much was destroyed and forgotten by schools, political institutions, artistic techniques in art and literature, but the figurative world of medieval Christianity is directly related to ancient heritage due to various kinds of encyclopedias of the vaults of ancient knowledge about the world - such as, for example, the “etymology” of St.

Isidora Sevilles Isidor Sevilles - - Archbishop of Seville. His “etymology” is an encyclopedia of knowledge from different areas, including from ancient works. It is considered the founder of medieval encyclopedism and the patron of the Internet.