Life and customs of the Middle Ages. Daily life and customs of medieval Russia Life and customs of the Crusaders of the 11th-13th centuries

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation
St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design

Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences

Essay on cultural studies:

“Life and manners of the Middle Ages”

St. Petersburg
2003.

Content:
1.Introduction………………………………………………………………………3
2. The brightness and sharpness of life……………………………………………………….4
3. Chivalry……………………………………………………………………..7
4. The significance of the cathedral in the medieval city……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
5. City dweller and time…………………………………………………………….. 14
6. Crime of the Middle Ages…………………………………………… …..16
7. The role of the church…………………………………………………………………..17
7.1 The role of the church in education…………………………………………… ….18
8. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..19
Application………………………………………………………………………...20
List of used literature……………………………………………….. 21

1. Introduction
. I wanted to take a closer look at the life of those times. How did people live? What was their morality? What guided you in life? What daily concerns occupied their minds? How strongly do the interests of the people of the present and that time contrast? As now there were big cities, squares, but since then a lot has changed: if earlier in the square you could hear
the creak of wheels, the clatter of hooves, the clatter of wooden shoes, the cries of pedlars, the rumble and ringing of craft workshops, but now this has been replaced by the frantic pace of city streets, industrial plants. But how have people changed?
I was interested to find out what role the cathedral played. And why did so much time was devoted to the construction of the cathedral. What meaning did the cathedral bring to public life?

2. Brightness and sharpness of life
When the world was five centuries younger, all the events of life took on forms much more sharply outlined than they do today. Suffering and joy, misfortune and good fortune are much more palpable; human experiences retained that degree of fullness and immediacy with which the soul of a child perceives grief and joy to this day. Every action, every deed, followed an elaborate and expressive ritual, rising to a stable and unchanging way of life. Important events: birth, marriage, death - thanks to the sacraments of the Church, they achieved the brilliance of mystery. Things not so significant, such as travel, work, business or friendly visits, were also accompanied by repeated blessings, ceremonies, proverbs and furnished with certain ceremonies.
Disasters and deprivation had nowhere to wait for relief, at that time they were much more painful and terrible. Sickness and health differed much more, frightening darkness and severe cold in winter represented a real evil. They reveled in nobility and wealth with greater greed and more earnestly, for they opposed blatant poverty and rejection much more sharply. The fur-lined cloak, the hot fire of the hearth, the wine and the joke, the soft and comfortable bed, gave that tremendous pleasure, which later, perhaps thanks to English novels, invariably becomes the most vivid embodiment of worldly joys. All aspects of life were paraded arrogantly and rudely. The lepers twirled their rattles and gathered in procession, the beggars screamed on the porches, exposing their squalor and ugliness. Conditions and estates, ranks and professions differed in clothing. Noble gentlemen moved only shining with the splendor of weapons and outfits, to everyone's fear and envy. The administration of justice, the appearance of merchants with goods, weddings and funerals were loudly announced with shouts, processions, weeping and music. Lovers wore the colors of their lady, members of the brotherhood their emblem, supporters of an influential person their respective badges and distinctions.
Diversity and contrasts also prevailed in the external appearance of cities and villages. The medieval city did not move, like our cities, into slovenly outskirts with simple houses and dull factories, but appeared as a single whole, surrounded by walls and bristling with formidable towers. No matter how high and massive the stone houses of merchants or the nobility were, the buildings of the temples majestically reigned over the city with their bulk.
The difference between summer and winter was felt more sharply than in our life, just as between light and darkness, silence and noise. The modern city is hardly aware of the impenetrable darkness, the dead silence, the impressive impact of a single light or a single distant cry.
Because of the constant contrasts, the diversity of forms of everything that touched the mind and feelings, everyday life aroused and kindled passion, manifested either in unexpected explosions of rude unbridledness and bestial cruelty, or in impulses of spiritual responsiveness, in the changeable atmosphere of which the life of a medieval city flowed.
But one sound invariably blotted out the hustle and bustle of life; no matter how varied it was, it did not mix with anything and exalted everything transcendent into a sphere of order and clarity. This bell ringing of bells in everyday life was likened to warning good spirits, who in familiar voices announced grief and joy, peace and anxiety, summoned the people and warned of imminent danger. They were called by their first names: Roland, Fatty, Jacqueline - and everyone understood the meaning of this or that ringing. And although the bells sounded almost incessantly, attention to their ringing was not dulled. In the continuation of the notorious duel between two townspeople in 1455, which plunged both the city and the entire Burgundian court into a state of incredible tension, a large bell - "terrifying hearing", according to Chatellin - rang until the fight was over. An old alarm bell, cast in 1316 and nicknamed “Orida”, still hangs on the bell churches of Our Lady in Antwerp. horrida - scary. What incredible excitement must have gripped everyone when all the churches and monasteries of Paris rang their bells from morning to evening - and even at night - on the occasion of the election of a pope, who was supposed to put an end to the schism, or in honor of the conclusion of peace between the Bourguignons and Armagnacs.
A deeply moving spectacle, no doubt, was the procession. In bad times - and they happened often - processions succeeded each other, day after day, week after week. When the disastrous strife between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy eventually led to open civil war, and King Charles VI in 1412. unfolded the oriflamme, in order to, together with John the Fearless, oppose the Armagnacs, who had betrayed their homeland by allying with the British, in Paris, for the duration of the king's stay in hostile lands, it was decided to organize processions daily. They continued from the end of May almost until the end of July; they involved successive orders, guilds and corporations; each time they walked along different streets and each time they carried other relics. These days people fasted; everyone walked barefoot - councilors of parliament, as well as the poorest citizens. Many carried torches or candles. There were always children among the participants in the procession. On foot, from afar, barefoot, poor peasants came to Paris. People walked by themselves or looked at those walking. And it was very rainy.
And there were solemn exits of brilliant nobles, furnished with all the cunning and skill for which only the imagination was enough. And in never-ending abundance - executions. The cruel excitement and rude participation caused by the spectacle of the scaffold were an important part of the spiritual food of the people. These are moral performances. Terrible punishments are invented for terrible crimes. In Brussels, a young arsonist and murderer is chained to a ring placed on a pole around which bundles of brushwood and straw are blazing. Addressing the audience with touching words, he so softened their hearts, "that they shed all the tears out of compassion, and set up his death as an example, as the most beautiful one anyone has ever seen." Mensir Mansart du Bois, an Armagnac who was to be beheaded in 1411. in Paris during the Bourguignon terror, not only from the bottom of his heart grants forgiveness to the executioner, which he asks him according to custom, but also wants to exchange a kiss with him. “And there were crowds of people, and almost everyone wept bitter tears.” Often the condemned were noble gentlemen, and then the people received an even more lively satisfaction from the accomplishment of inexorable justice and an even more cruel lesson in the frailty of earthly greatness than any picturesque depiction of the Dance of Death could do. The authorities tried not to miss anything in order to achieve the effect of the whole performance: signs of the high dignity of the convicts accompanied them during this mournful procession.
Everyday life invariably gave endless expanse to ardent passions and childish fantasies. Modern medieval studies, which, because of the unreliability of the chronicles, mainly turns, as far as possible, to sources that are of an official nature, thereby unwittingly falls into a dangerous mistake. Such sources do not sufficiently reveal the differences in lifestyle that separate us from the era of the Middle Ages. They make us forget the tense pathos of medieval life. Of all the passions that colored it, they tell us only about two: greed and militancy. Who will not be amazed by the almost incomprehensible frenzy, the constancy with which in the legal documents of the late Middle Ages greed, quarrelsomeness, vindictiveness come to the fore! Only in connection with this passion that overwhelmed everyone, scorched all aspects of life, can one understand and accept the aspirations characteristic of those people. That is why the chronicles, even if they skim the surface of the events described and, moreover, so often report false information, are absolutely necessary if we want to see this time in its true light.
Life still retained the flavor of a fairy tale. If even court chroniclers, noble, learned people close to sovereigns, saw and portrayed the latter in no other way than in an archaic, hieratic guise, then what was the magical brilliance of royal power supposed to mean for the naive popular imagination!

Community of citizens. The uniqueness of the medieval cities of Western Europe was given by their socio-political system. All other features - concentration of population, narrow streets, walls and towers, occupations of citizens, economic and ideological functions and political role - could also be inherent in cities of other regions and other eras. But only in the medieval West, the city is invariably presented as a self-regulating community, endowed with a relatively high degree of autonomy and having a special right and a rather complex structure.

3. Chivalry
Chivalry is a special privileged social stratum of medieval society. Traditionally, this concept is associated with the history of the countries of Western and Central Europe, where in the heyday of the Middle Ages, in fact, all secular feudal warriors belonged to chivalry. But more often this term is used in relation to medium and small feudal lords, as opposed to the nobility. The origin of chivalry dates back to that period of the early Middle Ages (7th-8th centuries), when conditional forms of feudal landownership, first for life, later hereditary, became widespread. When land was transferred to a feud, its complainant became a seigneur (suzerain), and the recipient became a vassal of the latter, which involved military service (compulsory military service did not exceed 40 days a year) and the performance of some other duties in favor of the seigneur. These included monetary "assistance" in the event of a son being knighted, a daughter's wedding, and the need to ransom a seigneur who was captured. According to custom, the vassals participated in the court of the lord, were present in his council. The ceremony of registration of vassal relations was called homage, and the oath of allegiance to the lord was called foie. If the size of the land received for service allowed, the new owner, in turn, transferred part of it as fiefs to his vassals (subinfeodation). This is how a multi-stage system of vassalage developed ("suzerainty", "feudal hierarchy", "feudal ladder") from the supreme overlord - the king to single-shielded knights who did not have their own vassals. For the continental countries of Western Europe, the rules of vassal relations reflected the principle: "the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal", while, for example, in England (the Salisbury oath of 1085) a direct vassal dependence of all feudal landowners on the king was introduced with compulsory service in royal army.
The hierarchy of vassal relations repeated the hierarchy of land holdings and determined the principle of the formation of the military militia of the feudal lords. So, along with the establishment of military-feudal relations, the formation of chivalry as a military-feudal service class, which flourished in the 11-14 centuries. Military affairs became its main social function. The military profession gave rights and privileges, determined special estate views, ethical norms, traditions, and cultural values.
The military duties of the knights included defending the honor and dignity of the suzerain, and most importantly, the land from encroachment both by neighboring feudal rulers in internecine wars and by troops of other states in the event of an external attack. In the conditions of civil strife, the line between defending one's own possessions and seizing foreign lands was rather shaky, and a champion of justice in words often turned out to be an invader in deed, not to mention participation in campaigns of conquest organized by the royal government, such as numerous campaigns of German emperors in Italy, or by the Pope himself, like the Crusades. The knightly army was a powerful force. His armament, battle tactics corresponded to military tasks, the scale of military operations and the technical level of his time. Protected by metal military armor, the knightly cavalry, invulnerable to foot soldiers and peasant militia, played the main role in the battle.
Feudal wars did not exhaust the social role of chivalry. In conditions of feudal fragmentation, with the relative weakness of royal power, chivalry, fastened by a system of vassalage into a single privileged corporation, guarded the feudal lords' property rights to land, the basis of their dominance. A vivid example of this is the history of the suppression of the largest peasant uprising in France - the Jacquerie (1358-1359), which broke out during the Hundred Years War. At the same time, the knights representing the belligerents, the British and French, united under the banner of the Navarrese king Charles the Evil and turned their weapons against the rebellious peasants, solving a common social problem. Chivalry also influenced the political processes of the era, since the social interests of the feudal class as a whole and the norms of knightly morality to a certain extent restrained centrifugal tendencies and limited the feudal freemen. During the process of state centralization, chivalry (medium and small feudal lords) constituted the main military force of the kings in their opposition to the nobility in the struggle for the territorial unification of the country and real power in the state. This was the case, for example, in France in the 14th century, when, in violation of the former norm of vassalage, a significant part of the chivalry was recruited into the army of the king on terms of monetary payment.
Participation in the knightly army required a certain security, and the land grant was not only a reward for the service, but also a necessary material condition for its implementation, since the knight acquired both a war horse and expensive heavy weapons (spear, sword, mace, armor, armor for a horse) at their own expense, not to mention the maintenance of the corresponding retinue. Knightly armor included up to 200 parts, and the total weight of military equipment reached 50 kg; over time, their complexity and cost have grown. The training of future warriors was served by the system of knightly training and education. In Western Europe, boys up to 7 years old grew up in a family, later up to 14 years old they were brought up at the court of a seigneur as a page, then a squire, and finally they were knighted.
Tradition required a knight to be knowledgeable in matters of religion, to know the rules of court etiquette, to possess the "seven knightly virtues": horseback riding, fencing, skillful handling of a spear, swimming, hunting, playing checkers, writing and singing poems in honor of the lady of the heart.
Knighting symbolized entry into the privileged class, familiarization with its rights and duties, and was accompanied by a special ceremony. According to European custom, the knight initiating the rank struck the initiate with a sword on the shoulder, pronounced the initiation formula, put on a helmet and golden spurs, handed over a sword - a symbol of knightly dignity - and a shield with a coat of arms and a motto. The initiate, in turn, took an oath of allegiance and an obligation to uphold the code of honor. The ritual often ended with a jousting tournament (duel) - a demonstration of military skill and courage.
Knightly traditions and special ethical norms have evolved over the centuries. The code of honor was based on the principle of loyalty to the overlord and duty. Among the knightly virtues were military courage and contempt for danger, pride, a noble attitude towards a woman, attention to members of knightly families in need of help. Avarice and avarice were subject to condemnation, betrayal was not forgiven.
But the ideal was not always in harmony with reality. As for predatory campaigns in foreign lands (for example, the capture of Jerusalem or Constantinople during the Crusades), then knightly "exploits" brought grief, ruin, reproach and shame to more than one common people.
The Crusades contributed to the formation of ideas, customs, morality of chivalry, the interaction of Western and Eastern traditions. In the course of them in Palestine, special organizations of Western European feudal lords arose to protect and expand the possessions of the crusaders - spiritual and knightly orders. These include the Order of St. John (1113), the Order of the Knights Templar (1118), the Teutonic Order (1128). Later, the orders of Calatrava, Sant'Iago, and Alcantara acted in Spain. In the Baltics, the Order of the Sword and the Livonian Order are known. Members of the order took monastic vows (non-possession, renunciation of property, chastity, obedience), wore robes similar to monastic ones, and under them - military armor. Each order had its own distinctive clothing (for example, the Templars had a white cloak with a red cross). Organizationally, they were built on the basis of a strict hierarchy, headed by an elected master, approved by the pope. When the master acted chapter (council), with legislative functions.
The reflection of knightly morals in the field of spiritual culture opened the brightest page of medieval literature with its own special color, genre and style. She poeticized earthly joys in spite of Christian asceticism, glorified the feat and not only embodied knightly ideals, but also shaped them. Along with the heroic epic of high patriotic sound (for example, the French "Song of Roland", the Spanish "Song of my Sid"), chivalric poetry appeared (for example, the lyrics of the troubadours and trouveurs in France and the minnesingers in Germany) and the chivalric romance (the love story of Tristan and Isolde), representing the so-called "courtly literature" (from the French courtois - courteous, chivalrous) with the obligatory cult of the lady.
In Europe, chivalry has been losing its significance as the main military force of feudal states since the 15th century. The so-called "battle of spurs" (July 11, 1302), when the foot militia of the Flemish townspeople defeated the French knightly cavalry, became a harbinger of the sunset of the glory of French chivalry. Later, the ineffectiveness of the actions of the French knightly army was clearly manifested at the first stage of the Hundred Years' War, when it suffered a series of severe defeats from the English army. To withstand the competition of mercenary armies using firearms (which appeared in the 15th century), chivalry proved incapable. The new conditions of the era of the disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist relations led to its disappearance from the historical arena. In the 16th and 17th centuries chivalry finally loses the specifics of a special class and is part of the nobility.
Brought up on the military traditions of their ancestors, representatives of the old knightly families made up the officer corps of the armies of the absolutist time, went on risky sea expeditions, and carried out colonial conquests. The noble ethics of subsequent centuries, including the noble principles of fidelity to duty and worthy service to the fatherland, undoubtedly bear the influence of the knightly era.

4. The significance of the cathedral in the medieval city
For a long time, the cathedral was the only public building in the medieval city. It played the role of not only a religious, ideological, cultural, educational center, but also an administrative and, to some extent, economic center. Later, town halls and covered markets appeared, and part of the functions of the cathedral passed to them, but even then it by no means remained only a religious center. The idea that “the main tasks of the city ... served as the material basis and symbols of the conflicting social forces that dominated urban life: the castle was the pillar of secular feudal power; the cathedral is the embodiment of the power of the clergy; the town hall is a stronghold of self-government of citizens” (A.V. Ikonnikov) - only partly true. Their unconditional acceptance simplifies the socio-cultural life of the medieval city.
It is rather difficult for a modern person to perceive the variety of functions of a medieval cathedral, its significance in all spheres of urban life. The cathedral remained a temple, a religious building or became a monument of architecture and culture, a museum, a concert hall, necessary and accessible to a few. His life today does not convey the fullness of his being in the past.
The medieval city was small and enclosed by walls. Residents perceived it as a whole, in an ensemble - a feeling lost in a modern city. The cathedral defines the architectural and spatial center of the city; in any type of urban planning, the web of streets gravitated towards it. As the tallest building in the city, it served as a watchtower if necessary. Cathedral Square was the main, and sometimes the only one. All vital public events took place or began in this square. Subsequently, when the market was moved from the suburbs to the city and a special market square appeared, it often adjoins the cathedral one of the corners. So it was in a number of cities in Germany and France: Dresden, Meissen, Naumburg, Montauban, Monpazier. In the city, in addition to the main cathedral, as a rule, there were also parish churches, some of the functions of the cathedral were transferred to them. In large cities, their number could be significant. So a contemporary notes in London at the end of the 12th century. One hundred twenty-six such churches.
To our admiring eyes, the cathedral appears in a completed and “cleansed” form. Around him there are no those small shops and little shops that, like bird nests, clung to all the ledges and caused the demands of the city and church authorities "not to punch holes in the walls of the temple." The aesthetic inappropriateness of these shops, apparently, did not bother contemporaries at all, they became an integral part of the cathedral, did not interfere with its greatness. The silhouette of the cathedral was also different, since one or the other of its wing was constantly in the forests.
The medieval city was noisy: in a small space there was a creak of wheels, the clatter of hooves, the clatter of wooden shoes, the cries of peddlers, the roar and ringing of craft workshops, the voices and bells of domestic animals, which were only gradually driven out of the streets by the city authorities, the rattles of leprosy patients. “But one sound invariably blocked the noise of a restless life: no matter how diverse it was, it did not mix with anything, elevating everything that happened to the sphere of order and clarity. This is a bell ringing. Bells in everyday life were likened to good warning spirits, who, with familiar voices, announced grief and joy, peace and anxiety, called the people together and warned of impending danger. They were called by their names: Roland, Fat Jacqueline - and everyone understood the meaning of this or that ringing. And although their glosses sounded almost incessantly, attention to their ringing was not dulled at all ”(J. Huizinga). The cathedral spikelet compiled the necessary information for all the townspeople at once: about a fire, about the sea, an attack, any emergency intracity event. And today the ancient "Big Paul" or "Big Ben" animate the space of the modern city.
The cathedral was the keeper of time. The bells chimed the hours of duck worship, but for a long time they also announced the beginning and end of the craftsman's work. Until the XIV century. - the beginning of the spread of mechanical tower clocks - it was the cathedral bell that set the rhythm of "well-measured life".
The vigilant eye of the church accompanied the city dweller from birth to death. The church accepted him into society, and she also helped him pass into the afterlife. Church sacraments and rituals were an essential part of everyday life. Baptism, engagement, marriage ceremony, funeral service and burial, confession and communion - all this connected the city dweller with the cathedral or parish church (in small towns the cathedral was also a parish church), made it possible to feel like a part of Christian society. The cathedral also served as a burial place for wealthy citizens, some of them had closed family tombs with tombstones. It was not only prestigious, but also practical (as historians note, the robberies of parish cemeteries occurred constantly).
The relationship between the townspeople and the city clergy was far from idyllic. The chronicles of Guibert of Nozhansky, Otto of Freisingen, Richard Devise do not say anything good about the townspeople. In turn, in urban literature - fablio, schwank, satirical poetry - the monk and the priest are often ridiculed. The townspeople oppose the freedom of the clergy from taxes, they seek not only to free themselves from the power of their senior prelates, but also to take under municipal control the affairs that were traditionally the responsibility of the church. Indicative in this regard, the evolution of the situation of hospitals, which during the XIII-XIV centuries. gradually cease to be ecclesiastical institutions, although they retain the patronage of the church and, therefore, the inviolability of their property. However, the frequent opposition to the clergy is combined with constant contacts with him in everyday life and does not prevent the townspeople from considering the construction and decoration of the cathedral as their vital business.
The construction of the city cathedral was attended not only by the townspeople, but also by the peasants of the district, the magnates and the clergy. Medieval chronicles and other documents reflected examples of religious enthusiasm that struck contemporaries: “ladies, knights, all sought not only donations, but also feasible work to help the construction.” Often, funds were raised throughout the country for the construction of the cathedral. “In the Middle Ages, a wide variety of donations, donations, contributions to the construction of the temple, which were considered as a worthy and pleasing deed, became widespread. Most often, these were donations of jewelry and valuables, sums of money or free provision of materials for future construction ”(K.M. Muratov). The cathedral was built for several decades, but the complete completion of the building dragged on for centuries. From generation to generation, legends about the laying and construction of the temple were indulged, more and more funds were collected, donations were made, wills were left. The phrase of the papal legate and former chancellor of the University of Paris, Odo de Chateauroux, that "Notre Dame Cathedral was built on the pennies of poor widows," of course, should not be taken literally, but precisely under a foundation. A sincere impulse of piety was combined with rivalry with a neighboring city, and for some, with a desire to receive personal remission of sins. The beautiful cathedral was one of the important signs of prestige, it demonstrated the strength and wealth of the city community. The size of the temples built in very small cities, the luxury and complexity of their interiors meet the need to create something incommensurable in beauty and grandeur with everything around. The significance of the cathedral is also evidenced by the desire to immediately restore its aftermath of the fire, and certainly in the same place, in order to preserve the usual objects of pilgrimage.
The construction of the cathedral was for many years in the center of attention of the townspeople, but it entered into action long before its final completion. The construction began from the choir, the roof was built, as a rule, even before the church was covered with vaults, so the service could be performed fairly quickly after the start of construction.
etc.................

Artist E. Blair-Leighton

What was invented in the Middle Ages and what is used to this day:
Soap;
Whitening masks.
François Villon
"The Ballad of the Seniors of the Past"
Tell me where they are, in what country
Thais and Flora sweet shadows?
And where is the end in fire
The holy virgin is Lorreni's daughter?
Where is the nymph Echo, whose tune is spring
Sometimes the quiet shore disturbed the rivers,
Whose beauty was the most perfect?

Where are Berta and Alice - where are they?
About them my languid songs.
Where is the lady who cried in silence
What did Buridan drown in the Seine?
Oh where are they like light foam?
Where is Eloise, for whose age
Did Pierre graduate under the schema of renunciation?
But where is he - where is last year's snow?
Will I see Queen Blanche in a dream?
By songs equal to the former siren,
That sang on the sea wave,
In what region is she - what captivity?
Artist E. Blair-Leighton
I will also ask about sweet Elena.
O maiden of maidens, who stopped their flourishing?
And where is she, mistress of visions?
But where is he - where is last year's snow?

Famous beauties of the Middle Ages
Fair Rosamund- Beauty Rosamund Clifford, beloved of the English King Henry II. Fearing the jealousy of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the king took Rosamund to a secluded castle and visited her there. But the queen found a way to poison her husband's mistress. As punishment, Henry excommunicated his wife from the marital bed and sent her into exile, and Eleanor turned her sons against him, which led to a long civil strife in the country.
Artist J.Waterhouse

Queen Jeanne of Navarre wife of the French King Philip the Handsome. She was famous for her beautiful figure, as well as exorbitant voluptuousness.

To satisfy lust, she lured men to the Nel Tower, and to keep the secret, after the pleasures, she killed her lovers and dumped their bodies into the Seine.
Queen Isabella the French Wolf- daughter of the French king Philip the Handsome, wife of the English king Edward II. She was famous for her golden hair, dazzling whiteness of skin, intelligence, education and the ability to maintain external equanimity.

She got her nickname when she rebelled against her husband and brutally killed him in order to enthrone her son, who became King Edward III of England and, at the instigation of his mother, laid claim to the French throne, as a result of which the Hundred Years War began.
Agnes Sorel- the beloved of the French king Charles VII, became famous for her angelic perfection of her face and magnificent breast shape, to demonstrate which she brought into fashion a bold neckline, captured in many paintings of that time.
Artist Jean_Fouquet

Agnes was reproached for excessive abuse of luxury: she collected jewelry and incense, loved oriental silk and Russian furs (even then they were popular in Europe). Her sybaritism looked especially outrageous against the background of general poverty: the country was tormented by a hundred years of war, peasant riots and civil strife. But Agnes loved the king sincerely. Being in the ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that an assassination attempt was being prepared on Charles VII, and went to warn him. The carriages at that time were unsprung, Agnes was greatly shaken, she began to give birth, but she endured the torment and continued to drive the horses - in order to save her beloved.
Artist J.Waterhouse

Agnes Sorel died from childbirth in the literal sense in the arms of Charles VII, but managed to warn him about the impending assassination attempt.
Publication date: 07/07/2013

The Middle Ages originate from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and end around the 15th - 17th centuries. The Middle Ages are characterized by two opposite stereotypes. Some believe that this is the time of noble knights and romantic stories. Others believe that this is a time of disease, dirt and immorality...

Story

The very term "Middle Ages" was first introduced in 1453 by the Italian humanist Flavio Biondo. Prior to this, the term "dark ages" was used, which at the moment denotes a narrower segment of the time period of the Middle Ages (VI-VIII centuries). This term was introduced into circulation by the professor of the Gallic University Christopher Cellarius (Keller). This man also divided world history into antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times.
It is worth making a reservation, saying that this article will focus specifically on the European Middle Ages.

This period is characterized by a feudal system of land use, when there was a feudal landowner and a peasant who was half dependent on him. Also characteristic:
- a hierarchical system of relations between feudal lords, which consisted in the personal dependence of some feudal lords (vassals) on others (seigneurs);
- the key role of the church, both in religion and in politics (inquisitions, church courts);
- ideals of chivalry;
- the heyday of medieval architecture - Gothic (including in art).

In the period from the X to the XII centuries. the population of European countries is increasing, which leads to changes in the social, political and other spheres of life. Starting from the XII - XIII centuries. in Europe there has been a sharp rise in the development of technology. More inventions were made in a century than in the previous thousand years. During the Middle Ages, cities develop and grow rich, culture is actively developing.

With the exception of Eastern Europe, which was invaded by the Mongols. Many states of this region were plundered and enslaved.

Life and life

The people of the Middle Ages were highly dependent on weather conditions. So, for example, the great famine (1315 - 1317), which happened due to unusually cold and rainy years that ruined the harvest. Also plague epidemics. It was the climatic conditions that largely determined the way of life and the type of activity of medieval man.

During the early medieval period, a very large part of Europe was covered with forests. Therefore, the economy of the peasants, in addition to agriculture, was largely oriented towards forest resources. Herds of cattle were driven into the forest to graze. In oak forests, pigs gained fat by eating acorns, thanks to which the peasant received a guaranteed supply of meat food for the winter. The forest served as a source of firewood for heating and, thanks to it, charcoal was made. He brought variety to the food of a medieval person, because. all kinds of berries and mushrooms grew in it, and it was possible to hunt outlandish game in it. The forest was the source of the only sweet of that time - the honey of wild bees. Resinous substances could be collected from trees to make torches. Thanks to hunting, it was possible not only to feed, but also to dress up, the skins of animals were used for sewing clothes and for other household purposes. In the forest, in the clearings, it was possible to collect medicinal plants, the only medicines of that time. The bark of trees was used to mend animal skins, and the ashes of burnt bushes were used to bleach fabrics.

As well as climatic conditions, the landscape determined the main occupation of people: cattle breeding prevailed in the mountainous regions, and agriculture prevailed in the plains.

All the troubles of a medieval person (diseases, bloody wars, famine) led to the fact that the average life expectancy was 22 - 32 years. Few survived until the age of 70.

The way of life of a medieval person depended largely on his habitat, but at the same time, people of that time were quite mobile, and, one might say, were constantly on the move. At first, these were echoes of the great migration of peoples. Subsequently, other reasons pushed people on the road. Peasants moved along the roads of Europe, singly and in groups, looking for a better life; "knights" - in search of feats and beautiful ladies; monks - moving from monastery to monastery; pilgrims and all kinds of beggars and vagabonds.

Only over time, when the peasants acquired certain property, and the feudal lords acquired large lands, then cities began to grow and at that time (approximately the 14th century) Europeans became “homebodies”.

If we talk about housing, about the houses in which medieval people lived, then most of the buildings did not have separate rooms. People slept, ate and cooked in the same room. Only over time, wealthy citizens began to separate the bedroom from the kitchens and dining rooms.

Peasant houses were built of wood, in some places preference was given to stone. Roofs were thatched or reeds. There was very little furniture. Mostly chests for storing clothes and tables. Slept on benches or beds. The bed was a hayloft or a mattress stuffed with straw.

Houses were heated by hearths or fireplaces. Furnaces appeared only at the beginning of the XIV century, when they were borrowed from the northern peoples and Slavs. The dwellings were lit with tallow candles and oil lamps. Expensive wax candles could only be purchased by rich people.

Food

Most Europeans ate very modestly. They usually ate twice a day: in the morning and in the evening. Everyday food was rye bread, cereals, legumes, turnips, cabbage, grain soup with garlic or onions. Little meat was consumed. Moreover, during the year there were 166 days of fasting, when meat dishes were forbidden to be eaten. Fish was much more in the diet. Of the sweets, there was only honey. Sugar came to Europe from the East in the 13th century. and was very expensive.
In medieval Europe they drank a lot: in the south - wine, in the north - beer. Herbs were brewed instead of tea.

The dishes of most Europeans are bowls, mugs, etc. were very simple, made of clay or tin. Products made of silver or gold were used only by the nobility. There were no forks; they ate with spoons at the table. Pieces of meat were cut off with a knife and eaten with the hands. The peasants ate food from one bowl with the whole family. At the feasts of the nobility, they put one bowl and a goblet for wine on two. The bones were thrown under the table, and the hands were wiped with a tablecloth.

clothing

As for clothing, it was largely unified. Unlike antiquity, the church considered the glorification of the beauty of the human body to be sinful and insisted that it be covered with clothes. Only by the XII century. the first signs of fashion began to appear.

The change in clothing style reflected the then social preferences. The opportunity to follow the fashion had mainly representatives of the wealthy strata.
The peasant usually wore a linen shirt and pants to the knees or even to the ankles. The outer garment was a cloak, tied at the shoulders with a clasp (fibula). In winter, they wore either a roughly combed sheepskin coat or a warm cape made of dense fabric or fur. Clothing reflected a person's place in society. The attire of the wealthy was dominated by bright colors, cotton and silk fabrics. The poor were content with dark clothes made of coarse homespun cloth. Shoes for men and women were leather pointed boots without hard soles. Hats originated in the 13th century. and have changed continuously since then. Habitual gloves acquired importance during the Middle Ages. Shaking hands in them was considered an insult, and throwing a glove to someone was a sign of contempt and a challenge to a duel.

The nobility liked to add various decorations to their clothes. Men and women wore rings, bracelets, belts, chains. Very often, these things were unique pieces of jewelry. For the poor, all this was unattainable. Wealthy women spent considerable money on cosmetics and perfumes, which were brought by merchants from eastern countries.

stereotypes

As a rule, certain ideas about something are rooted in the public mind. And ideas about the Middle Ages are no exception. First of all, it concerns chivalry. Sometimes there is an opinion that the knights were uneducated, stupid dorks. But was it really so? This statement is too categorical. As in any community, representatives of the same class could be completely different people. For example, Charlemagne built schools, knew several languages. Richard the Lionheart, considered a typical representative of chivalry, wrote poems in two languages. Charles the Bold, who is often described in literature as a kind of boor-macho, knew Latin very well and loved to read ancient authors. Francis I patronized Benvenuto Cellini and Leonardo da Vinci. The polygamist Henry VIII knew four languages, played the lute and loved the theatre. Should the list continue? These were all sovereigns, models for their subjects. They were guided by them, they were imitated, and those who could knock down an enemy from a horse and write an ode to the Beautiful Lady enjoyed respect.

Regarding the same ladies, or wives. There is an opinion that women were treated like property. And again, it all depends on how the husband was. For example, Senor Etienne II de Blois was married to a certain Adele of Normandy, daughter of William the Conqueror. Etienne, as it was then necessary for a Christian, went on crusades, and his wife remained at home. It would seem that there is nothing special in all this, but Etienne's letters to Adele have survived to our time. Tender, passionate, yearning. This is evidence and an indicator of how a medieval knight could treat his own wife. You can also remember Edward I, who was killed by the death of his beloved wife. Or, for example, Louis XII, who, after the wedding, from the first debauchee of France turned into a faithful husband.

Speaking about the cleanliness and level of pollution of medieval cities, they also often go too far. To the extent that they claim that human waste in London merged into the Thames, as a result of which it was a continuous stream of sewage. Firstly, the Thames is not the smallest river, and secondly, in medieval London, the number of inhabitants was about 50 thousand. So they simply could not pollute the river in this way.

The hygiene of medieval man was not as terrible as it seems to us. They are very fond of citing the example of Princess Isabella of Castile, who made a vow not to change linen until victory is won. And poor Isabella kept her word for three years. But this act of hers caused a great resonance in Europe, a new color was even invented in honor of her. But if you look at the statistics of soap production in the Middle Ages, you can understand that the statement that people did not wash for years is far from the truth. Otherwise, why would such an amount of soap be needed?

In the Middle Ages, there was no such need for frequent washing, as in the modern world - the environment was not so catastrophically polluted as it is now ... There was no industry, the food was without chemicals. Therefore, water, salts were excreted with human sweat, and not all those chemicals that are full in the body of a modern person.

Another stereotype that has become entrenched in the public mind is that everyone stank terribly. Russian ambassadors at the French court complained in letters that the French "stink terribly." From which it was concluded that the French did not wash, stank and tried to drown out the smell with perfume. They really used spirits. But this is explained by the fact that in Russia it was not customary to suffocate strongly, while the French simply doused themselves with perfume. Therefore, for a Russian person, a Frenchman who smelled abundantly of spirits was "stinking like a wild beast."

In conclusion, we can say that the real Middle Ages was very different from the fairy-tale world of chivalric novels. But at the same time, some facts are largely distorted and exaggerated. I think the truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle. As always, people were different and they lived differently. Some things really seem wild compared to modern ones, but all this happened centuries ago, when mores were different and the level of development of that society could not afford more. Someday, for the historians of the future, we will also find ourselves in the role of a “medieval man”.

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Content:
1.Introduction…………………………………………………………………………3
2. The brightness and sharpness of life……………………………………………………….4
3. Chivalry……………………………………………………………………..7
4. The significance of the cathedral in the medieval city……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
5. Citizen and time……………………………………………………………..14
6. Crime of the Middle Ages…………………………………………………..16
7. The role of the church…………………………………………………………………..17
7.1 The role of the church in education……………………………………………….18
8. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..19
Application……………………………………………………………………...20
List of used literature……………………………………………..21

1. Introduction
. I wanted to take a closer look at the life of those times. How did people live? What was their morality? What guided you in life? What daily concerns occupied their minds? How strongly do the interests of the people of the present and that time contrast? As now there were big cities, squares, but since then a lot has changed: if earlier in the square you could hear
the creak of wheels, the clatter of hooves, the clatter of wooden shoes, the cries of pedlars, the rumble and ringing of craft workshops, but now this has been replaced by the frantic pace of city streets, industrial plants. But how have people changed?
I was interested to find out what role the cathedral played. And why did so much time was devoted to the construction of the cathedral. What meaning did the cathedral bring to public life?
2. Brightness and sharpness of life
When the world was five centuries younger, all the events of life took on forms much more sharply outlined than they do today. Suffering and joy, misfortune and good fortune are much more palpable; human experiences retained that degree of fullness and immediacy with which the soul of a child perceives grief and joy to this day. Every action, every deed, followed an elaborate and expressive ritual, rising to a stable and unchanging way of life. Important events: birth, marriage, death - thanks to the sacraments of the Church, they achieved the brilliance of mystery. Things not so significant, such as travel, work, business or friendly visits, were also accompanied by repeated blessings, ceremonies, proverbs and furnished with certain ceremonies.
Disasters and deprivation had nowhere to wait for relief, at that time they were much more painful and terrible. Sickness and health differed much more, frightening darkness and severe cold in winter represented a real evil. They reveled in nobility and wealth with greater greed and more earnestly, for they opposed blatant poverty and rejection much more sharply. The fur-lined cloak, the hot fire of the hearth, the wine and the joke, the soft and comfortable bed, gave that tremendous pleasure, which later, perhaps thanks to English novels, invariably becomes the most vivid embodiment of worldly joys. All aspects of life were paraded arrogantly and rudely. The lepers twirled their rattles and gathered in procession, the beggars screamed on the porches, exposing their squalor and ugliness. Conditions and estates, ranks and professions differed in clothing. Noble gentlemen moved only shining with the splendor of weapons and outfits, to everyone's fear and envy. The administration of justice, the appearance of merchants with goods, weddings and funerals were loudly announced with shouts, processions, weeping and music. Lovers wore the colors of their lady, members of the brotherhood their emblem, supporters of an influential person their respective badges and distinctions.
Diversity and contrasts also prevailed in the external appearance of cities and villages. The medieval city did not move, like our cities, into slovenly outskirts with simple houses and dull factories, but appeared as a single whole, surrounded by walls and bristling with formidable towers. No matter how high and massive the stone houses of merchants or the nobility were, the buildings of the temples majestically reigned over the city with their bulk.
The difference between summer and winter was felt more sharply than in our life, just as between light and darkness, silence and noise. The modern city is hardly aware of the impenetrable darkness, the dead silence, the impressive impact of a single light or a single distant cry.
Because of the constant contrasts, the diversity of forms of everything that touched the mind and feelings, everyday life aroused and kindled passion, manifested either in unexpected explosions of rude unbridledness and bestial cruelty, or in impulses of spiritual responsiveness, in the changeable atmosphere of which the life of a medieval city flowed.
But one sound invariably blotted out the hustle and bustle of life; no matter how varied it was, it did not mix with anything and exalted everything transcendent into a sphere of order and clarity. This bell ringing of bells in everyday life was likened to warning good spirits, who in familiar voices announced grief and joy, peace and anxiety, summoned the people and warned of imminent danger. They were called by their first names: Roland, Fatty, Jacqueline - and everyone understood the meaning of this or that ringing. And although the bells sounded almost incessantly, attention to their ringing was not dulled. In the continuation of the notorious duel between two townspeople in 1455, which plunged both the city and the entire Burgundian court into a state of incredible tension, a large bell - "terrifying hearing", according to Chatellin - rang until the fight was over. An old alarm bell, cast in 1316 and nicknamed “Orida”, still hangs on the bell churches of Our Lady in Antwerp. horrida - scary. What incredible excitement must have gripped everyone when all the churches and monasteries of Paris rang their bells from morning to evening - and even at night - on the occasion of the election of a pope, who was supposed to put an end to the schism, or in honor of the conclusion of peace between the Bourguignons and Armagnacs.
A deeply moving spectacle, no doubt, was the procession. In bad times - and they happened often - processions succeeded each other, day after day, week after week. When the disastrous strife between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy eventually led to open civil war, and King Charles VI in 1412. unfolded the oriflamme, in order to, together with John the Fearless, oppose the Armagnacs, who had betrayed their homeland by allying with the British, in Paris, for the duration of the king's stay in hostile lands, it was decided to organize processions daily. They continued from the end of May almost until the end of July; they involved successive orders, guilds and corporations; each time they walked along different streets and each time they carried other relics. These days people fasted; everyone walked barefoot - councilors of parliament, as well as the poorest citizens. Many carried torches or candles. There were always children among the participants in the procession. On foot, from afar, barefoot, poor peasants came to Paris. People walked by themselves or looked at those walking. And it was very rainy.
And there were solemn exits of brilliant nobles, furnished with all the cunning and skill for which only the imagination was enough. And in never-ending abundance - executions. The cruel excitement and rude participation caused by the spectacle of the scaffold were an important part of the spiritual food of the people. These are moral performances. Terrible punishments are invented for terrible crimes. In Brussels, a young arsonist and murderer is chained to a ring placed on a pole around which bundles of brushwood and straw are blazing. Addressing the audience with touching words, he so softened their hearts, "that they shed all the tears out of compassion, and set up his death as an example, as the most beautiful one anyone has ever seen." Mensir Mansart du Bois, an Armagnac who was to be beheaded in 1411. in Paris during the Bourguignon terror, not only from the bottom of his heart grants forgiveness to the executioner, which he asks him according to custom, but also wants to exchange a kiss with him. “And there were crowds of people, and almost everyone wept bitter tears.” Often the condemned were noble gentlemen, and then the people received an even more lively satisfaction from the accomplishment of inexorable justice and an even more cruel lesson in the frailty of earthly greatness than any picturesque depiction of the Dance of Death could do. The authorities tried not to miss anything in order to achieve the effect of the whole performance: signs of the high dignity of the convicts accompanied them during this mournful procession.
Everyday life invariably gave endless expanse to ardent passions and childish fantasies. Modern medieval studies, which, because of the unreliability of the chronicles, mainly turns, as far as possible, to sources that are of an official nature, thereby unwittingly falls into a dangerous mistake. Such sources do not sufficiently reveal the differences in lifestyle that separate us from the era of the Middle Ages. They make us forget the tense pathos of medieval life. Of all the passions that colored it, they tell us only about two: greed and militancy. Who will not be amazed by the almost incomprehensible frenzy, the constancy with which in the legal documents of the late Middle Ages greed, quarrelsomeness, vindictiveness come to the fore! Only in connection with this passion that overwhelmed everyone, scorched all aspects of life, can one understand and accept the aspirations characteristic of those people. That is why the chronicles, even if they skim the surface of the events described and, moreover, so often report false information, are absolutely necessary if we want to see this time in its true light.
Life still retained the flavor of a fairy tale. If even court chroniclers, noble, learned people close to sovereigns, saw and portrayed the latter in no other way than in an archaic, hieratic guise, then what was the magical brilliance of royal power supposed to mean for the naive popular imagination!
Community of citizens. The uniqueness of the medieval cities of Western Europe was given by their socio-political system. All other features - concentration of population, narrow streets, walls and towers, occupations of citizens, economic and ideological functions and political role - could also be inherent in cities of other regions and other eras. But only in the medieval West, the city is invariably presented as a self-regulating community, endowed with a relatively high degree of autonomy and having a special right and a rather complex structure.
3. Chivalry
Chivalry is a special privileged social stratum of medieval society. Traditionally, this concept is associated with the history of the countries of Western and Central Europe, where in the heyday of the Middle Ages, in fact, all secular feudal warriors belonged to chivalry. But more often this term is used in relation to medium and small feudal lords, as opposed to the nobility. The origin of chivalry dates back to that period of the early Middle Ages (7th-8th centuries), when conditional forms of feudal landownership, first for life, later hereditary, became widespread. When land was transferred to a feud, its complainant became a seigneur (suzerain), and the recipient became a vassal of the latter, which involved military service (compulsory military service did not exceed 40 days a year) and the performance of some other duties in favor of the seigneur. These included monetary "assistance" in the event of a son being knighted, a daughter's wedding, and the need to ransom a seigneur who was captured. According to custom, the vassals participated in the court of the lord, were present in his council. The ceremony of registration of vassal relations was called homage, and the oath of allegiance to the lord was called foie. If the size of the land received for service allowed, the new owner, in turn, transferred part of it as fiefs to his vassals (subinfeodation). This is how a multi-stage system of vassalage developed ("suzerainty", "feudal hierarchy", "feudal ladder") from the supreme overlord - the king to single-shielded knights who did not have their own vassals. For the continental countries of Western Europe, the rules of vassal relations reflected the principle: "the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal", while, for example, in England (the Salisbury oath of 1085) a direct vassal dependence of all feudal landowners on the king was introduced with compulsory service in royal army.
The hierarchy of vassal relations repeated the hierarchy of land holdings and determined the principle of the formation of the military militia of the feudal lords. So, along with the establishment of military-feudal relations, the formation of chivalry as a military-feudal service class, which flourished in the 11-14 centuries. Military affairs became its main social function. The military profession gave rights and privileges, determined special estate views, ethical norms, traditions, and cultural values.
The military duties of the knights included defending the honor and dignity of the suzerain, and most importantly, the land from encroachment both by neighboring feudal rulers in internecine wars and by troops of other states in the event of an external attack. In the conditions of civil strife, the line between defending one's own possessions and seizing foreign lands was rather shaky, and a champion of justice in words often turned out to be an invader in deed, not to mention participation in campaigns of conquest organized by the royal government, such as numerous campaigns of German emperors in Italy, or by the Pope himself, like the Crusades. The knightly army was a powerful force. His armament, battle tactics corresponded to military tasks, the scale of military operations and the technical level of his time. Protected by metal military armor, the knightly cavalry, invulnerable to foot soldiers and peasant militia, played the main role in the battle.
Feudal wars did not exhaust the social role of chivalry. In conditions of feudal fragmentation, with the relative weakness of royal power, chivalry, fastened by a system of vassalage into a single privileged corporation, guarded the feudal lords' property rights to land, the basis of their dominance. A vivid example of this is the history of the suppression of the largest peasant uprising in France - the Jacquerie (1358-1359), which broke out during the Hundred Years War. At the same time, the knights representing the belligerents, the British and French, united under the banner of the Navarrese king Charles the Evil and turned their weapons against the rebellious peasants, solving a common social problem. Chivalry also influenced the political processes of the era, since the social interests of the feudal class as a whole and the norms of knightly morality to a certain extent restrained centrifugal tendencies and limited the feudal freemen. During the process of state centralization, chivalry (medium and small feudal lords) constituted the main military force of the kings in their opposition to the nobility in the struggle for the territorial unification of the country and real power in the state. This was the case, for example, in France in the 14th century, when, in violation of the former norm of vassalage, a significant part of the chivalry was recruited into the army of the king on terms of monetary payment.
Participation in the knightly army required a certain security, and the land grant was not only a reward for the service, but also a necessary material condition for its implementation, since the knight acquired both a war horse and expensive heavy weapons (spear, sword, mace, armor, armor for a horse) at their own expense, not to mention the maintenance of the corresponding retinue. Knightly armor included up to 200 parts, and the total weight of military equipment reached 50 kg; over time, their complexity and cost have grown. The training of future warriors was served by the system of knightly training and education. In Western Europe, boys up to 7 years old grew up in a family, later up to 14 years old they were brought up at the court of a seigneur as a page, then a squire, and finally they were knighted.
Tradition required a knight to be knowledgeable in matters of religion, to know the rules of court etiquette, to possess the "seven knightly virtues": horseback riding, fencing, skillful handling of a spear, swimming, hunting, playing checkers, writing and singing poems in honor of the lady of the heart.
Knighting symbolized entry into the privileged class, familiarization with its rights and duties, and was accompanied by a special ceremony. According to European custom, the knight initiating the rank struck the initiate with a sword on the shoulder, pronounced the initiation formula, put on a helmet and golden spurs, handed over a sword - a symbol of knightly dignity - and a shield with a coat of arms and a motto. The initiate, in turn, took an oath of allegiance and an obligation to uphold the code of honor. The ritual often ended with a jousting tournament (duel) - a demonstration of military skill and courage.
Knightly traditions and special ethical norms have evolved over the centuries. The code of honor was based on the principle of loyalty to the overlord and duty. Among the knightly virtues were military courage and contempt for danger, pride, a noble attitude towards a woman, attention to members of knightly families in need of help. Avarice and avarice were subject to condemnation, betrayal was not forgiven.
But the ideal was not always in harmony with reality. As for predatory campaigns in foreign lands (for example, the capture of Jerusalem or Constantinople during the Crusades), then knightly "exploits" brought grief, ruin, reproach and shame to more than one common people.
The Crusades contributed to the formation of ideas, customs, morality of chivalry, the interaction of Western and Eastern traditions. In the course of them in Palestine, special organizations of Western European feudal lords arose to protect and expand the possessions of the crusaders - spiritual and knightly orders. These include the Order of St. John (1113), the Order of the Knights Templar (1118), the Teutonic Order (1128). Later, the orders of Calatrava, Sant'Iago, and Alcantara acted in Spain. In the Baltics, the Order of the Sword and the Livonian Order are known. Members of the order took monastic vows (non-possession, renunciation of property, chastity, obedience), wore robes similar to monastic ones, and under them - military armor. Each order had its own distinctive clothing (for example, the Templars had a white cloak with a red cross). Organizationally, they were built on the basis of a strict hierarchy, headed by an elected master, approved by the pope. When the master acted chapter (council), with legislative functions.
The reflection of knightly morals in the field of spiritual culture opened the brightest page of medieval literature with its own special color, genre and style. She poeticized earthly joys in spite of Christian asceticism, glorified the feat and not only embodied knightly ideals, but also shaped them. Along with the heroic epic of high patriotic sound (for example, the French "Song of Roland", the Spanish "Song of my Sid"), chivalric poetry appeared (for example, the lyrics of the troubadours and trouveurs in France and the minnesingers in Germany) and the chivalric romance (the love story of Tristan and Isolde), representing the so-called "courtly literature" (from the French courtois - courteous, chivalrous) with the obligatory cult of the lady.
In Europe, chivalry has been losing its significance as the main military force of feudal states since the 15th century. The so-called "battle of spurs" (July 11, 1302), when the foot militia of the Flemish townspeople defeated the French knightly cavalry, became a harbinger of the sunset of the glory of French chivalry. Later, the ineffectiveness of the actions of the French knightly army was clearly manifested at the first stage of the Hundred Years' War, when it suffered a series of severe defeats from the English army. To withstand the competition of mercenary armies using firearms (which appeared in the 15th century), chivalry proved incapable. The new conditions of the era of the disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist relations led to its disappearance from the historical arena. In the 16th and 17th centuries chivalry finally loses the specifics of a special class and is part of the nobility.
Brought up on the military traditions of their ancestors, representatives of the old knightly families made up the officer corps of the armies of the absolutist time, went on risky sea expeditions, and carried out colonial conquests. The noble ethics of subsequent centuries, including the noble principles of fidelity to duty and worthy service to the fatherland, undoubtedly bear the influence of the knightly era.
4. The significance of the cathedral in the medieval city
For a long time, the cathedral was the only public building in the medieval city. It played the role of not only a religious, ideological, cultural, educational center, but also an administrative and, to some extent, economic center. Later, town halls and covered markets appeared, and part of the functions of the cathedral passed to them, but even then it by no means remained only a religious center. The idea that “the main tasks of the city ... served as the material basis and symbols of the conflicting social forces that dominated urban life: the castle was the pillar of secular feudal power; the cathedral is the embodiment of the power of the clergy; the town hall is a stronghold of self-government of citizens” (A.V. Ikonnikov) - only partly true. Their unconditional acceptance simplifies the socio-cultural life of the medieval city.
It is rather difficult for a modern person to perceive the variety of functions of a medieval cathedral, its significance in all spheres of urban life. The cathedral remained a temple, a religious building or became a monument of architecture and culture, a museum, a concert hall, necessary and accessible to a few. His life today does not convey the fullness of his being in the past.
The medieval city was small and enclosed by walls. Residents perceived it as a whole, in an ensemble - a feeling lost in a modern city. The cathedral defines the architectural and spatial center of the city; in any type of urban planning, the web of streets gravitated towards it. As the tallest building in the city, it served as a watchtower if necessary. Cathedral Square was the main, and sometimes the only one. All vital public events took place or began in this square. Subsequently, when the market was moved from the suburbs to the city and a special market square appeared, it often adjoins the cathedral one of the corners. So it was in a number of cities in Germany and France: Dresden, Meissen, Naumburg, Montauban, Monpazier. In the city, in addition to the main cathedral, as a rule, there were also parish churches, some of the functions of the cathedral were transferred to them. In large cities, their number could be significant. So a contemporary notes in London at the end of the 12th century. One hundred twenty-six such churches.
To our admiring eyes, the cathedral appears in a completed and “cleansed” form. Around him there are no those small shops and little shops that, like bird nests, clung to all the ledges and caused the demands of the city and church authorities "not to punch holes in the walls of the temple." The aesthetic inappropriateness of these shops, apparently, did not bother contemporaries at all, they became an integral part of the cathedral, did not interfere with its greatness. The silhouette of the cathedral was also different, since one or the other of its wing was constantly in the forests.
The medieval city was noisy: in a small space there was a creak of wheels, the clatter of hooves, the clatter of wooden shoes, the cries of peddlers, the roar and ringing of craft workshops, the voices and bells of domestic animals, which were only gradually driven out of the streets by the city authorities, the rattles of leprosy patients. “But one sound invariably blocked the noise of a restless life: no matter how diverse it was, it did not mix with anything, elevating everything that happened to the sphere of order and clarity. This is a bell ringing. Bells in everyday life were likened to good warning spirits, who, with familiar voices, announced grief and joy, peace and anxiety, called the people together and warned of impending danger. They were called by their names: Roland, Fat Jacqueline - and everyone understood the meaning of this or that ringing. And although their glosses sounded almost incessantly, attention to their ringing was not dulled at all ”(J. Huizinga). The cathedral spikelet compiled the necessary information for all the townspeople at once: about a fire, about the sea, an attack, any emergency intracity event. And today the ancient "Big Paul" or "Big Ben" animate the space of the modern city.
The cathedral was the keeper of time. The bells chimed the hours of duck worship, but for a long time they also announced the beginning and end of the craftsman's work. Until the XIV century. - the beginning of the spread of mechanical tower clocks - it was the cathedral bell that set the rhythm of "well-measured life".
The vigilant eye of the church accompanied the city dweller from birth to death. The church accepted him into society, and she also helped him pass into the afterlife. Church sacraments and rituals were an essential part of everyday life. Baptism, engagement, marriage ceremony, funeral service and burial, confession and communion - all this connected the city dweller with the cathedral or parish church (in small towns the cathedral was also a parish church), made it possible to feel like a part of Christian society. The cathedral also served as a burial place for wealthy citizens, some of them had closed family tombs with tombstones. It was not only prestigious, but also practical (as historians note, the robberies of parish cemeteries occurred constantly).
The relationship between the townspeople and the city clergy was far from idyllic. The chronicles of Guibert of Nozhansky, Otto of Freisingen, Richard Devise do not say anything good about the townspeople. In turn, in urban literature - fablio, schwank, satirical poetry - the monk and the priest are often ridiculed. The townspeople oppose the freedom of the clergy from taxes, they seek not only to free themselves from the power of their senior prelates, but also to take under municipal control the affairs that were traditionally the responsibility of the church. Indicative in this regard, the evolution of the situation of hospitals, which during the XIII-XIV centuries. gradually cease to be ecclesiastical institutions, although they retain the patronage of the church and, therefore, the inviolability of their property. However, the frequent opposition to the clergy is combined with constant contacts with him in everyday life and does not prevent the townspeople from considering the construction and decoration of the cathedral as their vital business.
The construction of the city cathedral was attended not only by the townspeople, but also by the peasants of the district, the magnates and the clergy. Medieval chronicles and other documents reflected examples of religious enthusiasm that struck contemporaries: “ladies, knights, all sought not only donations, but also feasible work to help the construction.” Often, funds were raised throughout the country for the construction of the cathedral. “In the Middle Ages, a wide variety of donations, donations, contributions to the construction of the temple, which were considered as a worthy and pleasing deed, became widespread. Most often, these were donations of jewelry and valuables, sums of money or free provision of materials for future construction ”(K.M. Muratov). The cathedral was built for several decades, but the complete completion of the building dragged on for centuries. From generation to generation, legends about the laying and construction of the temple were indulged, more and more funds were collected, donations were made, wills were left. The phrase of the papal legate and former chancellor of the University of Paris, Odo de Chateauroux, that "Notre Dame Cathedral was built on the pennies of poor widows," of course, should not be taken literally, but precisely under a foundation. A sincere impulse of piety was combined with rivalry with a neighboring city, and for some, with a desire to receive personal remission of sins. The beautiful cathedral was one of the important signs of prestige, it demonstrated the strength and wealth of the city community. The size of the temples built in very small cities, the luxury and complexity of their interiors meet the need to create something incommensurable in beauty and grandeur with everything around. The significance of the cathedral is also evidenced by the desire to immediately restore its aftermath of the fire, and certainly in the same place, in order to preserve the usual objects of pilgrimage.
The construction of the cathedral was for many years in the center of attention of the townspeople, but it entered into action long before its final completion. The construction began from the choir, the roof was built, as a rule, even before the church was covered with vaults, so the service could be performed fairly quickly after the start of construction.
The construction and decoration of the temple served as an impetus for the development of urban artistic crafts. The famous Parisian “Book of Crafts” (XIII century) reports on a number of such professions, the use of which in the daily life of the city would be very limited. Among them are painters, stone carvers, filigree makers, sculptors, rosary makers (from corals, shells, bones, horns, ambergris, amber), carpets, inlays, gold and silver threads for brocade, book fasteners, etc. Then the town hall, the houses of magnates living in the city and the city patriciate, charitable institutions will be decorated. But at first, the craftsmen mostly work for the cathedral. The builders did not stay in one place, they moved from city to city, from country to country. They learned from renowned masters; the site of the cathedral under construction was a school for architects.
The iconographic material of the era also testifies to the keen interest of contemporaries in the process of building the temple: the plot of the construction of the cathedral is often on miniatures of medieval manuscripts. (Appendix A)
Relics with relics were kept in the cathedral, pilgrims flocked to it, sometimes from afar. There was a constant exchange between the inhabitants of different areas. The motley crowd of pilgrims going to Canterbury to venerate the relics of Thomas Becket gave Chaucer the idea for The Canterbury Tales. The city and the temple valued such pilgrimages: they brought substantial income.
At the cathedral there was a school with a singing and grammar class. In a small town, she often remained the only one. So, in London in the XIV century. Only three church schools are known. Church book collections could be quite rich, but they were accessible only to a narrow circle of clergy and, possibly, urban intellectuals. Libraries at town halls and Guildhalls appeared later. On the porch, and in the winter and in the premises of the cathedral, schoolchildren and students held disputes. The townspeople present at them enjoyed the gesture and the very process of the dispute rather than the word: the disputes were conducted in Latin. In Bologna, lectures were given to university students from the outer pulpit of the Cathedral of San Stefano.
The porch of the cathedral was the liveliest place in the city: various deals were concluded here, people were hired, the marriage ceremony began here, the beggars asked for alms. London lawyers on the porch of the Cathedral of St. Pavel arranged meetings and gave advice to clients. The porch served as a stage for dramatic performances for a long time. On the porch, and sometimes in the church itself, the so-called "church ales" were arranged - the prototype of future charity bazaars, they sold wine, various local crafts and agricultural products. The proceeds went to the maintenance of the temple, the needs of the parish, in particular, and to pay for festive processions and theatrical performances. A custom that was constantly condemned, but with the passage of time became more and more frequent. These feasts greatly revolted church reformers and zealots of piety in general.
The city cathedral has long served as a place of municipal meetings, was used in case of various public needs. True, monastery churches and the houses of city lords were also used for the same purpose. The temple was always a ready and open refuge in the days of grief, anxiety and doubt, it could also become a refuge in the literal sense, guaranteeing immunity for a while. The cathedral tried to accommodate everyone, but on especially solemn days there were too many people who wanted to. And despite the strict etiquette of the medieval way of life, which has already become a frozen stereotype for us, there was a stampede and not always a harmless crowd in the cathedral. Contemporaries left evidence of riots during coronation ceremonies in Reims Cathedral.
The cathedral was one of the most significant (if not the most significant) implementation of medieval culture. He contained the entire amount of knowledge of his era, all its materialized ideas about beauty. He satisfied the needs of the soul in the high and beautiful, non-everyday, and the simpleton, and the intellectual. “The symbol of the universe was the cathedral,” writes a modern historian, “its structure was conceived in everything similar to the cosmic order: a review of its internal plan, dome, altar, aisles should have given a complete picture of the structure of the world. Each of its details, as well as the layout as a whole, was full of symbolic meaning. The one praying in the temple contemplated the beauty and harmony of divine creation. It is, of course, impossible to restore in its entirety how an ordinary city dweller perceived worship. The experience of "temple action" was both a deeply individual and at the same time a collective process. Upbringing, ritualized norms of behavior were superimposed on the piety, impressionability, education of the individual.

4. Citizen and time
The Middle Ages inherited the methods of measuring time from ancient times. Instruments for such measurements were divided into two large groups: those that measured time intervals and those that showed astronomical time. The first include the hourglass, known since antiquity, but recorded in Western Europe only in 1339, and the fire clock - candles or oil lamps, the combustion of which occurs over a certain period of time. The second type of clock includes solar and mechanical. Solar gnomon, known in Egypt in the 5th millennium BC, were widely spread in the Roman Empire and were an almost obligatory decoration of many villas and houses. An intermediate type of clock can be considered water-clepsydra. Clepsydras have also been known since the 15th century. BC. in Egypt. Others of them are two connected flasks in which water is poured from one to the other in a fixed time - such, for example, are known in Greece from about 450g. BC. "Hours for Speakers". Another type of water clock is large cisterns, in which water also overflows from one to another, but for many days or, when one of the cisterns is connected to a natural or artificial water stream, it is constant, and the absolute time is determined by the water level. About 150g. BC. Ctesibius of Alexandria invented a water clock in which a rising float turned a shaft with an arrow. This watch was more like a yearly calendar, and the hand marked the day; every hour, however, the water threw out a pebble, which fell with a ringing sound on a metal plate. Later, the clepsydra were modified so that the arrow showed not the day, but the hour. (The division of a day into 24 hours, and an hour into 60 minutes, was known in Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium BC)
In the early Middle Ages, accurate measurement of time, especially of the day, was not widely used. The first clocks known then - solar and water - were built according to the instructions of the famous philosopher Boethius (c. 480-524) by order of Theodoric the Great (c. 454-526; king of the Ostrogoths from 471, king of Italy from 493); they were intended as a gift to the king of the Burgundians, Gunvold. From the letter accompanying this gift, it was clear that in the barbarian kingdoms that arose on the territory of Gaul, clocks were unknown (although there were gnomons and clepsydras in Roman villas in Gaul).
The low prevalence of watches in the early Middle Ages is explained, firstly, by the attitude (in a certain sense, indifference) of people to time, in which they proceeded from natural cyclicality and were guided by signs and phenomena observed over the centuries. Secondly, technical difficulties: both clepsydra and gnomons were motionless, bulky and (especially the first) complex structures, and a sundial, moreover, could only show time during the day and in clear weather.
Many thinkers of the Middle Ages paid much attention to the careful gradation of time. For example, Honorius Augustodunsky (first half of the 12th century) divided the hour into 4 "points", 10 "minutes", 15 "parts", 40 "moments", 60 "signs" and 22560 "atoms". But still, the unit of measurement of time remained at best an hour, and that one, rather, in liturgical use, while in everyday life it is a day. Gregory of Tours (c. 538-594), in his De cursu stellarum ratio, proposed to calculate time by the rising of the stars and by the number of psalms read.
The division of time into equal hours was absent for a long time: the light and dark times of the day were divided into 12 hours each, so that the hours of the day and night were not the same and varied at different times of the year. The primary division of the day into 24 hours was made in the Middle East, at whose latitude day and night are approximately equal throughout the year, but in the northern regions of Europe the difference was striking. One of the first, if not the first thinker to express the desire to equalize the hours was the Anglo-Saxon Bede the Venerable (c. 673-731), as is clear from his treatise De ratione computi. He or his entourage owns the first calendar, which indicates the distribution of light and dark time at the latitude of the middle part of the British Isles: “December - night hours XVIII, daytime - VI; March - night hours XII, daytime - XII; June - night hours VI; daily - XVIII ", etc. Already after the invention of mechanical clocks and before the beginning of the XVII century. Very complex adjustable drives were used, which made it possible to divide the day into unequal periods of time - the hours of the day and night, so that the idea of ​​the hour as a constant unit of time spread rather slowly and initially only in church life, where it was caused by liturgical necessity. The constancy of the hour began to be especially actively maintained in the 10th century, in the process of the Cluniac reform, in order to unify the church ritual, which provided, among other things, for the simultaneousness of church services (they did not know about standard time then).
19th century explorers The invention of the mechanical clock was attributed to the famous scientist Herbert of Aurillac (c. 940-1003), who became in 999. Pope under the name of Sylvester II. In fact, he only improved (c. 983) clepsydra, and now its axis rotated under the influence of falling water; this made it possible to subsequently replace the force of water with the weight of weights, i.e. facilitated the creation of mechanical watches.
The reasons for the appearance of the latter were more socio-psychological than technical. The exact measurement of time was carried out only inside the church space, outside the time was noted not so accurately.
6. Crime of the Middle Ages.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, historians painted romantic pictures of the equality and communal unity of medieval townspeople, supposedly opposing their secular and spiritual lords as a united front.
The study of urban poverty is hampered by the state of the sources, especially for the early centuries of urban history. Sources become more eloquent only as we approach the late Middle Ages. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that poverty is an exceptional phenomenon of these centuries.
Below we will talk about specific representatives of the underworld of medieval France and Burgundy - professional thieves.
The problems of urban crime constantly occupied the minds of officials. Potential criminals were those who refused to work and led a wild life, visiting taverns and brothels. These lazy people set a "bad example" to those around them, spending all their time gambling and drinking under the pretext that wages were not high enough. Secondly, people who did not have any worthy profession at all.
The city was an ideal place for the creation and existence of the gang. On its streets one could meet anyone. Moreover, theft is considered not just a profession - in it, as in any craft, there is a certain specialization.
Already in the XIII century. In Paris, there is a gang of "dirty Baboons" ("livilains Baubuins") who lured dupes to Notre Dame Cathedral and, while they stared at the sculptures of Pepin and Charlemagne, cut their wallets from their belts.
There are the following types of masters, thieves' specialties:
- A burglar is someone who knows how to open locks.
- "collector" - one who cuts wallets
- "mockery" is a thief who lures a dupe, plays
- "sender" - killer
 "scammer" - someone who sells counterfeit gold bars.
Actually, nothing could really exclude them from the life of society. Professional criminals lived in "symbiosis" with the urban population, they could even cooperate with the authorities, especially with the nobility.
7. The role of the church in the Early Middle Ages
The most important feature of medieval culture is the special role of Christian doctrine and the Christian church. In the context of the general decline of culture immediately after the collapse of the Roman Empire, only the church for many centuries remained the only social institution common to all countries, tribes and states of Western Europe. The church was not only the dominant political institution, but also had a dominant influence directly on the consciousness of the population. In the conditions of a difficult and meager life, against the background of extremely limited and unreliable knowledge about the surrounding world, the church offered people a coherent system of knowledge about the world, its structure, and the forces acting in it. This picture of the world completely determined the mentality of the believing villagers and townspeople and was based on the images and interpretations of the Bible.
The entire cultural life of European society of this period was largely determined by Christianity.
The population was traditionally attached to pagan cults and sermons, and descriptions of the lives of the saints were not enough to convert them to the true faith. They converted to a new religion with the help of state power. However, even a long time after the official recognition of a single religion, the clergy had to deal with the persistent remnants of paganism among the peasantry.
The church destroyed temples and idols, forbade worshiping gods and making sacrifices, arranging pagan holidays and rituals. Severe punishments threatened those who practiced divination, divination, spells, or simply believed in them.
The formation of the process of Christianization was one of the sources of sharp clashes, since. the concept of people's freedom was often associated with the old faith among the people, while the connection of the Christian church with state power and oppression stood out quite clearly.
In the minds of the masses of the rural population, regardless of belief in certain gods, attitudes of behavior were preserved in which people felt themselves directly included in the cycle of natural phenomena.
This constant influence of nature on man and the belief in man's influence on the course of natural phenomena with the help of a whole system of supernatural means was a manifestation of the magical consciousness of the medieval community, an important feature of its worldview.
In the mind of a medieval European, the world was seen as a kind of arena of confrontation between the forces of heaven and hell, good and evil. At the same time, the consciousness of people was deeply magical, everyone was absolutely sure of the possibility of miracles and perceived everything that the Bible reported about in a literal sense.
In the most general terms, the world was seen by people in accordance with a certain hierarchical ladder, or rather, as a symmetrical scheme, resembling two pyramids folded with their bases. The top of one of them is God. Below are the levels of sacred characters - Apostles, archangels, angels, etc. At some level, people are included in this hierarchy: first the pope and the cardinals, then lower-level clerics, then the laity, starting with the secular authorities. Then, further from God and closer to the earth, there were animals and plants, then - the earth itself, already completely inanimate. And then it was like a mirror image of the upper, earthly and heavenly, hierarchy, but in a different dimension, as if with a “minus” sign, along the growth of evil and proximity to Satan, who was the embodiment of Evil.
Thus, adherence to tradition, conservatism of all public life, the dominance of the stereotype in artistic creativity, and the stability of magical thinking, which was imposed on the church, can be considered signs of early medieval culture.
7.1 The role of the church in education
In the V-IX centuries, all schools in Europe were in the hands of the church. She drew up a curriculum, selected students. The Christian Church preserved and used elements of secular culture left over from the ancient education system: disciplines inherited from antiquity were taught in church schools: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics with elements of logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.
Medieval university science was called scholasticism. The influence of the church on medieval universities was enormous. A woman in the Middle Ages, as a rule, with very rare exceptions, did not receive education. Some noble ladies could afford to be educated, but usually a woman was kept in the background, and even if noble men did not receive an education, since they were fascinated by military affairs, and not by books, then a lot of effort and money were not spent on women in this sense. .
Byzantium during the early Middle Ages was characterized by the strengthening of the positions of the Christian Church in the field of education, which was expressed in the persecution of ancient philosophy. Ancient philosophy was replaced by theology. A prominent representative of the Byzantine culture of that time was Patriarch Photius, the compiler of the "Mariobiblion" - a collection of reviews of 280 works of mainly ancient authors, authors of theological works.
8.Conclusion
In answer to the questions I posed at the beginning, we can say that no matter how barbaric the Middle Ages, it cultivated a sense of duty, if only out of pride. However limited the amount of knowledge of that time was, at least it taught first of all to think and only then to act; and then there was no plague of modern society - complacency. And the Middle Ages are considered naive.
Undoubtedly, the cathedral, the church, played an important role, determining the mindset of the inhabitants.
Along with the poverty of that time, the problems of crime, luxurious trips of nobles and knightly competitions were arranged.
The courage and dexterity of knights, the diversity of forms of everything that affected the mind and feelings, everyday life aroused and kindled passion, manifested either in unexpected explosions of rude unbridledness and bestial cruelty, or in impulses of spiritual responsiveness, in the changeable atmosphere of which the life of a medieval city flowed. In a word, life retained the flavor of a fairy tale.
Annex A

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