MIDDLE AGES

Early Middle Ages

(from 500 to 1000)

It begins with the fall of the Great Roman Empire (476) and lasts about 5 centuries. This is the time of the so-called Great Migration, which began in the 4th century and ended in the 7th. During this time, Germanic tribes captured and subjugated all the countries of Western Europe, thus determining the appearance of the modern European world. The main reasons for mass migration during this period of the Middle Ages were the search for fertile lands and favorable conditions, as well as a sharp cooling in the climate. Therefore, the northern tribes moved closer to the south. In addition to the Germanic tribes, Turks, Slavs and Finno-Ugric tribes took part in the resettlement. The Great Migration of Peoples was accompanied by the destruction of many tribes and nomadic peoples.

Viking tribes appeared, the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths in Italy and the Visigoths in Aquitaine and the Iberian Peninsula arose, and the Frankish state was formed, which occupied most of Europe during its heyday. North Africa and Spain became part of the Arab Caliphate, there were many small states of the Angles, Saxons and Celts in the British Isles, states appeared in Scandinavia, as well as in central and eastern Europe: Great Moravia and the Old Russian state. The Europeans' neighbors were the Byzantines, the population of ancient Russian principalities and Muslim Arabs. Residents of Europe maintained different relations with neighboring countries and states. The Arab states and Byzantium had the greatest influence on all aspects of life in European countries.

Medieval society in Western Europe was agrarian. The basis of the economy was agriculture, and the vast majority of the population was employed in this area. Labor in agriculture, as in other branches of production, was manual, which predetermined its low efficiency and generally slow pace of technical and economic evolution.

The vast majority of the population of Western Europe lived outside the city throughout the Middle Ages. If for ancient Europe cities were very important - they were independent centers of life, the nature of which was predominantly municipal, and a person’s belonging to a city determined his civil rights, then in Medieval Europe, especially in the first seven centuries, the role of cities was insignificant, although over time Over time, the influence of cities is increasing.

The early Middle Ages in Europe were characterized by constant wars. The barbarian tribes, having destroyed the Roman Empire, began to create their own states of the Angles, Franks and others. They fought fierce wars with each other over territory. In 800, Charlemagne managed, at the cost of numerous campaigns of conquest, to subjugate many nations and create the Frankish Empire. Having disintegrated after the death of Charles 43 years later, it was recreated again in the 10th century by the German kings.

During the Middle Ages, the formation of Western European civilization began, developing with greater dynamism than all previous civilizations, which was determined by a number of historical factors (the legacy of Roman material and spiritual culture, the existence in Europe of the empires of Charlemagne and Otto I, which united many tribes and countries, the influence of Christianity as a common religion for all, the role of corporatism permeating all spheres of the social order).

The basis of the economy of the Middle Ages was agriculture, in which most of the population was employed. The peasants cultivated both their land plots and the master's. More precisely, the peasants had nothing of their own; they were distinguished from slaves only by their personal freedom.

By the end of the first period of the Middle Ages, all peasants (both personally dependent and personally free) had an owner. Feudal law did not recognize simply free people, independent of anyone, trying to build social relations according to the principle: “There is no man without a master.”

During the formation of medieval society, the pace of development was slow. Although three-field instead of two-field had already become fully established in agriculture, the yield was low. They kept mostly small livestock - goats, sheep, pigs, and there were few horses and cows. The level of specialization in agriculture was low. Each estate had almost all vitally important, from the point of view of Western Europeans, branches of the economy: field cultivation, cattle breeding, various crafts. The economy was subsistence, and agricultural products were not produced specifically for the market; the craft also existed in the form of custom work. The domestic market was thus very limited.

During the early Middle Ages - the beginning of the formation of medieval society - the territory in which the formation of Western European civilization took place expanded significantly: if the basis of ancient civilization was Ancient Greece and Rome, then medieval civilization already covered almost all of Europe. The most important process in the early Middle Ages in the socio-economic sphere was the formation of feudal relations, the core of which was the formation of feudal ownership of land. This happened in two ways. The first way is through the peasant community. The plot of land owned by a peasant family was inherited from father to son (and from the 6th century to daughter) and was their property. This is how the allod was gradually formalized - the freely alienable land property of communal peasants. Allod accelerated the stratification of property among free peasants: lands began to be concentrated in the hands of the communal elite, which was already acting as part of the feudal class. Thus, this was the way of forming the patrimonial-allodial form of feudal ownership of land, especially characteristic of the Germanic tribes.

During the early Middle Ages, feudal fragmentation was observed in Europe. Then the role of Christianity in the creation of a united Europe increases.

Medieval cities

They arose primarily in places of busy trade. In Europe it was Italy and France. Cities appeared here already in the 9th century. The time of appearance of the remaining cities refers to

Beginning in the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe experienced a sharp rise in technology development and an increase in the number of innovations in the means of production, which contributed to the economic growth of the region. More inventions have been made in less than a century than in the previous thousand years.

Guns, glasses, and artesian wells were invented. Gunpowder, silk, compass and astrolabe came from the East. There were also great advances in shipbuilding and watches. At the same time, huge numbers of Greek and Arabic works on medicine and science were translated and distributed throughout Europe

At that time, science and culture began to develop. The most progressive rulers also understood the value of education and science. For example, back in the 8th century, on the orders of Charlemagne, an Academy was formed that bears his name.

Among the sciences: astronomy. In the Middle Ages, it was closely connected with astrology. The geocentric concept of Ptolemy was taken as the basis for the world, although many scientists by that time were already convinced of its fallacy. But Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to openly criticize; Chemistry: In the Middle Ages it was called alchemy. Alchemical scientists were searching for the philosopher's stone, which bestows wisdom, and a way to create gold from other metals. In the process of these searches, a huge number of important inventions and others were made.

In Western European art of the 10th-12th centuries, the Romanesque style predominates. He expressed himself most fully in architecture.

Classical (high) Middle Ages

(1000 to 1300)

The main characteristic trend of this period was the rapid increase in the population of Europe, which in turn led to dramatic changes in social, political and other spheres of life.

In the XI–XV centuries. in Europe there is a process of gradual formation of centralized states - England, France, Portugal, Spain, Holland, etc., where new forms of government arise - the Cortes (Spain), parliament (England), Estates General (France). The strengthening of centralized power contributed to more successful development of the economy, science, culture, and the emergence of a new form of organization of production - manufacturing. In Europe, capitalist relations are emerging and strengthening, which was greatly facilitated by the Great Geographical Discoveries.

During the High Middle Ages, Europe began to actively prosper. The arrival of Christianity in Scandinavia. The collapse of the Carolingian Empire into two separate states, on the territories of which modern Germany and France were later formed. Organization of crusades by Christians with the aim of reconquering Palestine from the Seljuks. Cities are developing and becoming richer. Culture is developing very actively. New styles and trends in architecture and music are emerging.

In Eastern Europe, the era of the High Middle Ages was marked by the rise of the Old Russian state and the appearance of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the historical stage. The Mongol invasion in the 13th century caused irreparable damage to the development of Eastern Europe. Many states in this region were plundered and enslaved.

The Western European Middle Ages was a period of dominance of subsistence farming and weak development of commodity-money relations. The insignificant level of regional specialization associated with this type of economy determined the development of mainly long-distance (external) rather than short-range (internal) trade. Long-distance trade was aimed mainly at the upper strata of society. Industry during this period existed in the form of crafts and manufacturing.

Medieval society is class-based. There were three main classes: the nobility, the clergy and the people (peasants, artisans, and merchants were united under this concept). Estates had different rights and responsibilities and played different socio-political and economic roles.

The most important characteristic of medieval Western European society was its hierarchical structure, the system of vassalage. At the head of the feudal hierarchy was the king - the supreme overlord and, at the same time, often only the nominal head of state. This conditionality of the absolute power of the highest person in the states of Western Europe is also an essential feature of Western European society, in contrast to the truly absolute monarchies of the East. Thus, the king in medieval Europe was merely “first among equals,” and not an all-powerful despot. It is characteristic that the king, occupying the first step of the hierarchical ladder in his state, could well be a vassal of another king or the Pope.

On the second rung of the feudal ladder were the king's direct vassals. These were large feudal lords - dukes, counts, archbishops, bishops, abbots. According to the immunity certificate received from the king, they had various types of immunity (from the Latin - immunity). The most common types of immunity were tax, judicial and administrative, i.e. the owners of the immunity certificates themselves collected taxes from their peasants and townspeople, held court, and made administrative decisions. Feudal lords of this level could mint their own coins, which often circulated not only within a given estate, but also outside it. The submission of such feudal lords to the king was often simply formal.

On the third rung of the feudal ladder stood the vassals of dukes, counts, and bishops - the barons. They enjoyed virtual immunity on their estates. Even lower were the vassals of the barons - the knights. Some of them could also have their own vassals - even smaller knights, others had only peasants under their subordination, who, however, stood outside the feudal ladder.

The vassalage system was based on the practice of land grants. The person who received the land became a vassal, the one who gave it became a lord. The owner of the land, the lord, could give a fief (land plot) for temporary use under special conditions. Land was given under certain conditions, the most important of which was service with the lord, which, as a rule, was 40 days a year according to feudal custom. The most important duties of a vassal in relation to his lord were participation in the lord's army, protection of his possessions, honor, dignity, and participation in his council. If necessary, the vassals ransomed the lord from captivity.

When receiving land, the vassal swore an oath of allegiance to his master. If the vassal did not fulfill his obligations, the lord could take the land from him, but this was not so easy, since the vassal, as a feudal lord, was inclined to defend his property with arms in hand. In general, despite the seemingly clear order, the vassalage system was quite confusing, and a vassal could have several lords at the same time. Then the principle “my vassal’s vassal is not my vassal” was in effect.

In the Middle Ages, two main classes of feudal society were also formed: feudal lords, spiritual and secular - land owners, and peasants - land holders. The basis of the economy of the Middle Ages was agriculture, in which most of the population was employed. The peasants cultivated both their land plots and the master's.

Among the peasants there were two groups, differing in their economic and social status. Personally free peasants could, at their own discretion, leave their owner, give up their land holdings: rent them out or sell them to another peasant. Having freedom of movement, they often moved to cities or new places. They paid fixed taxes in kind and money and performed certain work on their master's farm. Another group is personally dependent peasants. Their responsibilities were broader, in addition (and this is the most important difference) they were not fixed, so that personally dependent peasants were subject to arbitrary taxation. They also bore a number of specific taxes: posthumous taxes - upon entering into an inheritance, marriage taxes - redemption of the right of the first night, etc. These peasants did not enjoy freedom of movement.

The producer of material goods under feudalism was the peasant, who, unlike the slave and the hired worker, managed the farm himself, and in many ways completely independently, that is, he was the owner. The peasant was the owner of the yard, the main means of production. He also acted as the owner of the land, but was a subordinate owner, while the feudal lord was the supreme owner. The supreme owner of the land is always at the same time the supreme owner of the personalities of the subordinate owners of the land, and thereby their labor force. Here, as in the case of slavery, there is a non-economic dependence of the exploited on the exploiter, but not complete, but supreme. Therefore, the peasant, unlike the slave, is the owner of his personality and labor power, but not full, but subordinate.

Progress in agriculture was also facilitated by the liberation of peasants from personal dependence. The decision on this was made either by the city near which the peasants lived and with which they were connected socially and economically, or by their feudal lord, on whose land they lived. The rights of peasants to land plots were strengthened. They could increasingly freely transfer land by inheritance, bequeath and mortgage it, lease it, donate it and sell it. This is how the land market gradually forms and becomes wider. Commodity-money relations are developing.

Church. The schism (schism) of 1054 led to the formation of two main branches of the Christian church - the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe and the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe. During the era of the classical Middle Ages, the Catholic Church reached its power in Europe. She influenced all areas of human life. The rulers could not compare with its wealth - the church owned 1/3 of all lands in each country.

A whole series of crusades took place over 400 years, from the 11th to the 15th centuries. They were organized by the Catholic Church against Muslim countries under the slogan of protecting the Holy Sepulcher. In fact, it was an attempt to seize new territories. Knights from all over Europe went on these campaigns. For young warriors, participation in such an adventure was a prerequisite to prove their courage and confirm their knighthood.

Medieval man was extremely religious. What is considered incredible and supernatural for us was ordinary for him. Belief in the dark and light kingdoms, demons, spirits and angels is what surrounded man and what he believed unconditionally.

The Church strictly ensured that its prestige was not damaged. All free-thinking thoughts were nipped in the bud. Many scientists suffered from the actions of the church at one time: Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus and others. At the same time, in the Middle Ages it was the center of education and scientific thought. There were church schools at the monasteries, which taught literacy, prayers, the Latin language and the singing of hymns. In the book copying workshops, also at the monasteries, the works of ancient authors were carefully copied, preserving them for posterity.

The main branch of the economy of Western European countries during the classical Middle Ages, as before, was agriculture. The main characteristics of the development of the agricultural sector as a whole were the process of rapid development of new lands, known in history as the process of internal colonization. It contributed not only to the quantitative growth of the economy, but also to serious qualitative progress, since the duties imposed on peasants on the new lands were predominantly monetary rather than in kind. The process of replacing natural duties with monetary ones, known in the scientific literature as rent commutation, contributed to the growth of economic independence and enterprise of peasants, and increased productivity of their labor. The cultivation of oilseeds and industrial crops is expanding, oil production and winemaking are developing.

Grain productivity reaches the level of sam-4 and sam-5. The growth of peasant activity and the expansion of peasant farming led to a reduction in the feudal lord's economy, which in the new conditions turned out to be less profitable.

An important and ever-increasing segment of the urban population were artisans. From the XII–XIII centuries. Due to the increase in the purchasing power of the population and the growth of consumer demand, there is an increase in urban crafts. Craftsmen are moving from working to order to working for the market. The craft becomes a respected occupation that brings good income. People in construction specialties – masons, carpenters, plasterers – were especially respected. Architecture was then carried out by the most gifted people, with a high level of professional training. During this period, the specialization of crafts deepened, the range of products expanded, and craft techniques were improved, remaining, as before, manual.

Technologies in metallurgy and in the production of cloth fabrics become more complex and more efficient, and in Europe they begin to wear woolen clothes instead of fur and linen. In the 12th century. Mechanical watches were made in Europe in the 13th century. - large tower clock, in the 15th century. - pocket watch. Watchmaking became the school in which precision engineering techniques were developed, which played a significant role in the development of the productive forces of Western society. Other sciences also developed successfully, and many discoveries were made in them. The water wheel was invented, water and windmills were improved, mechanical watches, glasses, and a loom were created.

Craftsmen united into guilds that protected their members from competition from “wild” craftsmen. In cities there could be tens and hundreds of workshops of various economic orientations, because the specialization of production took place not within a workshop, but between workshops. So, in Paris there were more than 350 workshops. The most important feature of the workshops was also a certain regulation of production in order to prevent overproduction and maintain prices at a sufficiently high level; shop authorities, taking into account the volume of the potential market, determined the quantity of products produced.

During this entire period, the guilds fought with the city's top brass for access to management. The city elite, called the patriciate, united representatives of the landed aristocracy, wealthy merchants, and moneylenders. Often the actions of influential artisans were successful, and they were included in the city authorities.

The guild organization of craft production had both obvious disadvantages and advantages, one of which was a well-established apprenticeship system. The official training period in different workshops ranged from 2 to 14 years; it was assumed that during this time a craftsman should go from student and journeyman to master.

The workshops developed strict requirements for the material from which the goods were made, for tools, and production technology. All this ensured stable operation and guaranteed excellent product quality. The high level of medieval Western European craft is evidenced by the fact that an apprentice who wanted to receive the title of master was required to complete a final work, which was called a “masterpiece” (the modern meaning of the word speaks for itself).

The workshops also created conditions for the transfer of accumulated experience, ensuring the continuity of craft generations. In addition, artisans participated in the formation of a united Europe: apprentices during the training process could roam around different countries; masters, if there were more of them in the city than required, easily moved to new places.

On the other hand, towards the end of the classical Middle Ages, in the 14th–15th centuries, the guild organization of industrial production increasingly began to act as an inhibitory factor. The workshops are increasingly isolated and stop developing. In particular, it was almost impossible for many to become a master: only the son of a master or his son-in-law could actually obtain the status of a master. This has led to a large layer of “eternal apprentices” appearing in cities. In addition, strict regulation of crafts begins to hinder the introduction of technological innovations, without which progress in the sphere of material production is unthinkable. Therefore, the workshops gradually exhausted themselves, and by the end of the classical Middle Ages, a new form of organization of industrial production appeared - manufactory.

In the classical Middle Ages, old cities grew rapidly and new ones emerged - near castles, fortresses, monasteries, bridges, and river crossings. Cities with a population of 4–6 thousand inhabitants were considered medium. There were very large cities, such as Paris, Milan, Florence, where 80 thousand people lived. Life in a medieval city was difficult and dangerous - frequent epidemics claimed the lives of more than half of the townspeople, as happened, for example, during the “Black Death” - a plague epidemic in the middle of the 14th century. Fires were also frequent. However, they still wanted to go to the cities, because, as the saying testified, “the city air made a dependent person free” - for this you had to live in the city for one year and one day.

Cities arose on the lands of the king or large feudal lords and were beneficial to them, bringing in income in the form of taxes on crafts and trade.

At the beginning of this period, most cities were dependent on their lords. The townspeople fought to gain independence, that is, to become a free city. The authorities of independent cities were elected and had the right to collect taxes, pay the treasury, manage city finances at their own discretion, have their own courts, mint their own coins, and even declare war and make peace. The means of struggle of the urban population for their rights were urban uprisings - communal revolutions, as well as the purchase of their rights from the lord. Only the richest cities, such as London and Paris, could afford such a ransom. However, many other Western European cities were also rich enough to gain independence for money. So, in the 13th century. About half of all cities in England - that is, about 200 - gained independence in collecting taxes.

The wealth of cities was based on the wealth of their citizens. Among the richest were moneylenders and money changers. They determined the quality and usefulness of the coin, and this was extremely important in the context of the constant deterioration of coins practiced by mercantilistic governments; they exchanged money and transferred it from one city to another; They took available capital for safekeeping and provided loans.

At the beginning of the classical Middle Ages, banking activity developed most actively in Northern Italy. The activities of moneylenders and money changers could be extremely profitable, but sometimes (if large feudal lords and kings refused to repay large loans) they also became bankrupt.

Late Middle Ages

(1300-1640)

In Western European science, the end of the Middle Ages is usually associated with the beginning of the church reformation (early 16th century) or the era of great geographical discoveries (15-17th centuries). The late Middle Ages is also called the Renaissance.

This is one of the most tragic periods of the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, almost the entire world experienced several plague epidemics, the Black Death. In Europe alone, it destroyed more than 60 million people, almost half the population. This is the time of the strongest peasant uprisings in England and France and the longest war in the history of mankind - the Hundred Years' War. But at the same time, this is the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries and the Renaissance.

Reformation (lat. reformatio - correction, transformation, reformation) is a broad religious and socio-political movement in Western and Central Europe of the 16th - early 17th centuries, aimed at reforming Catholic Christianity in accordance with the Bible.

The main reason for the Reformation was the struggle between those who represented the emerging capitalist mode of production and the defenders of the then dominant feudal system, the protection of the ideological dogmas of which was carried out by the Catholic Church. The interests and aspirations of the emerging bourgeois class and the masses who in one way or another supported its ideology found expression in the founding of Protestant churches, which called for modesty, economy, accumulation and self-reliance, as well as in the formation of national states in which the church did not play a major role.

Until the 16th century, the Church in Europe owned large fiefs, and its power could only last as long as the feudal system existed. The wealth of the church was based on land ownership, church tithes and fees for rituals. The splendor and decoration of the temples was amazing. The church and the feudal system perfectly complemented each other.

With the emergence of a new, gradually gaining strength class of society - the bourgeoisie, the situation began to change. Many have long expressed dissatisfaction with the excessive pomp of the rites and temples of the church. The high cost of church rituals also caused great protest among the population. The bourgeoisie, which wanted to invest money not in pompous and expensive church ceremonies, but in production, was especially dissatisfied with this state of affairs.

In some countries where the king's power was strong, the church was limited in its appetites. In many others, where the priests could manage to their heart's content, she was hated by the entire population. Here the Reformation found fertile ground.

In the 14th century, Oxford professor John Wycliffe openly opposed the Catholic Church, calling for the destruction of the institution of the papacy and the confiscation of all lands from the priests. His successor was Jan Hus, rector of the University of Prague and part-time pastor. He fully supported Wycliffe's idea and proposed church reform in the Czech Republic. For this he was declared a heretic and burned at the stake.

The beginning of the Reformation is considered to be the speech of Martin Luther, Doctor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg: on October 31, 1517, he nailed his “95 Theses” to the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church, in which he spoke out against the existing abuses of the Catholic Church, in particular against the sale of indulgences. Historians consider the end of the Reformation to be the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as a result of which the religious factor ceased to play a significant role in European politics.

The main idea of ​​his work is that a person does not need the mediation of the church to turn to God; faith is enough for him. This act marked the beginning of the Reformation in Germany. Luther was persecuted by church authorities, who demanded that he recant his words. The ruler of Saxony, Friedrich, stood up for him, hiding the doctor of theology in his castle. Followers of Luther's teachings continued to struggle to bring about change in the church. The protests, which were brutally suppressed, led to the Peasants' War in Germany. Supporters of the Reformation began to be called Protestants.

The Reformation did not end with Luther's death. It began in other European countries - in Denmark, England, Norway, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, the Baltic states, and Poland.

Protestantism became widespread throughout Europe in the beliefs of the followers of Luther (Lutheranism), John Calvin (Calvinism), Ulrich Zwingli (Zwinglianism), etc.

A set of measures taken by the Catholic Church and the Jesuits to combat the Reformation,

The process of pan-European integration was contradictory: along with rapprochement in the field of culture and religion, there was a desire for national isolation in terms of statehood development. The Middle Ages are the time of the formation of national states, which exist in the form of monarchies, both absolute and estate-representative. The peculiarities of political power were its fragmentation, as well as its connection with conditional ownership of land. If in ancient Europe the right to own land was determined for a free person by his ethnicity - the fact of his birth in a given polis and the resulting civil rights, then in medieval Europe the right to land depended on a person’s belonging to a certain class.

At this time, centralized power was strengthened in most Western European countries, and national states began to form and strengthen (England, France, Germany, etc.). Large feudal lords are increasingly dependent on the king. However, the king's power is still not truly absolute. The era of class-representative monarchies is coming. It was during this period that the practical implementation of the principle of separation of powers began, and the first parliaments emerged - estate-representative bodies that significantly limited the power of the king. The earliest such parliament, the Cortes, appeared in Spain (late 12th – early 12th centuries). In 1265, parliament appears in England. In the XIV century. parliaments had already been created in most Western European countries. At first, the work of parliaments was not regulated in any way; neither the timing of meetings nor the order of their holding were determined - all this was decided by the king, depending on the specific situation. However, even then, the most important and constant issue that parliamentarians considered was taxes.

Parliaments could act as an advisory, legislative, and judicial body. Legislative functions are gradually assigned to parliament, and a certain confrontation between parliament and the king is outlined. Thus, the king could not introduce additional taxes without the sanction of parliament, although formally the king was much higher than parliament, and it was the king who convened and dissolved parliament and proposed issues for discussion.

Parliaments were not the only political innovation of the classical Middle Ages. Another important new component of public life was political parties, which first began to form in the 13th century. in Italy, and then (in the 14th century) in France. Political parties fiercely opposed each other, but the reason for their confrontation was then more likely to be psychological than economic.

In the XV–XVII centuries. In the field of politics, a lot of new things have also appeared. Statehood and government structures are noticeably strengthening. The line of political evolution common to most European countries was to strengthen the central government and strengthen the role of the state in the life of society.

Almost all countries of Western Europe during this period went through the horrors of bloody strife and war. An example would be the War of the Roses in England in the 15th century. As a result of this war, England lost a quarter of its population. The Middle Ages were also a time of peasant uprisings, unrest and riots. An example is the rebellion led by Wat Tyler and John Ball in England in 1381.

Great geographical discoveries. One of the first expeditions to India was organized by Portuguese sailors who tried to reach it by circumnavigating Africa. In 1487, they discovered the Cape of Good Hope - the southernmost point of the African continent. At the same time, the Italian Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was also looking for a way to India, who managed to equip four expeditions with money from the Spanish court. The Spanish royal couple - Ferdinand and Isabella - believed his arguments and promised him huge profits from the newly discovered lands. Already during the first expedition in October 1492, Columbus discovered the New World, then called America after Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), who participated in expeditions to South America in 1499–1504. It was he who first described new lands and first expressed the idea that this was a new part of the world, not yet known to Europeans.

The sea route to real India was first paved by a Portuguese expedition led by Vasco da Gama (1469–1524) in 1498. The first trip around the world was made in 1519–1521, led by the Portuguese Magellan (1480–1521). Of the 256 people in Magellan's team, only 18 survived, and Magellan himself died in a battle with the natives. Many expeditions of that time ended so sadly.

In the second half of the 16th – 17th centuries. The British, Dutch and French took the path of colonial conquest. By the middle of the 17th century. Europeans discovered Australia and New Zealand.

As a result of the Great Geographical Discoveries, colonial empires begin to take shape, and treasures - gold and silver - flow from the newly discovered lands to Europe - the Old World. The consequence of this was an increase in prices, primarily for agricultural products. This process, which took place to one degree or another in all countries of Western Europe, was called the price revolution in historical literature. It contributed to the growth of monetary wealth among merchants, entrepreneurs, speculators and served as one of the sources of the initial accumulation of capital.

Another important consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was the relocation of world trade routes: the monopoly of Venetian merchants on caravan trade with the East in Southern Europe was broken. The Portuguese began to sell Indian goods several times cheaper than Venetian merchants.

Countries actively engaged in intermediary trade – England and the Netherlands – are growing stronger. Engaging in intermediary trade was very unreliable and dangerous, but very profitable: for example, if out of three ships sent to India, one returned, then the expedition was considered successful, and the traders’ profits often reached 1000%. Thus, trade was the most important source for the formation of large private capital.

The quantitative growth of trade contributed to the emergence of new forms in which trade was organized. In the 16th century For the first time, exchanges appeared, the main goal and purpose of which was to use price fluctuations over time. Thanks to the development of trade at this time, a much stronger connection between the continents emerged than before. This is how the foundations of the world market begin to be laid.

When preparing for the Unified State Exam in history, especially when studying material on world history, students have many questions about periodization. And since it is useless to study this science without periodization, we will dwell on the question: the Middle Ages - what kind of years are they?

Periodization of Medieval history

The history of the Middle Ages begins in 476. This year is considered the official end. Already from the beginning of the fifth century of the new era, the so-called barbarian kingdoms began to form: the Vandals, Goths, Huns and other tribes who lived on the border of the empire and were just waiting for a happy opportunity to settle on its territory.

The end of medieval history is considered to be the middle of the 17th century, when the first bourgeois revolution began in England. There is no particular year. However, for me personally, I mean the date 1649, when King Charles the First Stuart was executed.

Of course, this period, from 476 to 1649, is very long. It is sometimes called the Dark Ages. In fairness, it is worth noting that this period was first called that by Francesco Petrarch (1304 - 1374). However, in modern historical science, this name is often used to refer to a narrower period of the 6th - 8th centuries, when the barbarian kingdoms destroyed the fragments of Rome to the ground and tried to create their own statehood on its ruins. Often, however, without success.

It is important to understand that the Middle Ages itself is also divided into a number of periods.

• The first period - V to XI centuries - is called the Early (Upper) Middle Ages. It is characterized by the formation of states on the territory of the once huge Western Roman Empire. During this period, the formation of feudalism based on the Roman colonnatus also took place.
• The second period is the Classical (Middle) Middle Ages - XII to XV centuries. During this period, fragmentation occurred in the countries of Western Europe, followed by the process of gathering the royal domain, as well as the formation of signs of absolutist power.
• The third period is the Late (Lower) Middle Ages from the 15th century to the mid-17th century. During this period, the Reformation and other very important historical processes took place.

You must be able to clearly correlate all the events of the Middle Ages with these periods. To find out exactly what events need to be taught, I highly recommend downloading the KIM topic codifier

He signed the Magna Carta, a document limiting royal power and which later became one of the main constitutional acts of England, and in the year the first parliament was convened.

Scandinavia

France and Germany

By the beginning of the High Middle Ages, the Carolingian Empire had split into two separate states, on the territories of which modern Germany and France were later formed. Germany at that time occupied a dominant position within the Holy Roman Empire.

Southern Europe

Eastern Europe

During the first half of the era (-), the Balkans south of the Danube were dominated by the Byzantine Empire, which reached its greatest prosperity during the reign of the Komnenos dynasty. After a year, a crisis arose in the empire: in the year Bulgaria fell away, in the year - Serbia. Back in the century, the church split into Western and Eastern, and in the year the Crusader army captured Constantinople, and Byzantium broke up into a number of smaller states.

Religion

Church

Crusades

One of the defining features of the High Middle Ages was the crusades organized by Christians to reconquer Palestine from the Seljuks. The Crusades had a powerful influence on all layers of medieval society - from the kings and emperors who led these campaigns to ordinary peasants, whose masters spent many years fighting in the East. The heyday of the idea of ​​the crusades came in the 12th century, when, after the First Crusade, a Christian state, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, was formed in the conquered territories. In the 13th century and later, Christians undertook several crusades against their own Christian brothers, as well as against pagans who professed other, non-Muslim religions.

Scholasticism

Scholasticism (Greek σχολαστικός - scientist, Scholia - “school”) is a systematic European medieval philosophy, concentrated around universities and representing a synthesis of Christian (Catholic) theology and Aristotelian logic.

The rise of monasticism

At the end of the 13th century, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo was one of the first in Europe to travel along the Great Silk Road to China, and upon his return he carefully described what he saw during the journey, opening the world of Asia and the East to Westerners. Even before him, numerous missionaries visited the East - Giovanni Plano Carpini, Guillaume de Rubruck, Andre de Longjumeau, and later Odorico Pordenone, Giovanni de Marignolli, Giovanni Montecorvino - and travelers such as Niccolo Conti.

Technology development

During the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe experienced a sharp rise in technology development and an increase in innovations in the means of production, which contributed to the economic growth of the region. More inventions have been made in less than a century than in the previous thousand years.

• The first windmill was built in Yorkshire, England (the earliest documented case).
• This year, paper production appeared in Italy.
• In the 13th century, the spinning wheel came to Europe (probably from India).
• At the end of the 12th century, with the advent of the compass, navigation was greatly simplified.
• In the 1280s, spectacles were invented in Italy.
• The astrolabe returned to Europe from Muslim Spain.
• In the year, through the book Liber Abaci by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci, Europeans learned Arabic numerals.

Culture

Art

Architecture

Literature

Music

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Notes

During the classical, or high, Middle Ages, Western Europe began to overcome difficulties and be reborn. Since the 10th century, state structures have been consolidated, which made it possible to assemble larger armies and, to some extent, stop raids and robberies. Missionaries brought Christianity to the countries of Scandinavia, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, so that these states also entered the orbit of Western culture.

The relative stability that ensued provided the opportunity for rapid growth of cities and economies. Life began to change for the better; cities began to have their own culture and spiritual life. The church played a big role in this, which also developed, improved its teaching and organization.

The economic and social rise after 1000 began with construction. As contemporaries said: “Europe has become covered with a new white dress of churches.” On the basis of the artistic traditions of Ancient Rome and the former barbarian tribes, Romanesque and later brilliant Gothic art arose, and not only architecture and literature developed, but also other types of art - painting, theater, music, sculpture.

At this time, feudal relations finally took shape, and the process of personality formation was already completed (XII century). The horizons of Europeans expanded significantly due to a number of circumstances (this is the era of the Crusades beyond Western Europe: acquaintance with the life of Muslims, the East, with a higher level of development). These new impressions enriched the Europeans, their horizons expanded as a result of the merchants’ travels (Marco Polo traveled to China and upon his return wrote a book introducing Chinese life and traditions). Expanding your horizons leads to the formation of a new worldview. Thanks to new acquaintances and impressions, people began to understand that earthly life is not aimless, it has great significance, the natural world is rich, interesting, does not create anything bad, it is divine, worthy of study. Therefore, science began to develop.

Literature

Features of the literature of this time:

1) The relationship between church and secular literature is decisively changing in favor of secular literature. New class trends are being formed and flourishing: knightly and urban literature.

2) The sphere of literary use of vernacular languages ​​has expanded: in urban literature the vernacular language is preferred, even church literature turns to vernacular languages.

3) Literature acquires absolute independence in relation to folklore.

4) Drama emerges and successfully develops.

5) The genre of heroic epic continues to develop. A number of pearls of the heroic epic emerge: “The Song of Roland”, “The Song of My Sid”, “The Song of Nebelunga”.

Heroic epic.

The heroic epic is one of the most characteristic and popular genres of the European Middle Ages. In France, it existed in the form of poems called gestures, that is, songs about deeds and exploits. The thematic basis of the gesture is made up of real historical events, most of which date back to the 8th - 10th centuries. Probably, immediately after these events, traditions and legends about them arose. It is also possible that these legends originally existed in the form of short episodic songs or prose stories that developed in the pre-knight milieu. However, very early on, episodic tales went beyond this environment, spread among the masses and became the property of the entire society: not only the military class, but also the clergy, merchants, artisans, and peasants listened to them with equal enthusiasm.

Since these folk tales were originally intended for oral chanting performance by jugglers, the latter subjected them to intensive processing, which consisted of expanding the plots, cyclizing them, introducing inserted episodes, sometimes very large ones, conversational scenes, etc. As a result, short episodic songs became gradually the appearance of plot- and stylistically-organized poems is a gesture. In addition, in the process of complex development, some of these poems were noticeably influenced by church ideology and, without exception, by the influence of knightly ideology. Since chivalry had high prestige for all levels of society, the heroic epic gained wide popularity. Unlike Latin poetry, which was practically intended only for clergy, gestures were created in French and were understandable to everyone. Originating from the early Middle Ages, the heroic epic took a classical form and experienced a period of active existence in the 12th, 13th and partly 14th centuries. Its written recording dates back to the same time. Gestures are usually divided into three cycles:

1) the cycle of Guillaume d'Orange (otherwise: the cycle of Garin de Monglane - named after Guillaume's great-grandfather);

2) the cycle of “rebel barons” (otherwise: the Doon de Mayans cycle);

3) cycle of Charlemagne, King of France. The theme of the first cycle is the selfless service of loyal vassals from the Guillaume family to the weak, hesitant, often ungrateful king, who is constantly threatened by either internal or external enemies, driven only by love for the homeland.

The theme of the second cycle is the rebellion of proud and independent barons against the unjust king, as well as the brutal feuds of the barons among themselves. Finally, in the poems of the third cycle (“Pilgrimage of Charlemagne”, “Board of the Big Legs”, etc.) the sacred struggle of the Franks against the “pagans” - Muslims is glorified and the figure of Charlemagne is glorified, appearing as the focus of virtues and the stronghold of the entire Christian world. The most remarkable poem of the royal cycle and the entire French epic is “The Song of Roland,” the recording of which dates back to the beginning of the 12th century.

Features of the heroic epic:

1) The epic was created in the conditions of the development of feudal relations.

2) The epic picture of the world reproduces feudal relations, idealizes a strong feudal state and reflects Christian beliefs and Christian ideals.

3) With regard to history, the historical basis is clearly visible, but at the same time it is idealized and hyperbolized.

4) Bogatyrs are defenders of the state, the king, the independence of the country and the Christian faith. All this is interpreted in the epic as a national matter.

5) The epic is associated with a folk tale, with historical chronicles, and sometimes with a chivalric romance.

6) The epic was preserved in the countries of continental Europe (Germany, France).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In order... that the guild may prosper and enjoy its freedom, power, honor and rights, and in order to restrain those who of their own free will act and rebel against the guild, we decree and declare that no member of the guild and no artisans are independent workers or members of any any guilds - by no means or by any means or legal tricks, neither act nor design, shall create, organize or establish any ... monopolies, agreements, conspiracies, regulations, rules, societies, leagues, intrigues or other similar things against the said guild, against masters of the guild or against their honor, jurisdiction, guardianship, power or authority, under penalty of a fine of 200 pounds of small florins. And secret spies are appointed to supervise these matters; but at the same time, anyone is allowed to make accusations and denunciations openly or secretly, receiving a reward of half the fine, and the name of the informer is kept secret.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What didn't burn was looted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If 1204 marked a milestone in the triumph of cynicism and the creation of a new military-commercial alliance, not everyone in Europe approved of this path. It may be recalled that almost half of the participants in the Fourth Crusade abandoned the war against Constantinople. However, some of them, for example Count Simon de Montfort, went on another crusade - against the Albigensians. Moreover, in 1212, crusading fervor gripped the youngest: thousands of teenagers, essentially still children, mainly from the Rhineland and Lorraine, left their homes to follow the equally young preachers. They were taught that they, unarmed and sinless, would succeed where adult warriors had failed or allowed themselves to be diverted from their goal. Church authorities tried to curtail this movement, but due to mass enthusiasm they were forced to retreat. However, the miracle did not happen. Thousands of children died at sea or were sold into slavery, and those lucky enough to return home became objects of ridicule. The most convenient explanation for this catastrophe was that the children were led astray by the devil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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