The Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantine culture as a whole played a gigantic, not yet fully appreciated role in the preservation and transmission of the Greco-Roman philosophical and scientific heritage (including in the field of philosophy and the theory of language) to representatives of the ideology and science of modern times.
It is to the Byzantine culture that Europe owes its achievements in the creative synthesis of the pagan ancient tradition (mainly in the late Hellenistic form) and the Christian worldview. And it remains only to regret that in the history of linguistics, insufficient attention is still paid to the contribution of Byzantine scientists to the formation of medieval linguistic teachings in Europe and the Middle East.
When characterizing the culture and science (in particular, linguistics) of Byzantium, one must take into account the specifics of the state, political, economic, cultural, religious life in this powerful Mediterranean power that existed for more than a thousand years during the period of continuous redrawing of the political map of Europe, the appearance and disappearance of many “barbarian” states .
The specifics of the cultural life of this state reflected a whole series of significant historical processes: early isolation within the Roman Empire; the transfer in 330 of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, which long before that had become the leading economic, cultural and scientific center of the empire; final collapse Roman Empire to Western Roman and Eastern Roman in 345; the fall in 476 of the Western Roman Empire and the establishment of the complete domination of the “barbarians” in the West of Europe.
Byzantium succeeded in maintaining for a long time centralized state power over all the Mediterranean territories in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and Western Asia and even achieved new territorial conquests. She more or less successfully resisted the onslaught of the tribes during the period of the “great migration of peoples”.
By the 4th c. Christianity was already established here, officially recognized in the 6th century. state religion. By this time, in the struggle against pagan remnants and numerous heresies, Orthodoxy had developed. It became in the 6th century. dominant form of Christianity in Byzantium.
The spiritual atmosphere in Byzantium was determined by a long rivalry with the Latin West, which in 1204 led to the official rupture (schism) of the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic churches and to the complete cessation of relations between them.
Having conquered Constantinople, the crusaders created a Western-style Latin Empire (Romania) on a significant part of the Byzantine territory, but it lasted only until 1261, when the Byzantine Empire was again restored, since the masses did not accept attempts to forcibly latinize state administration, culture and culture. religion.
Culturally, the Byzantines were superior to the Europeans. In many ways, they retained the late antique way of life for a long time. They were characterized by the active interest of a wide range of people in the problems of philosophy, logic, literature and language. Byzantium had a powerful cultural impact on the peoples of neighboring countries. And at the same time, until the 11th century. the Byzantines protected their culture from foreign influences and only later borrowed the achievements of Arabic medicine, mathematics, etc.
In 1453 the Byzantine Empire finally fell under the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks. A mass exodus of Greek scientists, writers, artists, philosophers, religious figures, theologians began to other countries, including the Muscovite state.
Many of them continued their activities as professors at Western European universities, humanist mentors, translators, spiritual leaders, and so on. Byzantium had a responsible historical mission to save the values of the great ancient civilization during the period of steep breaks, and this mission successfully ended with their transfer to the Italian humanists in the Pre-Renaissance period.
The features of the Byzantine science of language are largely explained by the difficult language situation in the empire. Here, the atticistic literary language, which was archaic in its nature, the informal colloquial speech that continued the folk language of the general Hellenistic era, and the intermediate literary and colloquial Koine competed with each other.
In public administration and in everyday life, the Byzantines / “Romans” initially widely used the Latin language, which gave way to the status of the official Greek only in the 7th century. If in the era of the Roman Empire there was a symbiosis of the Greek and Latin languages with a preponderance in favor of the second, then in the period of independent state development, the preponderance turned out to be on the side of the first. Over time, the number of people with a good command of Latin decreased, and the need arose for orders for translations of works by Western authors.
The ethnic composition of the population of the empire was very diverse from the very beginning and changed during the history of the state. Many of the inhabitants of the empire were originally Hellenized or Romanized. The Byzantines had to maintain constant contacts with speakers of a wide variety of languages - Germanic, Slavic, Iranian, Armenian, Syriac, and then Arabic, Turkic, etc.
Many of them were familiar with written Hebrew as the language of the Bible, which did not prevent them from often expressing an extremely puristic attitude, contrary to church dogmas, to borrowings from it. In the 11th-12th centuries. - after the invasion and settlement of numerous Slavic tribes on the territory of Byzantium and before the formation of independent states by them - Byzantium was in fact a Greek-Slavic state.
Byzantine philosophers-theologians of the 2nd-8th centuries. (Origen, Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Proclus, Maximus the Confessor, Similiky, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, John Chrysostom, Leonty, John Philomon, John of Damascus, many of whom were officially recognized as “saints” and “fathers of the church” ) along with Western representatives of patristics, they took an active part in the development of Christian dogmas with the involvement of the worldview ideas of Plato and partly Aristotle, in the development of a coherent philosophy of language within the framework of the Christian system of views, in the preparation of isolating scholastic logic from the philosophy (together with logical grammar).
They had a considerable influence on representatives of contemporary and subsequent Western philosophy and science. Later Byzantine theologians also addressed the philosophical problems of language (Michael Psellos, Maxim Planud, Gregory Palamas).
Indicative (unlike the Latin West) is the careful attitude of the Byzantine church and monasteries to the preservation and rewriting of ancient (pagan in content) monuments. Associated with this process of rewriting was the transition to the 9th and 10th centuries. to a minuscule letter.
I.P. Susov. History of linguistics - Tver, 1999
belongs to Indo-European. a family of languages, which developed on the territory of the South-East. Europe (or, according to other t. sp., M. Asia) as a result of ethnic processes approx. VI-V-th millennium BC It occupies a special place among the Indo-European. languages, since the written history of G. I. dates back more than 3.5 thousand years (from the 15th-14th centuries BC) and is a unique phenomenon that allows us to trace the continuous development of its linguistic and cultural traditions. This circumstance contributed to the preservation of the stability of G. Ya., to-ry influenced the main Europeans. tongues, especially in Slavic, and also in the languages of Christ. East. Greek is the foundational language of Christ. texts.
History of G. I.
conditionally divided into 3 main periods: proto-Greek. language, ancient Greek language ancient Greece, the language of the Middle Ages. Byzantium, sometimes called Middle Greek, and Modern Greek. modern language Greece.
Within this periodization, the following more fractional division can be proposed: 1) proto-Greek. language III - ser. II millennium BC; 2) ancient Greek. language: Mycenaean Greece (Mycenaean Business Koine) - XV-XII centuries. BC, prepolis period (reconstruction) - XI-IX centuries. BC, ancient polis Greece (polydialect state) - VIII - con. 4th century BC, "Alexandrian" Koine (the fall of ancient dialects) - III-I centuries. BC; 3) G. I. Hellenistic-Roman. period (opposition of the atticizing lit. language and polyvariant colloquial and everyday speech) - I-IV centuries. according to R. H.; 4) medieval. G. I.; 5) the language of Byzantium V - ser. XV century; 6) the language of the era of the Ottoman yoke - con. XV - beginning. XVIII century; 7) modern Greek. language since the 18th century.
From a linguistic point of view, taking into account the specifics of the development and relationships of 2 functional forms of the language (lit. and colloquial-everyday), which played an important role in the development of G. Ya., the periodization of its history is based on the allocation of 3 language complexes: ancient Greek. language (in oral speech until the 4th-3rd centuries BC), containing territorial, as well as literary processed dialects; the Hellenistic koine, which developed under Alexander the Great and his successors, and already in the 1st millennium A.D. developed into modern Greek; actually modern Greek. language in demotic form after the tenth century. according to R. Kh. As such, Byzantine, or Middle Greek, a language that differed in grammatical structure from the named language complexes did not exist.
Separation of G. I. in ancient, middle and modern Greek. has primarily historical and political, and not historical and linguistic significance (Beletsky A. A. Problems of the Greek language of the Byzantine era // Antique culture and modern science. M., 1985. P. 189-193). From the standpoint of linguistic history proper, a special state of linguistics, which had no analogue in other languages, is its development into Byzantium. an era when, in addition to the preserved and newly created texts in ancient Greek. language in it were closely intertwined and directly adjacent in one text features of ancient Greek. period (from Homeric forms and vocabulary to variants of G. I. of the first centuries according to R. Kh.) and new features, which began to form even before R. Kh. and formed into a system already in the New Greek. language.
Occurrence of G. I.
Department of Greek (Hellenic) proto-dialects from the rest of the Indo-Europeans. refers to approximately the 3rd millennium BC. At the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, proto-Greek. tribes appeared on the Balkan Peninsula, apparently spreading in 2 directions. From the south, the Balkan Peninsula and nearby islands, where non-Indo-Europeans have long lived. and Indo-European tribes inhabited by the Achaeans, later from the north came tribes united under the name "Dorian". A highly developed civilization on the island of Crete was at the heart of non-Indo-European, it influenced the culture of the Achaeans, who borrowed their syllabic writing from the Cretans (the result of which was “letter A”, still not deciphered, and later, deciphered, "letter B"), political organization, the beginnings of crafts and art.
Mycenaean or Crete-Mycenaean is the culture of the most developed in the XIII-XI centuries. BC Achaean state-va. The Cretan-Mycenaean texts on lined clay tablets (“linear” writing) give reason to consider this time as the beginning of the history of Greece.
The formation of Greek dialects
In con. II millennium BC there was a migration of tribes living in Europe and in the north of the Balkans. Part of the tribes that inhabited the north of the Balkans rushed to the south. Among them were the Dorians, who were at a lower level of cultural development than the Achaeans. As a result of the Dorian invasion and, possibly, some natural disasters, the Achaean culture almost completely died. In the XII-IX centuries. BC in the east of the Greek. world developed Ionian dialects of the Asia Minor coast, parts of the islands of the Aegean archipelago and Attica. The dialect of Attica soon became independent. Central and partly east. the tribes were carriers of Aeolian dialects (the island of Lesbos, the adjacent coast of M. Asia, as well as Thessaly, Boeotia in the Balkans). A separate group was made up of the Dorian dialects of the Peloponnese and dialects of the North-West close to them. parts of Hellas. All these dialects played a big role in the formation of the Greek language. literature.
Archaic and classical periods
In the 8th century BC in the most developed central part of the Asia Minor coast, populated mainly by Ionians, the formation of the foundations of lit. language, evolved Greek. non-folklore epic. Its main monuments are the epic poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", the authorship of which has been attributed to Homer since antiquity. These works are borderline between folklore and author's literature, so the VIII century. BC is considered the time of the beginning of the Greek. liters. Rapid economic and cultural development created a need for writing, and it was borrowed from the Semites. peoples. In the VII-VI centuries. BC in connection with the development of the Greek. classical literature developed a genre-dialect differentiation of Greek. literature.
The rise of Athens as a result of Greco-Persian. wars (500-449 BC) led to an increase in the prestige of the Attic dialect. This was also facilitated by the flourishing of verbal creativity in Athens, the emergence of philosophical schools, the rise of oratory. In the V-IV centuries. BC language lit. works reached a high degree of stylistic processing, with all the importance of the Attic dialect for the language of literature, the Ionian lit. forms, which gradually led to the creation of the Attic-Ionic general variant language - Koine (from Greek κοινὴ διάλεκτος - common language) in colloquial and lit. forms.
Hellenistic and Roman periods
From con. 4th century BC, in the Hellenistic era (see Ancient Greece), on the state of G. I. and its further development was largely influenced by the change in the relationship between written and oral speech. If polis life required the development of oral speech, then political and cultural contacts in the vast territory of the empire of Alexander the Great and his successors could not be carried out without expanding the scope of the written language, this process entailed a restructuring of education and a change in lit. genres. Since that time, oral speech and written lit. language developed in opposite directions. Numerous local variants appeared in oral speech, forms of dialects were mixed and a certain average colloquial form was created, understandable throughout the Greek space. peace. This version of the Greek language in Greek Science received the name "Alexandrian (th) Koine", in Russian - "Koine". In written lit. prose language, there was a conscious conservation of the classical Attic norm of the 5th-4th centuries. BC and the Ionian-Attic variant lit. con language. IV-III century. BC, which influenced the further history of G. I.
In the II century. BC Greek. states came under the rule of Rome. Rome. culture developed under a strong Greek. influence, however, the Greeks were also influenced by lat. language, which became state. the language of Hellas (since that time part of the Roman Empire). 1st-4th centuries according to R. Kh., they define it as a Roman, or Hellenistic-Roman, period in the development of Greek. culture. Reaction to the Latinization of Greek. policies was the "revival" of the Greek. influence in the second century. according to R. Kh., which was reflected primarily in the fate of the language: the norm of lit. language again became the language of Attic prose of the 5th-4th centuries. BC This is an archaic trend in the history of G. I. called "atticism". The Attikists prevented the penetration into Lit. language of new vocabulary, non-classical grammatical forms, restored forms that had gone out of use - all this contributed a lot to the fact that oral speech and written lit. the language further diverged in the forms of use. This situation is typical for the entire history of G. I. up to modern states.
Byzantine period
The political history of Byzantium begins conditionally from 330 - the foundation of the new capital of the Roman (Romaic) Empire - K-field (see Byzantine Empire). The specificity of the linguistic situation in Byzantium was the preservation in written speech, at first exclusively, and then to a lesser extent, of the norms of lit. language of the Attic period, or Hellenistic lit. koine. Along with this form, lit. language, the spoken language continued to develop (the basis of the New Greek language), which hardly conquered higher spheres of linguistic communication. The growing difference between written and oral language is characteristic of almost the entire thousand-year period of Byzantium's existence.
After the conquest of the Greek land in the 15th century. Ottoman authorities only minimally supported the Greek. culture necessary for cultural and political ties with Europe. At this time, for the Greek-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire, ancient culture and ancient Greek. language became the embodiment of the national spirit, their study and propaganda continued to be the basis of education. A similar archaizing tendency prevailed after the liberation of the Greeks from the tour. the yoke in 1821 and continued for more than a century.
Dialect division of the ancient Greek language and the language of literature
Dialects of the classical period
G. i. archaic and classical time (VIII-IV centuries BC) was polydialect. In parallel with the development of many of territorial dialects, more generalized, albeit local forms of the language, the Koine dialects, also developed. They had at least 2 variants: colloquial and everyday and to some extent stylistically processed, used in the business language (its features were reflected in the inscriptions) and in the lit. works, where a certain tradition was gradually created: a certain lit. the genre must correspond to a certain variant of the dialect lit. koine.
By the classical period (V-IV centuries BC), in various areas of the multi-polis and multi-structural Hellenic world, the Dorian koine was formed in the Peloponnese and Vel. Greece, Aeolian Koine in Wed. Greece, the Ionian koine in Asia Minor regions. The main role at this time was played by the Attic Koine. The Koine dialects differed mainly in phonetic features. There were not many grammatical differences (in the form of endings).
Dorian koine
Northwest dialects Balkans, most of the Peloponnese and Vel. Greece for many phonetic and grammatical features are combined into one group, usually called Dorian. These dialects retained the archaic features of G. Ya., therefore it is precisely the Dorian forms of Greek. words are most often used when comparing Indo-European. languages. About Dorian Lit. Koine can be judged by the official language. inscriptions and works of poets, for example. Alkman from Sparta (7th century BC). Examples of the use of the Dorian dialect in Christ. literature is not numerous (Sinesius of Cyrene, 5th century).
Aeolian koine
The group of Aeolian dialects, with a broad interpretation of this term, includes 3 sowing. dialect (Thessalian, Boeotian and Asia Minor, or Lesbos) and 2 southern (Arcadian in the Peloponnese and Cypriot). But the latter are usually distinguished into the Arcado-Cypriot group. Lit. the form of the Aeolian dialects is known from the inscriptions and works of the Lesbos poets Alcaeus and Sappho. In Christ. literature, this dialect is not represented.
Ionian Koine
Dialects of this dialect were common on the coast of M. Asia and on the islands (Chios, Samos, Paros, Euboea, etc.), in the policies of the South. Italy and the Black Sea. The Attic dialect, which separated from it early, also belongs to the Ionian dialects. Stylistically processed forms of Ionian dialects are known from epic and lyrical works(poems by Mimnerm), inscriptions and the "History" of Herodotus. Echoes of the Ionian dialect are found mainly in the works of the Byzantines. historians as a result of their imitation of Herodotus.
Attic dialect and Atticism
The Attic dialect is an early isolated dialect of the Ionian group. Due to the leading position of Athens, the main city of Attica, in the political and cultural history of Hellas, lit. a variant of the Attic dialect in the classical period (V-IV centuries BC) played the role of common Greek. language (Koine) in the higher spheres of communication (religion, art, science, court, army). Already from the III century. BC in Alexandria, which became the center of Hellenistic culture, the works of Attic authors of the classical period began to be considered canonical, vocabulary and grammar of the 5th-4th centuries. BC were recommended as norms lit. language. This direction was called "atticism". Before the beginning 20th century it was proclaimed the basis of the Greek. language culture, which contributed to the stability of Lit. G. i.
In the history of the Attic dialect, 3 periods are conditionally distinguished: Old Attic (VI - early V century BC), classical (V-IV centuries BC), Neo-Attic (from the end of the IV century BC). X.). The Neo-Attic dialect reflected the features general development G. Ya.: an active process of leveling declension and conjugation according to the principle of analogy, etc. But the main features of the Neo-Attic dialect are its convergence with Ionian dialects (in some cases, the recomposition of archaic or common Greek forms) and the spread of Ionian vocabulary and word-formation models. These processes were associated with the formation of a common variant of the language - the Hellenistic (Alexandrian) Koine. It is to this dialect that G. I. to ser. 3rd century according to R. Kh. in Alexandria were translated from Hebrew. the language of the OT book (see Art. Septuagint), which laid the foundation first for the Hellenistic-Jewish, and then for the early Christ. liters.
Greek Koine of the Hellenistic period (3rd century BC - 4th century AD). Major language changes
Phonetics
In the system of vocalism, the differences in vowel length and brevity gradually disappeared, in the II-III centuries. according to R. Kh., this led to a change in the type of stress - musical to dynamic; the complex system of diphthongs began to be simplified since the 5th century. BC, when the diphthong ου was monophthongized; curtailment (involution) gr. vocalism led to the fact that the vowels ι and η, and in some regions also υ, coincided in pronunciation [i] (Itacism, or Jotacism). By the 1st century BC completely disappeared from the letter iota in diphthongs with the 1st long vowel. It was later introduced by the Attikists as an iota attributed, and then by the Byzantine. grammar - like an iota of signature.
In the system of consonantism, the pronunciation of the double consonant ζ in [z] was simplified and the opposition s / z was gradually formed; aspirated φ, χ, θ turned into voiceless fricatives; voiced β, γ, δ - into voiced fricatives; the phonetic features of the Attic dialect were leveled, the Ionian forms were established: -γν- > -ν-, -ρρ- > -ρσ-, -ττ- > -σσ-; formed New episode stop (nasal or non-nasal allophone); palatalized stops appeared (they were not specifically designated in the letter); in the later period there was an affricate. In the field of syntactic phonetics, the prefix ν at the end of a word has become widespread; elision and krasis were rarely used.
In morphology, in the naming system, the alignment of subspecies in declension to -α occurred, the II Attic declension disappeared, the greatest changes affected the athematic declension. Its anomalies were either replaced by synonyms or changed according to the most common derivational types. There was a contamination of declension III, on the one hand, and I and II, on the other. The vocative has given way to the nominative, and if it was used, then without the interjection ὦ. The dual number disappeared, the dative case was gradually eliminated. As a result of the re-decomposition of the endings in favor of the bases, gradually the Greek. declension by types of stems was transformed into declension by grammatical gender (masculine, feminine and middle declension). The wrong degrees of comparison were aligned according to the regular type, the synthetic type of the superlative degree of adjectives was replaced by the superlative degree formed from the comparative with the addition of the article. Adjectives were divided into 2 types: -ος, -α, -ον and -υς, -(ε)ια, -υ. The numeral "one" began to act as an indefinite article. The reflexive pronoun of the 3rd person began to be used in the 1st and 2nd person.
In the verb system, the ways of expressing both verbal categories and individual forms have changed. At the same time, analytical tendencies were growing for a clearer expression of the complex meaning of the verb form. The tendency to form forms by analogy has intensified; forms such as "I am the seer" appeared to express the opposition of the long and short present in parallel with the long and short past. The endings of I and II aorists, the imperfect and aorist I, and verb forms in -αω and -εω were mixed. Verbs in -οω became verbs in -ωνω. The use of the descriptive imperative for the 1st and 3rd person began; the ending of the 2nd person of the imperative present was unified. tense and aorist.
In the field of syntax, there was a tendency to express various case meanings with the help of prepositions; gradually disappeared absolute (independent) infinitive and participial phrases; the variability of cases with prepositions was reduced; the process of formation of analytical forms with a preposition intensified, to-rye replaced many others. case.
There was a change of types in the word-formation of Koine. So, in the language of the NT and the papyri there were many new words in -ισκος, -ισκη, a large number of words for women appeared. kind on -η. Phrasing became especially intense in Koine, giving rise to many words in the New Testament and later languages, their tracing increased the vocabulary of glories. languages. In lit. Koine forms mostly preserved the vocabulary of the classical period.
Koine Septuagint and NT
From the linguistic point of view. feature of G. I. The OT consists in the fact that it is an adaptation to the language of a completely different system and at the same time is an illustration of the lability of G. Ya., reflecting grammatical and lexical Semitisms. The language of the OT is the most accurate expression of the essence of the Greek. koine. Lability and multivariance are a characteristic feature of G. I. NZ, which can be defined as a complex phenomenon, representing the difference in time between the creation of parts of the canon and the influence of Greek. dialects and neighboring languages, primarily Aramaic and Hebrew. Although the NZ has a spoken language with its own characteristics and development trends, G. Ya. NT cannot be considered a reflection of common speech. The NT texts are different in style: sermons, stories, parables, epistles, etc., they use many. rhetorical devices inherent in the developed lit. language. The NT language in the history of G. Ya. perceived as an independent form of lit. language like that of Homer.
Koine remained the language of Christ. liters up to ser. 2nd century Since that time, Christ writers mostly switch to variants of the “scholarly” atticising language, however, such works as patericons, soulful stories, some lives of saints, etc., continued to be written in Koine. Based on the Koine OT and NT and G. Ya. forms closer to the classical ones. to IV-V centuries. the language of Christ was formed. worship, to-ry became the basis of the stability of G. I. both in the Middle Ages and in new period history and to-ry used to present. time unchanged. Unlike the Catholic West, where lat. the language of worship was inaccessible to the general population, for the Orthodox. Greek liturgical texts have always remained at least partially intelligible.
Medieval G. i. (IV or VI-XV centuries).
In the structure of the language at that time, all those processes were going on, the beginning of which was laid in the Hellenistic era. Their periodization is difficult to imagine due to the insufficient number of sources consistent in time.
In phonetics, the processes of Itakism continued (almost everywhere η, ι, οι are pronounced as [i]), narrowing of the vowel (cf. ); dissimilation of voiceless consonants (νύξ and νύχτα - night), simplification of consonant groups, instability of the final -ν. In morphology, declensions were unified and reduced: the creation of paradigms with 2 and 3 case endings, the gradual disappearance of the dative case. The verb system was dominated by a tendency to “fold” the branched system of forms of classical time: the optative and infinitive disappeared, the use of the conjunctiva decreased, the increment became irregular, the declension of participles was lost, there were no differences in the system of conjugation of continuous verbs in the imperfect, the verb “to be” acquired clear medial endings, etc.
In the IV-VII centuries. the education system remained still focused on ancient culture, including G. I. ancient era. As in ancient Hellas, the basis of teaching grammar was the study of Homer's poems, since grammar was understood as the ability to read and interpret ancient authors. Declensions and conjugations, spelling, metrics, stylistics were studied on the example of Homer's language. The main textbook was the grammar of Dionysius of Thrace (II century BC), later they began to read the books of the OT (especially the Psalter) and the NT. The school curriculum also included the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the works of Hesiod, Pindar, Aristophanes, historians and orators. Ancient Greek the language continued to function not only in writing, but also in oral form, as evidenced by speeches and sermons, which were composed at that time and which should have been understandable to believers. Thus, the linguistic situation of this period was determined by diglossia - a divergence between colloquial and lit. language. The latter was a language of past centuries, mainly created by the Attikists and legitimized in the writings of the Church Fathers. It gradually became bookish, that is, literary, mainly in writing. However, the compilation of sermons on it testifies to the still existing organic connection between written and oral speech in Lit. and conversational options. G. i. ancient epoch (ancient Greek) functions in other historical and cultural conditions, but in the mouth of the native speakers of this language and in the conditions of the continuity of the linguistic and cultural tradition.
Political and cultural changes in Byzantium in the middle. 7th century (a sharp reduction in territory, the loss of many non-Greek regions, the decline of culture and education) had a direct impact on the language situation. The language of literature was still traditional. lit. G. Ya., from which the colloquial language was increasingly moving away both in vocabulary and in grammatical forms. Economic and cultural rise of the IX-XI centuries. led to the planting of ancient Greek. language in its classical forms, and above all the Attic dialect. By the X century. it became clear that, although in principle ancient Greek. the language in previous centuries remained lit. language, it was actively invaded by elements of the popular colloquial language, which can be called modern Greek. G. Ya's apologists tried to prevent this. ancient era. Such authors chose various forms of ancient Greek as models for their works. language from writings in the chronological range from Herodotus (5th century BC) to Lucian (2nd century AD).
In the tenth century Simeon Metaphrastus undertook a linguistic "purification" of hagiographic literature, subjecting the original language to editorial work in the direction of bringing it closer to ancient Greek, as if translating vernacular words and expressions into ancient Greek. language. The method of "translation" (μετάφρασις, hence the nickname Metaphrast) of works written in the vernacular into ancient Greek. language was used later. However, cases of reverse paraphrase are known, to Krom, for example, the historical works of Anna Komnena and Nikita Choniates were subjected. Thus, at this stage, bookish and spoken languages became to a certain extent different languages, they required translation, although a continuous linguistic and cultural tradition was maintained in the carriers of G. Ya. feeling of unity of ancient and modern Greek. language. The most difficult linguistic situation since the XII century. characterized by a combination in lit. the language of Byzantium of incomplete bilingualism (ancient Greek and modern Greek) with diglossia (the existence of colloquial and lit. forms) in the folk (modern Greek) language.
The linguistic situation in late Byzantium, after the capture of the K-field by the crusaders (1204), presented a complex picture. Diglossia still existed, but there was also an erasure of the opposition of ancient Greek. and New Greek (Byzantine) variants lit. language by mechanical mixing ancient Greek. and New Greek forms. This medieval. modern Greek language in lit. variant predominantly had a "mosaic" structure. In the same lit. The work simultaneously used ancient Greek. and New Greek forms of the same words were used by ancient Greek. and New Greek synonym words. The era of the Palaiologians (2nd half of the 13th-15th centuries) can be called the era of "2nd Atticism and 3rd sophistry". The discrepancy between lit. the written language and speech of the broad masses of the population of the empire that had decreased in size, in all likelihood, then reached its apogee (Beletsky 1985, p. 191). In the thirteenth century processed forms of modern Greek were gradually created. dialects, to-rye in late Byzantium began to differ. But the "processing" of folk dialectal speech was seen by educated circles of society as being as close as possible to the "learned" (ancient Greek atticized) language. The combination of these 2 styles gave different and unexpected forms of lit. language.
The existence of literature in the folk language in late Byzantium testified to the fact that the folk language began to win more and more positions from the archaic bookish language, its functional paradigm expanded. However normal development of G. I. tour was cancelled. conquest.
Modern Greek
In the Renaissance, the language of ancient Greece was perceived as an independent language clearly limited in time, little correlated with the language of Hellas, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. To understand G. I. New time the importance of ancient Greek. language was so great that the latter was called "Modern Greek", in which the concept of "Ancient Greek" is also implicitly present.
Since the 18th century there was an opposition of 2 variants of G. I. On the one hand, the language, cleared of Turkisms and oriented towards the norms of ancient Greek. lit. language (kafarevusa), and with others - colloquial and everyday folk language (dimotica). Depending on the ratio of these options, different types lit. G. i. In addition, the variant lit. Koine was determined by the influence of territorial dialects. South dialects of the Peloponnese were the basis of modern Greek. koine.
Main Features of Modern Greek Literary Koine
Novogreech. phonetics is characterized by 4 main processes: further simplification of the vowel system; simplification of consonant clusters; active process of dissimilation; the reduction of the “number of words”, which is reflected in the language in different ways - in the sound of the word, in pronunciation and in writing.
In the field of morphology, the naming system undergoes the following changes: the dative case has disappeared; the system of case endings has been simplified; declensions were rebuilt according to 2 differential features: by gender and by the number of stems (1-basic and 2-basic); the opposition of 2 types was fixed in the declension of names with 2 and 3 case forms. In the verb system, active participles have become an indeclinable form, that is, a form close to Russian. gerund. Some ancient Greek participles were preserved as substantives. The 3rd person of the imperative has been lost, the form of which has become periphrastic. While maintaining the system of simple tense forms (present, imperfect, aorist), a consistent system of descriptive forms appeared (future, perfect, pluperfect). In historical times, only the syllabic augment remained and only under stress, but in forms with prefixes, a quantitative augment can be preserved.
Among the features of the New Greek vocabulary and word formation can be noted the use of many ancient Greek. words in parallel with new words and with words that have a new grammatical form. At the same time, the original form was perceived not as archaic, but as bookish, that is, the form is not colloquial and everyday; a large number of ancient Greek words were kept in use as archaisms; vocabulary was further developed.
With t. sp. forms of existence of modern Greek. language since the 18th century. development of lit. G. i. can be divided into several periods depending on the attitude of native speakers to ancient Greek. language. I. Archaization lit. language ("archaism", or "neo-Attikism"); the formation of the opposition "kafarevus / dimotic" - XVIII - 1st half. 19th century II. Attempts to create processed ("purified") forms of the folk language (dimotics) (καθαρισμός - purification) - ser. 19th century III. Lit. language to colloquial folk; activities of J. Psycharis (the so-called paleodimoticism) - con. 19th century IV. Lit. language to kafarevus; creation of a "simple" kafarevusa; the appearance of a "mixed" kafarevusy - early. 20th century V. Creation of a normalized grammar of the national language before the Second World War (Dimoticism); formation of modern Greek lit. Koine modern Greece. VI. Dimotika (folk language) as the language of modern. Greece.
I. In the XVIII century. figures of the Greek cultures again turned to the problem of national lit. language and insisted on the revival of ancient Greek. lit. language. They believed that the spiritual revival of the Greek. people is possible only with a return to the origins of the spiritual culture of the Greeks. In the field of language, it was ancient Greek. archaic language, which will be able to restore the continuity of the entire Hellenic national culture. An example of an archaizing trend is the activity of Eugene (Bulgaris, Voulgaris) (1716-1806), author of works on history, philosophy, music, theology, translator of ancient and modern. him European philosophers. His extensive Op. "Logic" is written in ancient Greek. language, and the author insisted that philosophy could be studied only in it.
At that time, folk speech contained a lot of borrowed vocabulary (from the Turkish language, Romance, Slavic). In addition, a large number of non-standardized territorial variants were encountered in oral speech. Representatives of educated circles understandable ancient Greek. language was even closer than modern. or colloquial G. i. Again, as happened more than once in the history of G. Ya., the Attic dialect of the classical period was proclaimed as a model. Proposed pl. Cultural figures (I. Misiodakas, D. Katardzis, and others) did not find support for the thesis about the need to develop the national language: antiquity and ancient Greek. language for many remained a stronghold of national culture and a guarantee of national freedom.
Influence on the Greeks of Western Europe. culture went through great Greek. colonies in Trieste, Budapest, Vienna, Leipzig, and other cities. At this time in Zap. Europe was fond of the classical heritage of the Greeks and the subject of study was ancient Greek. language. These circumstances contributed a lot to the fact that by 1800, that is, shortly before final stage liberation struggle Greeks, kafarevusa won a victory over the people's language.
In Greece, the situation of incomplete bilingualism again arose in combination with diglossia: the functioning of the ancient G. I. as the highest stratum (lit. language, ch. arr. in writing) and folk new Greek. language as the lowest stratum (colloquial spoken language). At this time, ancient Greek the language is no longer well understood by the masses, and a translation into Dimotika is required.
When an independent Greek was formed. state-in, he immediately faced the question of the state. language, since at that time it was 2 G. I.: written - kafarevusa and oral - dimotika. Church and state The apparatus resolutely objected to the vernacular, arguing this position by the existence of a multi-dialect vernacular from Macedonia to Crete.
Since that time, a language policy has been carried out in Greece, aimed at the return of G. I. to national purity. State. the apparatus is served by a "strict" kafarevusa. Ancient Greek language is considered by cultural figures, public education and the Church as the true foundation of G. Ya., to which the New Greek should approach. language, since supporters of the Kafarevus believed that G. I. almost did not change for 2 thousand years. K ser. 19th century This is a movement for ancient Greek. language connected with the official. propaganda of the "great idea" of the restoration of Greece within the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire. The un-t created in Athens became the distributor of the “noble” kafarevusa, pl. writers and poets supported this idea. But works in the folk language (songs of klefts) have also been preserved, especially those that were created in the Ionian Islands, which were not under the rule of the Turks.
II. But it soon became clear to many that it was impossible to reverse the development of the language and that such changes were not entirely justified, since in G. I. Over the past centuries there have been more than just losses. There was resistance to the persistent archaization of G. I. ("linguistic strife," in the words of Greek linguists), demands have intensified to bring the written language closer to the spoken one. At the head of this moderate movement was the Greek. educator A. Korais, who believed that it was necessary to “purify” the language from the tour. and European borrowings and replacing them with Greek. words (ancient or newly created), but did not argue that the leading role should belong to the national language. Nevertheless, the moderate position of Korais, his conviction that the truth lies in the unification of the 2 beginnings of G. Ya., prepared the ground for the approval of dimotics, which more and more penetrated into lit. language. So, in 1856, the comedies of Aristophanes were translated into Dimotica.
III. Public upsurge in the 70s and 80s. 19th century in Greece contributed to the further expansion of the use of the living language in literature. In con. 19th century prof. The Sorbonne Psycharis theoretically substantiated the "linguistic status" of the folk grammar. and the need to use it as official. But his desire to unify many features of the vernacular and the use of words mainly only on the principle of analogy led to extreme "dimoticism". The vernacular could not be quickly unified due to the existence of many forms - from Peloponnesian Koine to island dialects.
However, the activities of Psykharis, who advocated the introduction of dimotica from national, scientific and lit. positions, forced to once again revise the norms of oral and written folk language, based on ancient Greek. lit. language. If until that time prose and dramatic works were entirely, and poetic works were mainly written in kafarevus, then in the beginning. 20th century the former mainly, and the latter entirely, began to be created on dimotic. Church, state-in and science adhered to kafarevusy and ancient Greek. language longer. In 1900, under the auspices of Cor. Olga, an attempt was made to translate the text of the NT from ancient Greek. language, because the masses did not understand it, but the purists did not allow this to be done. Some time later, A. Pallis published a translation of the NT into the vernacular in an Athenian gaz. "Acropolis" - the only one that allowed publication in the vernacular (see also Art. Bible, section "Bible Translations"). But this attempt caused unrest among the people and clashes with the police, there were killed and wounded. In 1903 prof. G. Sotiriadis published a vernacular translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia, and street riots broke out again. But, despite this, the positions of those who promoted dimotica were affirmed. In 1903, the weekly "Numas" was founded, where articles by Psykharis, Pallis, K. Palamas were published. The latter considered the only colloquial modern Greek. language, to-ry and can become a written language for the whole people.
IV. The extremes of the position of Psycharis emphasized the correctness of the middle path proposed by Korais, which led to the creation of a “simple kafarevusa” without strong archaism, which increasingly approached the oral language. The apologist for this type of kafarevusa was G. Hadzidakis, who studied folk speech and considered kafarevusa the language of the future. On the official level, the opposition of kafarevusa to dimotica intensified. In 1910, kafarevusa was approved as the only state. language. But 7 years later primary school schools were allowed to teach in dimotic, but without dialectisms and archaisms. These schools were called "mikta" (mixed, because in the senior classes teaching was conducted in kafarevus). School kafarevusa, as close as possible to the spoken language, was called "mikti".
V. Supporters of both varieties G. I. understood the need for further active work on its form. The extreme dimoticism of Psycharis was smoothed out in the works of M. Triandafillides, who, in collaboration with others, wrote a grammar of dimoticism, published in 1941. Triandafillides in pl. In some cases, he retained the spelling and grammatical forms of Kafarevusa, although he mainly relied on Dimotica. He believed that the spoken language necessarily needs to be normalized, streamlined, but his grammar was not an exact reflection of the spoken language, which retained many variants. One of the main reasons for this position is the need to maintain in G. I. etymological, not phonetic principle of spelling: for thousands of years of development of the Greek. pronunciation has changed so much that following the phonetic principle could in many ways. cases to interrupt the linguistic tradition.
As a result of education in the history of the New Greek. languages of 2 extreme directions (archaism - psycharism) and 2 moderate ones (kafarism - dimoticism) came to the need not to oppose, but to unite 2 principles: archaic, dating back to ancient Greek. language, and modern In the 70s. 20th century G.'s structure I. can be called "tetraglossia", which includes the following forms of G. I. Hyperkafarevusa adhered to the norms of the Hellenistic Koine and even the Attic dialect to the maximum, with some differences in syntax, vocabulary and a little in grammar (there is no, for example, dual number and optative), it was used in the Church and science. Actually, kafarevusa deviated more from the classical syntax and also did not use, for example, ancient Greek. forms of bud. time, was used in the political sections of the press, in scientific journals, in textbooks for secondary and high school. A mixed language, close to the colloquial version of G. Ya., was used in unofficial. magazine articles, in fiction. This language, which is different from the language of archaizing literature and from the language of folk songs, was characterized as “Demotika without extremes”, it can be called Novo-Greek. lit. koine. Dimotika in many respects differed from kafarevusa in grammar, quite strongly in vocabulary, contained a large number of borrowings, had territorial variants; used in poetry and prose, in textbooks, in lit. magazines and newspapers.
VI. World War II and then the Greek Civil War 1940-1949. stopped the development of theoretical problems of modern Greek. language. Only in 1976 was the vernacular language (Dimotica) officially declared the only form of Modern Greek. language, and in 1982 a certain reform of the graphics was carried out: all diacritics were canceled, except for the acute accent in 2-syllable and polysyllabic words. Kafarevusa has essentially fallen out of use and is found only in the official. documents, in legal proceedings or certain headings of newspapers, in the written language of the older generation.
During many centuries, the explicit or hidden existence of ancient Greek. language in parallel or in a complex interweaving with living Greek. language of Byzantium and modern. Greece has created such a complex linguistic situation that many differ in its assessment. researchers. Yes, Greek. scientists believe that it has never been determined by bilingualism, but has always been only diglossia: 2 states of one language that existed in parallel, and therefore their interaction and interpenetration are quite natural. Even if we accept the term "bilingualism" to characterize the language situation in the modern. Greece, it must be borne in mind that the Greek. bilingualism had less clear boundaries than, for example, the opposition of Latin and Romance languages, especially in Lit. language. Novogreech. the language is closely related to ancient Greek. Bilingualism affected Ch. arr. grammar (morphology and especially syntax), and in vocabulary and word formation there were never sharp boundaries between kafarevusa and dimotica. Incomplete (relative) bilingualism, which characterized for many years. centuries, the linguistic situation in the Greek-speaking environment, once again emphasizes the strength of archaic tendencies in G. Ya. and the importance of studying its ancient Greek. states. Ancient Greek the language was never realized by the carriers of G. i. as another language, even in the presence of translations from ancient Greek into modern Greek, which is associated with the peculiarities of the political and cultural history of Greece.
M. N. Slavyatinskaya
A state like Byzantium no longer exists today. However, it was she who, perhaps, had the greatest influence on the cultural and spiritual life of Ancient Rus'. What was it?
Relations between Rus' and Byzantium
By the 10th century, Byzantium, formed in 395 after the division of the Roman Empire, was a powerful power. It included Asia Minor, the southern part of the Balkans and southern Italy, the islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as part of the Crimea and Chersonese. The Russians called Byzantium the "Greek kingdom" because Hellenized culture prevailed there and the official language was Greek.
Contacts Kievan Rus with Byzantium, bordering each other across the Black Sea, began as early as the 9th century. At first, the two powers were at enmity with each other. The Russians repeatedly raided their neighbors.
But gradually Rus' and Byzantium stopped fighting: it turned out to be more profitable for them to “be friends”. Moreover, the Rus managed to destroy the threat to Constantinople Khazar Khaganate. Both powers began to establish diplomacy and trade relations.
Dynastic marriages also began to be practiced. So, one of the wives of the Russian prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich was Anna, the sister of the Byzantine emperor Vasily II. The mother of Vladimir Monomakh was Mary, daughter of Emperor Constantine IX Monomakh. And Moscow Prince Ivan III was married to Sofya Paleolog, niece last emperor Byzantium of Constantine XI.
Religion
The main thing that Byzantium gave to Rus' is the Christian religion. Back in the 9th century, the first Orthodox church was built in Kyiv, and Princess Olga of Kiev was supposedly the first Russian ruler to be baptized. Her grandson Prince Vladimir, as we know, became famous as the baptizer of Rus'. Under him, all pagan idols were demolished in Kyiv and Orthodox churches were built.
Together with the tenets of Orthodoxy, the Russians adopted the Byzantine canons of worship, including its beauty and solemnity.
This, by the way, became the main argument in favor of choosing a religion - the ambassadors of Prince Vladimir, who visited the service in Sophia of Constantinople, reported: “We came to the Greek land, and brought us to where they serve their God, and did not know - in heaven or we are on earth, for there is no such sight and beauty on earth, and we do not know how to tell about it - we only know that God dwells there with people, and their service is better than in all other countries. We cannot forget that beauty, for every person, if he tastes the sweet, will not then take the bitter, so we cannot stay here anymore.
The features of church singing, icon painting, as well as Orthodox asceticism were inherited from the Byzantines. From 988 to 1448, the Russian Orthodox Church was the metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Most of the Kyiv metropolitans at that time were of Greek origin: they were elected and confirmed in Constantinople.
In the XII century, one of the greatest Christian shrines was brought to Rus' from Byzantium - the most ancient icon of the Mother of God, which became known to us as Vladimirskaya.
Economy
Economic and trade ties between Russia and Byzantium were established even before the christening of Rus'. After the adoption of Christianity by Russia, they only got stronger. Byzantine merchants brought textiles, wines, and spices to Rus'. Instead, they took away furs, fish, caviar.
culture
A "cultural exchange" also developed. Thus, the famous icon painter of the second half of the 14th - early 15th century Theophanes the Greek painted icons in Novgorod and Moscow churches. No less famous is the writer and translator Maxim Grek, who died in 1556 in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery.
Byzantine influence can also be seen in Russian architecture of that time. Thanks to him, the construction of stone buildings began for the first time in Rus'. Take at least the St. Sophia Cathedrals in Kyiv and Novgorod.
Russian architects learned from Byzantine masters both the principles of construction and the principles of decorating temples with mosaics and frescoes. True, the techniques of traditional Byzantine architecture are combined here with the “Russian style”: hence the many domes.
Language
From the Greek language, the Russians borrowed such words as "notebook" or "lamp". At baptism, Russians were given Greek names - Peter, George, Alexander, Andrey, Irina, Sophia, Galina.
Literature
The first books in Rus' were brought from Byzantium. Subsequently, many of them began to be translated into Russian - for example, the lives of the saints. There were also works of not only spiritual, but also artistic content, for example, the story of the adventures of the brave warrior Digenis Akritus (in Russian retelling - Devgeny).
Education
We owe the creation of Slavic writing on the basis of the Greek statutory writing to the outstanding figures of Byzantine culture Cyril and Methodius. After the adoption of Christianity in Kyiv, Novgorod and other Russian cities, schools began to open, arranged according to the Byzantine model.
In 1685, brothers Ioannikius and Sophronius Likhud, immigrants from Byzantium, at the request of Patriarch Joachim, opened the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow (at the Zaikonospassky Monastery), which became the first institution of higher education in the Russian capital.
Despite the fact that the Byzantine Empire ceased to exist in 1453 after the Ottomans captured Constantinople, it was not forgotten in Russia. In the second half of the 19th century, a Byzantology course was introduced at Russian universities, within the framework of which they studied Byzantine history and literature. In all educational institutions, the Greek language was included in the program, especially since most of the sacred texts were in ancient Greek.
“For almost a thousand years, the consciousness of spiritual involvement in the culture of Byzantium was organic for Orthodox subjects Russian state- writes G. Litavrin in the book "Byzantium and Rus'". “It is natural, therefore, that the study of the history, art and culture of the homeland of Orthodoxy was an important and prestigious area of humanitarian knowledge in Russia.”
Archangel Michael and Manuel II Palaiologos. 15th century Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, Italy / Bridgeman Images / Fotodom1. A country called Byzantium never existed
If the Byzantines of the 6th, 10th or 14th centuries had heard from us that they were Byzantines, and their country was called Byzantium, the vast majority of them would simply not understand us. And those who did understand would think that we want to flatter them by calling them residents of the capital, and even in an outdated language that is used only by scientists who try to make their speech as refined as possible.
Part of the consular diptych of Justinian. Constantinople, 521 Diptychs were presented to consuls in honor of their assumption of office. The Metropolitan Museum of Art There never was a country that its inhabitants would call Byzantium; the word "Byzantines" was never the self-name of the inhabitants of any state. The word "Byzantines" was sometimes used to refer to the inhabitants of Constantinople - by name ancient city Byzantium (Βυζάντιον), which in 330 was re-founded by Emperor Constantine under the name of Constantinople. They were called that only in texts written in a conventional literary language, stylized as ancient Greek, which no one had spoken for a long time. No one knew the other Byzantines, and these existed only in texts accessible to a narrow circle of educated elites who wrote in this archaic Greek and understood it.
The self-name of the Eastern Roman Empire, starting from the III-IV centuries (and after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453), there were several stable and understandable phrases and words: romean state, or Romans, (βασιλεία τῶν Ρωμαίων), romania (Ρωμανία), Romaida (Ρωμαΐς ).
The inhabitants themselves called themselves Romans- the Romans (Ρωμαίοι ), they were ruled by the Roman emperor - basileus(Βασιλεύς τῶν Ρωμαίων) and their capital was New Rome(Νέα Ρώμη) - this is how the city founded by Constantine was usually called.
Where did the word “Byzantium” come from and with it the idea of the Byzantine Empire as a state that arose after the fall of the Roman Empire on the territory of its eastern provinces? The fact is that in the 15th century, along with statehood, the Eastern Roman Empire (this is how Byzantium is often called in modern historical writings, and this is much closer to the self-consciousness of the Byzantines themselves), in fact, lost its voice heard beyond its borders: the Eastern Roman tradition of self-description found itself isolated within the Greek-speaking lands that belonged to the Ottoman Empire; the only important thing now was that Western European scholars thought and wrote about Byzantium.
Jerome Wolf. Engraving by Dominicus Custos. 1580 Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig In the Western European tradition, the state of Byzantium was actually created by Hieronymus Wolff, a German humanist and historian, who in 1577 published the Corpus of Byzantine History, a small anthology of works by historians of the Eastern Empire with a Latin translation. It was from the "Korpus" that the concept of "Byzantine" entered the Western European scientific circulation.
Wolf's work formed the basis of another collection of Byzantine historians, also called the "Corpus of Byzantine History", but much larger - it was published in 37 volumes with the assistance of King Louis XIV of France. Finally, the Venetian edition of the second Corpus was used by the 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon when writing his History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire - perhaps no other book had such a huge and at the same time destructive influence on the creation and popularization of the modern image of Byzantium.
The Romans, with their historical and cultural tradition, were thus deprived not only of their voice, but also of the right to self-name and self-consciousness.
2. The Byzantines didn't know they weren't Romans
Autumn. Coptic panel. 4th century Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, UK / Bridgeman Images / Fotodom For the Byzantines, who themselves called themselves Romans, the history of the great empire never ended. The very idea would seem absurd to them. Romulus and Remus, Numa, Augustus Octavian, Constantine I, Justinian, Phocas, Michael the Great Komnenos - all of them in the same way from time immemorial stood at the head of the Roman people.
Before the fall of Constantinople (and even after it), the Byzantines considered themselves inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Social institutions, laws, statehood - all this has been preserved in Byzantium since the time of the first Roman emperors. The adoption of Christianity had almost no effect on the legal, economic and administrative structure Roman Empire. If the Byzantines saw the origins of the Christian Church in the Old Testament, then the beginning of their own political history attributed, like the ancient Romans, to the Trojan Aeneas - the hero of Virgil's poem fundamental to Roman identity.
The social order of the Roman Empire and the sense of belonging to the great Roman patria were combined in the Byzantine world with Greek scholarship and written culture: the Byzantines considered classical ancient Greek literature to be their own. For example, in the 11th century, the monk and scholar Michael Psellos seriously argues in one treatise about who writes poetry better - the Athenian tragedian Euripides or the Byzantine poet of the 7th century George Pisida, the author of a panegyric on the Avaro-Slavic siege of Constantinople in 626 and the theological poem "Shestodnev about the divine creation of the world. In this poem, later translated into Slavic, George paraphrases the ancient authors Plato, Plutarch, Ovid and Pliny the Elder.
At the same time, at the level of ideology, Byzantine culture often opposed itself to classical antiquity. Christian apologists noticed that all Greek antiquity - poetry, theater, sports, sculpture - was permeated with religious cults of pagan deities. Hellenic values (material and physical beauty, the desire for pleasure, human glory and honors, military and athletic victories, eroticism, rational philosophical thinking) were condemned as unworthy of Christians. Basil the Great, in his famous talk "To Young Men on How to Use Pagan Writings," sees the main danger for Christian youth in the attractive way of life offered to the reader in Hellenic writings. He advises to select in them for oneself only stories that are morally useful. The paradox is that Basil, like many other Fathers of the Church, himself received an excellent Hellenic education and wrote his works in a classical literary style, using the techniques of ancient rhetorical art and a language that by his time had already fallen into disuse and sounded like archaic.
In practice, ideological incompatibility with Hellenism did not prevent the Byzantines from carefully treating the ancient cultural heritage. Ancient texts were not destroyed, but copied, while the scribes tried to be accurate, except that in rare cases they could throw out a too frank erotic passage. Hellenic literature continued to be the basis of the school curriculum in Byzantium. An educated person had to read and know the epos of Homer, the tragedies of Euripides, the speeches of Demos-Phen and use the Hellenic cultural code in their own writings, for example, call the Arabs Persians, and Rus' - Hyperborea. Many elements of ancient culture in Byzantium were preserved, although they changed beyond recognition and acquired new religious content: for example, rhetoric became homiletics (the science of church preaching), philosophy became theology, and the ancient love story influenced hagiographic genres.
3. Byzantium was born when Antiquity adopted Christianity
When does Byzantium begin? Probably, when the history of the Roman Empire ends - that's how we used to think. For the most part, this thought seems natural to us, due to the enormous influence of Edward Gibbon's monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Written in the 18th century, this book still prompts both historians and non-specialists to look at the period from the 3rd to the 7th centuries (now increasingly called late Antiquity) as the time of the decline of the former greatness of the Roman Empire under the influence of two main factors - the invasions of the Germanic tribes and the ever-growing social role of Christianity, which became the dominant religion in the 4th century. Byzantium, existing in mass consciousness first of all, as a Christian empire, is drawn in this perspective as a natural heir to that cultural decline that occurred in late Antiquity due to mass Christianization: the focus of religious fanaticism and obscurantism, which stretched for a whole millennium of stagnation.
Amulet that protects from the evil eye. Byzantium, 5th-6th centuries
On one side, an eye is depicted, at which arrows are directed and attacked by a lion, a snake, a scorpion and a stork.
© The Walters Art MuseumHematite amulet. Byzantine Egypt, 6th–7th centuries
The inscriptions define him as "the woman who suffered from bleeding" (Luke 8:43-48). Hematite was believed to help stop bleeding, and amulets related to women's health and the menstrual cycle were very popular from it.
Thus, if you look at history through the eyes of Gibbon, late Antiquity turns into a tragic and irreversible end of Antiquity. But was it just a time of destruction of beautiful antiquity? Historical science has been sure for more than half a century that this is not so.
Especially simplified is the idea of the supposedly fatal role of Christianization in the destruction of the culture of the Roman Empire. The culture of late Antiquity in reality was hardly built on the opposition of "pagan" (Roman) and "Christian" (Byzantine). The way late antique culture was organized for its creators and users was much more complex: the very question of the conflict between the Roman and the religious would have seemed strange to Christians of that era. In the 4th century, Roman Christians could easily place images of pagan deities, made in ancient style, on household items: for example, on one casketgiven to newlyweds, naked Venus is adjacent to the pious call "Seconds and Project, live in Christ."
On the territory of the future Byzantium there was an equally problem-free fusion of pagan and Christian in artistic techniques for contemporaries: in the 6th century, images of Christ and saints were made using the technique of a traditional Egyptian funeral portrait, the most famous type of which is the so-called Fayum portrait. Fayum portrait- a kind of funeral portraits common in Hellenized Egypt in the Ι-III centuries AD. e. The image was applied with hot paints on a heated wax layer.. Christian visuality in late Antiquity did not necessarily strive to oppose itself to the pagan, Roman tradition: very often it deliberately (and perhaps, on the contrary, naturally and naturally) adhered to it. The same fusion of pagan and Christian is seen in the literature of late Antiquity. The poet Arator in the 6th century recites in the Roman cathedral a hexametric poem about the deeds of the apostles, written in the stylistic traditions of Virgil. In Christianized Egypt in the middle of the 5th century (by this time there were different forms of monasticism here for about a century and a half), the poet Nonn from the city of Panopol (modern Akmim) writes an adaptation (paraphrase) of the Gospel of John in the language of Homer, preserving not only the meter and style, but also deliberately borrowing whole verbal formulas and figurative layers from his epos Gospel of John 1:1-6 (synodal translation):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. Everything came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that came into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God; his name is John.
Nonn from Panopol. Paraphrase of the Gospel of John, Canto 1 (translated by Yu. A. Golubets, D. A. Pospelov, A. V. Markov):
Logos, God's Child, Light born from Light,
He is inseparable from the Father on the infinite throne!
Heavenly God, Logos, you are the primordial
He shone together with the Eternal, the Creator of the world,
Oh, Ancient of the universe! All things were done through Him,
What is breathless and in the spirit! Outside the Speech, which does a lot,
Is it manifest that it abides? And in Him exists from eternity
Life, which is inherent in everything, the light of a short-lived people ...<…>
In the bee-feeding more often
The wanderer on the mountain appeared, the inhabitant of the desert slopes,
He is the herald of the cornerstone baptism, the name is
God's man, John, the leader. .
Portrait of a young girl. 2nd century©Google Cultural Institute
Funeral portrait of a man. 3rd century©Google Cultural Institute
Christ Pantocrator. Icon from the monastery of St. Catherine. Sinai, mid 6th century Wikimedia Commons
St. Peter. Icon from the monastery of St. Catherine. Sinai, 7th century© campus.belmont.edu
The dynamic changes that took place in different layers of the culture of the Roman Empire in late Antiquity are difficult to directly relate to Christianization, since the Christians of that time were themselves such hunters for classical forms both in the visual arts and in literature (as well as in many other areas of life). The future Byzantium was born in an era in which the relationship between religion, artistic language, its audience, as well as the sociology of historical shifts were complex and indirect. They carried the potential of the complexity and diversity that developed later over the centuries of Byzantine history.
4. In Byzantium they spoke one language, but wrote in another
The language picture of Byzantium is paradoxical. The empire, which not only claimed succession from the Roman Empire and inherited its institutions, but also, from the point of view of its political ideology, was the former Roman Empire, never spoke Latin. It was spoken in the western provinces and the Balkans, until the 6th century it remained official language jurisprudence (the last legislative code in Latin was the Code of Justinian, promulgated in 529 - after it laws were issued in Greek), it enriched Greek with many borrowings (primarily in the military and administrative spheres), early Byzantine Constantinople attracted Latin grammarians with career opportunities. But still, Latin was not a real language even of early Byzantium. Let the Latin-speaking poets Corippus and Priscian live in Constantinople, we will not meet these names on the pages of the textbook of the history of Byzantine literature.
We cannot say at what exact moment the Roman emperor becomes Byzantine: the formal identity of institutions does not allow us to draw a clear boundary. In search of an answer to this question, it is necessary to turn to informal cultural differences. The Roman Empire differs from the Byzantine Empire in that the latter merged Roman institutions, Greek culture and Christianity and carried out this synthesis on the basis of the Greek language. Therefore, one of the criteria on which we could rely is the language: the Byzantine emperor, unlike his Roman counterpart, is easier to express himself in Greek than in Latin.
But what is this Greek? The alternative that bookstore shelves and philological programs offer us is misleading: we can find either ancient or modern Greek in them. No other reference point is provided. Because of this, we are forced to proceed from the fact that the Greek of Byzantium is either a distorted ancient Greek (almost the dialogues of Plato, but not quite) or Proto-Greek (almost the negotiations of Tsipras with the IMF, but not quite yet). The history of 24 centuries of continuous development of the language is straightened out and simplified: it is either the inevitable decline and degradation of ancient Greek (as Western European classical philologists thought before the establishment of Byzantine studies as an independent scientific discipline), or the inevitable germination of the modern Greek (as Greek scholars believed during the formation of the Greek nation in the 19th century).
Indeed, Byzantine Greek is elusive. Its development cannot be viewed as a series of progressive, successive changes, since for every step forward in language development there was a step back. The reason for this is the attitude towards the language of the Byzantines themselves. was socially prestigious language norm Homer and the classics of Attic prose. To write well meant to write history indistinguishable from Xenophon or Thucydides (the last historian who dared to introduce into his text the Old Attic elements, which seemed archaic already in the classical era, is a witness to the fall of Constantinople, Laonicus Chalkokondylus), and the epic is indistinguishable from Homer. From educated Byzantines throughout the history of the empire, it was required to literally speak one (changed) language and write another (frozen in classical immutability) language. The duality of linguistic consciousness is the most important feature of Byzantine culture.
Ostracon with a fragment of the Iliad in Coptic. Byzantine Egypt, 580–640
Ostraca - shards of clay vessels - were used to record Bible verses, legal documents, accounts, school assignments and prayers when papyrus was unavailable or too expensive.
© The Metropolitan Museum of ArtOstracon with a troparion to the Theotokos in Coptic. Byzantine Egypt, 580–640© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The situation was aggravated by the fact that since the time of classical antiquity, certain dialectal features were assigned to certain genres: epic poems were written in the language of Homer, and medical treatises were compiled in the Ionian dialect in imitation of Hippocrates. We see a similar picture in Byzantium. In ancient Greek, vowels were divided into long and short, and their ordered alternation formed the basis of ancient Greek poetic meters. In the Hellenistic era, the opposition of vowels by longitude left the Greek language, but nevertheless, even a thousand years later, heroic poems and epitaphs were written as if the phonetic system had remained unchanged since the time of Homer. Differences also permeated other linguistic levels: it was necessary to build a phrase, like Homer, select words, like Homer, and decline and conjugate them in accordance with a paradigm that died out in living speech millennia ago.
However, not everyone was able to write with antique liveliness and simplicity; often, in an attempt to achieve the Attic ideal, Byzantine authors lost their sense of proportion, trying to write more correctly than their idols. Thus, we know that the dative case, which existed in Ancient Greek, has almost completely disappeared in Modern Greek. It would be logical to assume that with each century in literature it will occur less and less until it gradually disappears altogether. However, recent studies have shown that the dative case is used much more often in Byzantine high literature than in the literature of classical antiquity. But it is precisely this increase in frequency that speaks of the loosening of the norm! Obsession in using one form or another will tell about your inability to use it correctly no less than its complete absence in your speech.
At the same time, the living linguistic element took its toll. We learn about how the spoken language changed thanks to the errors of manuscript copyists, non-literary inscriptions and the so-called vernacular literature. The term “folk-speaking” is not accidental: it describes the phenomenon of interest to us much better than the more familiar “folk”, since elements of simple urban colloquial speech were often used in monuments created in the circles of the Constantinople elite. It became a real literary fashion in the 12th century, when the same authors could work in several registers, today offering the reader exquisite prose, almost indistinguishable from Attic, and tomorrow - almost rhymes.
Diglossia, or bilingualism, also gave rise to another typically Byzantine phenomenon - metaphrasing, that is, transcription, retelling in half with translation, presentation of the content of the source with new words with a decrease or increase in the stylistic register. Moreover, the shift could go both along the line of complication (pretentious syntax, refined figures of speech, ancient allusions and quotations), and along the line of language simplification. Not a single work was considered inviolable, even the language of sacred texts in Byzantium did not have the status of sacred: the Gospel could be rewritten in a different stylistic key (as, for example, the already mentioned Nonn of Panopolitan did) - and this did not bring down anathema on the head of the author. It was necessary to wait until 1901, when the translation of the Gospels into colloquial Modern Greek (in fact, the same metaphrase) brought out opponents and defenders language update into the streets and led to dozens of victims. In this sense, the indignant crowds who defended the “language of the ancestors” and demanded reprisals against the translator Alexandros Pallis were much further from Byzantine culture, not only than they would like, but also than Pallis himself.
5. There were iconoclasts in Byzantium - and this is a terrible mystery
Iconoclasts John the Grammarian and Bishop Anthony of Silea. Khludov Psalter. Byzantium, circa 850 Miniature to Psalm 68, verse 2: "They gave me gall to eat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." The actions of the iconoclasts, covering the icon of Christ with lime, are compared with the crucifixion on Golgotha. The warrior on the right brings Christ a sponge with vinegar. At the foot of the mountain - John Grammatik and Bishop Anthony of Silea. rijksmuseumamsterdam.blogspot.ru Iconoclasm is the most famous period for a wide audience and the most mysterious even for specialists in the history of Byzantium. The depth of the trace that he left in the cultural memory of Europe is evidenced by the possibility, for example, in English to use the word iconoclast (“iconoclast”) outside of the historical context, in the timeless meaning of “rebel, overthrower of foundations”.
The event line is like this. By the turn of the 7th and 8th centuries, the theory of the worship of religious images was hopelessly lagging behind practice. The Arab conquests of the middle of the 7th century led the empire to a deep cultural crisis, which, in turn, gave rise to the growth of apocalyptic sentiments, the multiplication of superstitions and a surge of disordered forms of icon veneration, sometimes indistinguishable from magical practices. According to the collections of miracles of saints, drunk wax from a melted seal with the face of St. Artemy healed a hernia, and Saints Cosmas and Damian healed the suffering woman by ordering her to drink, mixing with water, the plaster from the fresco with their image.
Such veneration of icons, which did not receive a philosophical and theological justification, caused rejection among some clerics, who saw signs of paganism in it. Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (717-741), finding himself in a difficult political situation, used this discontent to create a new consolidating ideology. The first iconoclastic steps date back to the years 726-730, but both the theological justification of the iconoclastic dogma and full-fledged repressions against dissidents occurred during the reign of the most odious Byzantine emperor - Constantine V Copronymus (Gnoemennogo) (741-775).
Claiming for the status of the ecumenical, the iconoclastic council of 754 took the dispute to a new level: from now on, it was not about the fight against superstitions and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prohibition “Do not make an idol for yourself”, but about the hypostasis of Christ. Can He be considered pictorial if His divine nature is "indescribable"? The “Christological dilemma” was as follows: the iconodules are guilty either of imprinting on icons only the flesh of Christ without His deity (Nestorianism), or of limiting the deity of Christ through the description of His depicted flesh (Monophysitism).
However, already in 787, Empress Irina held a new council in Nicaea, the participants of which formulated the dogma of icon veneration as a response to the dogma of iconoclasm, thereby offering a full-fledged theological foundation for previously unordered practices. An intellectual breakthrough was, firstly, the separation of “official” and “relative” worship: the first can only be given to God, while with the second “the honor given to the image goes back to the archetype” (the words of Basil the Great, which became real motto of iconodules). Secondly, the theory of homonymy, that is, the same name, was proposed, which removed the problem of portrait similarity between the image and the depicted: the icon of Christ was recognized as such not due to the similarity of features, but due to the spelling of the name - the act of naming.
Patriarch Nicephorus. Miniature from the Psalter of Theodore of Caesarea. 1066 British Library Board. All Rights Reserved / Bridgeman Images / Fotodom In 815, Emperor Leo V the Armenian again turned to iconoclastic politics, hoping in this way to build a line of succession towards Constantine V, the most successful and most beloved ruler in the army in the last century. The so-called second iconoclasm accounts for both a new round of repressions and a new rise in theological thought. The iconoclastic era ends in 843, when iconoclasm is finally condemned as a heresy. But his ghost haunted the Byzantines until 1453: for centuries, participants in any church disputes, using the most sophisticated rhetoric, accused each other of covert iconoclasm, and this accusation was more serious than accusation of any other heresy.
It would seem that everything is quite simple and clear. But as soon as we try to somehow clarify this general scheme, our constructions turn out to be very unsteady.
The main difficulty is the state of the sources. The texts, thanks to which we know about the first iconoclasm, were written much later, and by iconodules. In the 40s of the 9th century, a full-fledged program was carried out to write the history of iconoclasm from icon-worshipping positions. As a result, the history of the dispute has been completely distorted: the iconoclasts' writings are available only in tendentious selections, and textual analysis shows that the iconodules' works, seemingly created to refute the teachings of Constantine V, could not have been written before the very end of the 8th century. The task of the icon-worshipping authors was to turn the history we have described inside out, to create the illusion of tradition: to show that the veneration of icons (and not spontaneous, but meaningful!) has been present in the church since apostolic times, and iconoclasm is just an innovation (the word καινοτομία - “innovation” on Greek - the most hated word for any Byzantine), and deliberately anti-Christian. Iconoclasts appeared not as fighters for the cleansing of Christianity from paganism, but as "Christian accusers" - this word began to refer specifically and exclusively to iconoclasts. The parties in the iconoclastic dispute turned out to be not Christians, who interpret the same teaching in different ways, but Christians and some external force hostile to them.
The arsenal of polemical techniques that were used in these texts to denigrate the enemy was very large. Legends were created about the hatred of iconoclasts for education, for example, about the burning of the never-existing university in Constantinople by Leo III, and participation in pagan rites and human sacrifices, hatred of the Mother of God and doubts about the divine nature of Christ were attributed to Constantine V. If such myths seem simple and were debunked long ago, others remain at the center of scientific discussions to this day. For example, it was only very recently that it was possible to establish that the cruel reprisal committed against Stefan the New, glorified as a martyr in 766, was connected not so much with his uncompromising icon-worshiping position, as life claims, but with his proximity to the conspiracy of political opponents of Constantine V. disputes about key questions: what is the role of Islamic influence in the genesis of iconoclasm? what was the true attitude of the iconoclasts towards the cult of saints and their relics?
Even the language we use to talk about iconoclasm is the language of the conquerors. The word "iconoclast" is not a self-designation, but an offensive polemical label invented and implemented by their opponents. No "iconoclast" would ever agree with such a name, simply because the Greek word εἰκών has many more meanings than the Russian "icon". This is any image, including non-material, which means that to call someone an iconoclast is to declare that he is struggling with the idea of God the Son as the image of God the Father, and man as the image of God, and the events of the Old Testament as prototypes of the events of the New etc. Moreover, the iconoclasts themselves claimed that they were defending the true image of Christ - the Eucharistic gifts, while what their opponents call an image, in fact, is not such, but is just an image.
In the end, defeat their teaching, it would be called Orthodox now, and we would contemptuously call the teaching of their opponents icon-worship and talk not about the iconoclastic, but about the icon-worshipping period in Byzantium. However, if it were so, the whole subsequent history and visual aesthetics of Eastern Christianity would have been different.
6. The West never liked Byzantium
Although trade, religious and diplomatic contacts between Byzantium and the states of Western Europe continued throughout the Middle Ages, it is difficult to talk about real cooperation or mutual understanding between them. At the end of the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire broke up into barbarian states and the tradition of "Romanness" was interrupted in the West, but preserved in the East. Within a few centuries, the new Western dynasties of Germany wanted to restore the continuity of their power with the Roman Empire and for this they entered into dynastic marriages with Byzantine princesses. The court of Charlemagne competed with Byzantium - this can be seen in architecture and in art. However, the imperial claims of Charles rather increased the misunderstanding between East and West: the culture of the Carolingian Renaissance wanted to see itself as the only legitimate heir of Rome.
Crusaders attack Constantinople. Miniature from the chronicle "The Conquest of Constantinople" by Geoffroy de Villehardouin. Approximately 1330, Villardouin was one of the leaders of the campaign. Bibliothèque nationale de France By the 10th century, the overland routes from Constantinople to northern Italy through the Balkans and along the Danube were blocked by barbarian tribes. The only way left was by sea, which reduced the possibilities of communication and made cultural exchange more difficult. The division into East and West has become a physical reality. The ideological gap between East and West, fueled throughout the Middle Ages by theological disputes, deepened during the Crusades. The organizer of the Fourth Crusade, which ended with the capture of Constantinople in 1204, Pope Innocent III openly declared the primacy of the Roman Church over all the rest, referring to the divine establishment.
As a result, it turned out that the Byzantines and the inhabitants of Europe knew little about each other, but were unfriendly towards each other. In the 14th century, the West criticized the depravity of the Byzantine clergy and attributed the success of Islam to it. For example, Dante believed that Sultan Saladin could have converted to Christianity (and even placed him in his "Divine Comedy" in limbo - a special place for virtuous non-Christians), but did not do this because of the unattractiveness of Byzantine Christianity. IN Western countries by the time of Dante, almost no one knew Greek. At the same time, Byzantine intellectuals learned Latin only to translate Thomas Aquinas and did not hear anything about Dante. The situation changed in the 15th century after the Turkish invasion and the fall of Constantinople, when Byzantine culture began to penetrate Europe along with Byzantine scholars who had fled from the Turks. The Greeks brought with them many manuscripts of ancient works, and humanists were able to study Greek antiquity from the originals, and not from Roman literature and the few Latin translations known in the West.
But Renaissance scholars and intellectuals were interested in classical antiquity, not in the society that preserved it. In addition, it was mainly intellectuals who fled to the West who were negatively inclined towards the ideas of monasticism and Orthodox theology of that time and who sympathized with the Roman Church; their opponents, supporters of Gregory Palamas, on the contrary, believed that it was better to try to negotiate with the Turks than to seek help from the pope. Therefore, Byzantine civilization continued to be perceived in a negative light. If the ancient Greeks and Romans were “their own”, then the image of Byzantium was fixed in European culture as oriental and exotic, sometimes attractive, but more often hostile and alien to European ideals of reason and progress.
The age of European enlightenment completely stigmatized Byzantium. The French Enlighteners Montesquieu and Voltaire associated it with despotism, luxury, lavish ceremonies, superstition, moral decay, civilizational decline and cultural sterility. According to Voltaire, the history of Byzantium is "an unworthy collection of grandiloquent phrases and descriptions of miracles" that dishonors the human mind. Montesquieu sees the main reason for the fall of Constantinople in the pernicious and pervasive influence of religion on society and power. He speaks especially aggressively about Byzantine monasticism and clergy, about the veneration of icons, as well as about theological controversy:
The Greeks - great talkers, great debaters, sophists by nature - constantly entered into religious disputes. Since the monks enjoyed great influence in the court, which weakened as it became corrupted, it turned out that the monks and the court mutually corrupted each other and that evil infected both. As a result, all the attention of the emperors was absorbed in first calming down, then inciting theological disputes, regarding which it was noticed that they became the hotter, the more insignificant was the reason that caused them.
Thus, Byzantium became part of the image of the barbaric dark East, which paradoxically also included the main enemies of the Byzantine Empire - the Muslims. In the Orientalist model, Byzantium was opposed to a liberal and rational European society built on the ideals of Ancient Greece and Rome. This model underlies, for example, the descriptions of the Byzantine court in the drama The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert:
“The king wipes fragrances from his face with his sleeve. He eats from sacred vessels, then breaks them; and mentally he counts his ships, his troops, his peoples. Now, out of a whim, he will take and burn his palace with all the guests. He thinks to restore the Tower of Babel and overthrow the Almighty from the throne. Antony reads from a distance on his forehead all his thoughts. They take possession of him, and he becomes Nebuchadnezzar."
The mythological view of Byzantium has not yet been completely overcome in historical science. Of course, there could be no question of any moral example of Byzantine history for the education of youth. School programs were built on samples of classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, and Byzantine culture was excluded from them. In Russia, science and education followed Western patterns. In the 19th century, a dispute about the role of Byzantium in Russian history broke out between Westerners and Slavophiles. Peter Chaadaev, following the tradition of European enlightenment, bitterly complained about the Byzantine heritage of Rus':
“By the will of fateful fate, we turned for moral teaching, which was supposed to educate us, to corrupted Byzantium, to the subject of deep contempt of these peoples.”
Byzantine ideologist Konstantin Leontiev Konstantin Leontiev(1831-1891) - diplomat, writer, philosopher. In 1875, his work “Byzantism and Slavism” was published, in which he argued that “Byzantism” is a civilization or culture, the “general idea” of which is composed of several components: autocracy, Christianity (different from Western, “from heresies and splits”), disappointment in everything earthly, the absence of an “extremely exaggerated concept of the earthly human personality”, rejection of the hope for the general welfare of peoples, the totality of some aesthetic ideas, and so on. Since all-Slavism is not a civilization or culture at all, and European civilization is coming to an end, Russia - having inherited almost everything from Byzantium - needs Byzantism to flourish. pointed to the stereotypical idea of Byzantium, which has developed due to schooling and the lack of independence of Russian science:
"Byzantium seems to be something dry, boring, priestly, and not only boring, but even something pitiful and vile."
7. In 1453, Constantinople fell - but Byzantium did not die
Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror. Miniature from the collection of Topkapı Palace. Istanbul, late 15th century Wikimedia Commons In 1935, the book of the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga, Byzantium after Byzantium, was published - and its title established itself as a designation of the life of Byzantine culture after the fall of the empire in 1453. Byzantine life and institutions did not disappear overnight. They were preserved thanks to Byzantine emigrants who fled to Western Europe, in Constantinople itself, even under the rule of the Turks, as well as in the countries of the "Byzantine commonwealth", as the British historian Dmitry Obolensky called Eastern European medieval cultures that were directly influenced by Byzantium - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia. The participants in this supranational unity preserved the heritage of Byzantium in religion, the norms of Roman law, the standards of literature and art.
In the last hundred years of the existence of the empire, two factors - the cultural revival of the Palaiologos and the Palamite disputes - contributed, on the one hand, to the renewal of ties between the Orthodox peoples and Byzantium, and on the other hand, to a new surge in the spread of Byzantine culture, primarily through liturgical texts and monastic literature. In the XIV century Byzantine ideas, texts and even their authors got into the Slavic world through the city of Tarnovo, the capital of the Bulgarian Empire; in particular, the number of Byzantine works available in Rus' doubled thanks to Bulgarian translations.
In addition, the Ottoman Empire officially recognized the Patriarch of Constantinople: as the head of the Orthodox millet (or community), he continued to manage the church, in whose jurisdiction both Rus' and the Orthodox Balkan peoples remained. Finally, the rulers of the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, even after becoming subjects of the Sultan, retained Christian statehood and considered themselves the cultural and political heirs of the Byzantine Empire. They continued the traditions of the ceremonial of the royal court, Greek education and theology, and supported the Greek elite of Constantinople, the Phanariots. Phanariots- literally "inhabitants of Phanar", a quarter of Constantinople, in which the residence of the Greek patriarch was located. The Greek elite of the Ottoman Empire were called Phanariotes because they lived predominantly in this quarter..
Greek uprising of 1821. Illustration from A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times by John Henry Wright. 1905 The Internet Archive Iorga believes that Byzantium died after Byzantium during the unsuccessful uprising against the Turks in 1821, which was organized by Phanariot Alexander Ypsilanti. On one side of the banner of Ypsilanti there was the inscription “Conquer this” and the image of Emperor Constantine the Great, whose name is associated with the beginning of Byzantine history, and on the other, a phoenix reborn from the flame, a symbol of the revival of the Byzantine Empire. The uprising was crushed, the Patriarch of Constantinople was executed, and the ideology of the Byzantine Empire then dissolved into Greek nationalism.
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution
higher professional education
"Orenburg State University"
Faculty of Geology and Geography
Department of Ecology and Nature Management
The spread of Greek-Byzantine spiritual traditions in Rus'. Lives of the Saints and familiarization with ancient knowledge
Work manager
candidate of pedagogical sciences, associate professor E.V. Grivko
Executor
student of group 15TB(ba)-1
A.V. Mazina
Orenburg 2015
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Pre-Cyrillic writing and knowledge of the Slavs
Spread of Greco-Byzantine cultural and scientific traditions
Christianization of Rus': the development of everyday and spiritual culture
Wide spread of literacy in the urban environment in the 11th-12th centuries: birch bark letters and graffiti
Mathematical, astronomical and geographical knowledge in Ancient Rus'
The first parish schools under Vladimir I and Yaroslav the Wise
Practical use knowledge in crafts and construction
Sources
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Byzantium is an original cultural integrity (330-1453), the first Christian empire. Byzantium was located at the junction of three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. Its territory included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cyrenaica, part of Mesopotamia and Armenia, the island of Cyprus, Crete, strongholds in the Crimea (Chersonese), in the Caucasus (in Georgia), some regions of Arabia. The Mediterranean Sea was the inland lake of Byzantium.
Byzantium was a multinational empire, motley in ethnic composition population, which consisted of Syrians, Copts, Thracians, Illyrians, Armenians, Georgians, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Romans. It is not the Greeks or the Romans who play the main role after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. There was no physical continuity between the ancient and medieval peoples at all. The immigration of barbarians into the empire is an essential feature separating antiquity from the Middle Ages. The constant and abundant replenishment of the provinces of the empire with new peoples poured a lot of new blood into the remnants of the old population, contributed to a gradual change in the very physical type ancient peoples.
In the era of the early Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire, the heir and successor of Greek culture and the state-legal organization of the Roman Empire, was the most cultural, strongest and most economically developed European state. It is quite natural that its influence was decisive for a fairly large segment of Russian history.
Since ancient times, the Slavs traded with Byzantium, using the great waterway of the Magi - the Dnieper - the so-called "from the Varangians to the Greeks." They exported honey, furs, wax, slaves, and from Byzantium they brought luxury items, art, household products, fabrics, and with the advent of writing, books. Numerous Russian trading cities arose along this path: Kyiv, Chernigov, Smolensk, Veliky Novgorod, Pskov and others. At the same time, the Russian princes made military campaigns against Tsargrad (Constantinople), which ended with the signing peace treaties. So, in 907, Grand Duke Oleg besieges Tsargrad, after which peace follows with the Greeks, after him Igor, the son of Rurik, goes on a campaign against Byzantium in 941-945, and in 946 concludes agreements with her on peace, trade and mutual military assistance. Igor's son Svyatoslav in 970 helps the Byzantine emperor in the war against the Danube Bulgaria.
1. Pre-Cyrillic writing and knowledge of the Slavs
Language and writing are perhaps the most important cultural factors. If the people are deprived of the right or opportunity to speak their native language, then this will be the most severe blow to their native culture. If a person is deprived of books in his native language, then he will lose the most important treasures of his culture. Since childhood, we get used to the letters of our Russian alphabet and rarely think about when and how our writing arose. The beginning of writing is a special milestone in the history of every nation, in the history of its culture.
Writing existed in Rus' even in the pre-Christian period, but the question of pre-Cyrillic Slavic writing remained controversial until recently. Only as a result of the work of scientists, as well as in connection with the discovery of new ancient monuments, the existence of writing among the Slavs in the pre-Cyril period is almost proven.
A historian working on the problems of Russian history of the 12th-14th centuries has only chronicles, preserved, as a rule, in later lists, very few happily surviving official acts, monuments of legislation, rare works of fiction and canonical church books. Taken together, these written sources make up a tiny fraction of a percent of the number of written sources in the 19th century. Even less written evidence survived from the 10th and 11th centuries. The paucity of ancient Russian written sources is the result of one of the most terrible disasters in wooden Rus' - frequent fires, during which entire cities with all their wealth, including books, burned out more than once.
In Russian works until the mid-40s of the twentieth century, and in most foreign works - until now, the existence of writing among the Slavs in the pre-Cyrilian period was usually denied. From the second half of the 40s to the end of the 50s of the twentieth century, many researchers of this issue showed a reverse trend - to excessively reduce the role of external influences on the emergence of Slavic writing, to believe that writing independently arose among the Slavs from ancient times. Moreover, there were even suggestions that Slavic writing repeated the entire path of the world development of writing - from the initial pictograms and primitive conventional signs to logography, from logographine - to syllabic or consonant-sound and, finally, to vocalized-sound writing.
However, according to the general laws of the development of writing, as well as according to the characteristics of the Slavic languages of the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. such a path of development should be recognized as impossible. The world history of writing shows that not one of the peoples, even the most ancient ones, went through the entire path of the world development of writing. The Slavs, including the Eastern ones, were young peoples.
The decomposition of the primitive communal system began only in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. and ended in the second half of the 1st millennium with the formation of early feudal states. In such a short period of time, the Slavs would not have been able to independently go through the difficult path from pictography to logography, and from it to sound writing. In addition, the Slavs were in this period in close trade and cultural ties with the Byzantine Greeks. And the Greeks have long used the perfect vocalized-sound writing, which the Slavs knew about. Vocalized-sound writing was also used by other neighbors of the Slavs: in the west, the Germans, in the east, Georgians (from the beginning of our era), Armenians (from the beginning of the 5th century AD), Goths (from the 4th century AD). ) and the Khazars (from the 8th century AD).
In addition, logographic writing could not have developed among the Slavs, since the Slavic languages are characterized by a wealth of grammatical forms; syllabic writing would be unsuitable, since the Slavic languages \u200b\u200bare distinguished by the variety of syllabic composition; consonant-sound writing would be unacceptable for the Slavs, because in the Slavic languages consonants and vowels are equally involved in the formation of root and affix morphemes. From all that has been said, it follows that the pre-Cyrillic Slavonic writing could be of only three types.
The surviving references to "features and cuts" in the legend "On Writings" (the turn of the 9th-10th centuries) have survived to our times. The author, Khrabr, a Chernorian, noted that the pagan Slavs use pictorial signs, with the help of which they "chitah and gadah" (read and guessed). The emergence of such an initial letter occurred when, on the basis of small and scattered tribal groups, more complex, large and durable forms of community of people arose - tribes and tribal unions. Evidence of the presence of pre-Christian writing among the Slavs is a broken clay pot discovered in 1949 in the Gnezdovsky pagan burial mounds near Smolensk, on which the inscription "goroukhscha" ("gorushna") was preserved, which meant: either "Pea wrote", or "mustard". In addition to Gnezdovskaya, fragments of inscriptions and numerical calculations were found on amphoras and other vessels of the 10th century. in Taman (ancient Tmutarakan), Sarkel and Black Sea ports. Writing based on various alphabets (Greek, Cyrillic, runic) was used by the diverse population of the most ancient cities and proto-cities located on important trade routes. Trade became the soil that contributed to the spread throughout the territory of Rus' of the Cyrillic alphabet adapted for Slavic speech and convenient for writing.
Along with the testimony of the Khrabr, a Chernorizian, with the above considerations of a sociological and linguistic order, the existence among the Slavs of a letter like "features and cuts" is also confirmed by literary reports of foreign travelers and writers of the 9th-10th centuries. and archaeological finds.
A "pre-Cyril" letter was being formed. History shows that a similar process of adaptation of writing to the language took place in almost all cases when one people borrowed the writing of another people, for example, when Phoenician writing was borrowed by the Greeks, Greek by the Etruscans and Romans, etc. The Slavs could not be an exception to this rule. The assumption of the gradual formation of "pre-Cyrillic" writing is also confirmed by the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet in its version that has come down to us is so adapted to the accurate transmission of Slavic speech that this could only be achieved as a result of a long development.
If alphabetic writing did not exist among the Slavs long before they adopted Christianity, then the unexpected flourishing of Bulgarian literature at the end of the 9th-beginning of the 10th century, and the wide spread of literacy in everyday life would have been incomprehensible. Eastern Slavs X-XI centuries, and high skill, which reached in Rus' already in the XI century. the art of writing and book design (example - "Ostromir gospel").
Thus, now we can say with confidence that in the pre-Cyrilian era, the Slavs had several types of writing; most likely, it was not fully adapted for the accurate transmission of Slavic speech and was of a syllabic or runic nature, the Slavs used the simplest writing such as "features and cuts" for various purposes. The spread of Christianity among the Slavs was a political step both on the part of the Slavs, who sought to strengthen their position in Europe, and on the part of the Roman-Byzantine world, which sought to establish its dominance over the Slavic peoples that were gaining more and more political influence. This is partly due to the almost complete destruction of the oldest Slavic writing and the rapid spread of new alphabets among people accustomed to writing.
Spread of Greco-Byzantine cultural and scientific traditions
Byzantium is a state that has made a great contribution to the development of culture in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the history of world culture, Byzantium has a special, prominent place. IN artistic creativity Byzantium gave the medieval world high images of literature and art, which were distinguished by the noble elegance of forms, figurative vision of thought, refinement of aesthetic thinking, and depth of philosophical thought. By the power of expressiveness and deep spirituality, Byzantium stood ahead of all the countries of medieval Europe for many centuries.
If you try to separate the Byzantine culture from the culture of Europe, the Front and the Near East, then the following factors will be the most important:
· In Byzantium there was a linguistic community (the main language was Greek); · There was a religious community in Byzantium (the main religion was Christianity in the form of Orthodoxy); · In Byzantium, for all its multi-ethnicity, there was an ethnic core consisting of Greeks. · The Byzantine Empire has always been distinguished by stable statehood and centralized administration. All this, of course, does not exclude the possibility that Byzantine culture, which had an impact on many neighboring countries, was itself subject to cultural influence from both the tribes and peoples that inhabited it, and its neighboring states. During its thousand-year existence, Byzantium faced powerful external cultural influences emanating from countries that were at a stage of development close to it - from Iran, Egypt, Syria, Transcaucasia, and later the Latin West and Ancient Rus'. On the other hand, Byzantium had to enter into various cultural contacts with peoples who were at a slightly or at a much lower stage of development (the Byzantines called them "barbarians"). The process of development of Byzantium was not straightforward. It had epochs of ups and downs, periods of the triumph of progressive ideas and gloomy years of domination by reactionaries. But the sprouts of the new, the living, the advanced, sooner or later sprouted in all spheres of life, at all times. Therefore, the culture of Byzantium is the most interesting cultural and historical type, which has very specific features. There are three stages in the history of Byzantine culture: *early (IV - mid-VII century); *middle (VII-IX centuries); *late (X-XV centuries). The most important topics of theological discussions at an early stage in the development of this culture were disputes about the nature of Christ and his place in the Trinity, about the meaning of human existence, the place of man in the universe and the limit of his capabilities. In this regard, several areas of theological thought of that era can be distinguished: *Arianism: The Arians believed that Christ is the creation of God the Father, and therefore he is not consubstantial with God the Father, is not eternal and occupies a subordinate place in the structure of the Trinity. *Nestorianism: The Nestorians believed that the divine and human principles in Christ are only relatively united and never merge. *Monophysitism: Monophysites emphasized primarily the divine nature of Christ and spoke of Christ as a god-man. *Chalcedonism: The Chalcedonites preached those ideas that later became dominant: the consubstantiality of God the Father and God the Son, the inseparability and inseparability of the divine and the human in Christ. The heyday of Byzantine art of the early period is associated with the strengthening of the power of the empire under Justinian. Magnificent palaces and temples are erected in Constantinople at this time. The style of Byzantine architecture developed gradually, it organically combined elements of ancient and oriental architecture. The main architectural structure was the temple, the so-called basilica (Greek " royal house"), the purpose of which differed significantly from other buildings. Another masterpiece of Byzantine architecture is the Church of St. Vitaliy in Ravenna - amazes with the sophistication and elegance of architectural forms. The famous mosaics of not only ecclesiastical, but also secular nature, in particular, images of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora and their retinue, brought special fame to this temple. The faces of Justinian and Theodora are endowed with portrait features, the color scheme of the mosaics is full-blooded brightness, warmth and freshness. The mosaics of Byzantium gained worldwide fame. The technology of mosaic art has been known since antiquity, but it was only in Byzantium that glass alloys, the so-called smalts with the thinnest gold surface, were used for the first time, not natural, but colored with mineral paints. Masters widely used the golden color, which, on the one hand, symbolized luxury and wealth, and on the other hand, was the brightest and most radiant of all colors. Most of the mosaics were located at different angles on the concave or spherical surface of the walls, and this only increased the golden sheen of uneven smalt cubes. He turned the plane of the walls into a continuous shimmering space, even more sparkling thanks to the light of candles burning in the temple. Byzantine mosaicists used a wide range of colors: from soft blue, green and bright blue to pale lilac, pink and red of various shades and degrees of intensity. The images on the walls mainly told about the main events of Christian history, the earthly life of Jesus Christ, and glorified the power of the emperor. The mosaics of the church of San Vitale in the city of Ravenna (6th century) acquired particular fame. On the side aisles of the apse, on both sides of the windows, there are mosaics depicting the imperial couple - Justinian and his wife Theodora with their retinues. The artist places the characters on a neutral gold background. Everything in this scene is full of solemn grandeur. Both mosaic paintings, located under the figure of the seated Christ, inspire the viewer with the idea of the inviolability of the Byzantine emperor. In painting VI-VII centuries. a specifically Byzantine image crystallizes, cleansed of foreign influences. It is based on the experience of the masters of the East and West, who independently came to create a new art that corresponds to the spiritualistic ideals of medieval society. In this art, there are already various trends and schools. The metropolitan school, for example, was distinguished by excellent workmanship, refined artistry, picturesqueness and colorful variety, quivering and iridescent colors. One of the most perfect works of this school were the mosaics in the dome of the Church of the Assumption in Nicaea. Music occupied a special place in Byzantine civilization. A peculiar combination of authoritarianism and democracy could not but affect the nature of musical culture, which was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon of the spiritual life of the era. In the V-VII centuries. the formation of the Christian liturgy took place, new genres of vocal art developed. Music acquires a special civil status, is included in the system of representation of state power. The music of city streets, theatrical and circus performances and folk festivals, which reflected the richest song and musical practice of many peoples inhabiting the empire, retained a special color. Each of these types of music had its own aesthetic and social meaning and at the same time, interacting, they merged into a single and unique whole. Christianity very early appreciated the special possibilities of music as a universal art and at the same time, possessing the power of mass and individual psychological impact, and included it in its cult ritual. It was cult music that was destined to occupy a dominant position in medieval Byzantium. *Trivium - grammar, rhetoric and dialectics. *Quadrivium - arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Mass spectacles continued to play a huge role in the life of the broad masses of the people. True, the ancient theater begins to decline - ancient tragedies and comedies are increasingly replaced by performances of mimes, jugglers, dancers, gymnasts, and tamers of wild animals. The place of the theater is now occupied by a circus (hippodrome) with its equestrian dances, which are very popular. If we summarize the first period of the existence of Byzantium, we can say that during this period the main features of Byzantine culture were formed. First of all, they should include the fact that Byzantine culture was open to other cultural influences received from outside. But gradually, already in the early period, they were synthesized by the main, leading Greco-Roman culture. The culture of early Byzantium was an urban culture. The large cities of the empire, and primarily Constantinople, were not only centers of crafts and trade, but also centers of the highest culture and education, where the rich heritage of antiquity was preserved. An important component of the second stage in the history of Byzantine culture was the confrontation between iconoclasts and iconodules (726-843). The first direction was supported by the ruling secular elite, and the second - by the orthodox clergy and many segments of the population. During the period of iconoclasm (726-843) an attempt was made to officially ban icons. The philosopher, poet, and author of many theological writings John of Damascus (700-760) spoke in defense of the icons. In his opinion, the icon is fundamentally different from the idol. It is not a copy or decoration, but an illustration reflecting the nature and essence of the deity. At a certain stage, the iconoclasts prevailed, therefore, in the Byzantine Christian art for some time, ornamental and decorative abstract-symbolic elements prevailed. However, the struggle between the supporters of these trends was extremely tough, and many monuments of the early stage of Byzantine culture, in particular the first mosaics of the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople, perished in this confrontation. But still, the supporters of icon veneration won the final victory, which further contributed to the final formation of the iconographic canon - strict rules for depicting all scenes of religious content. It should also be noted that the essential point is that the iconoclastic movement served as an incentive for a new rise in the secular visual arts and Byzantine architecture. Under the iconoclastic emperors, the influence of Muslim architecture penetrated into architecture. Thus, one of the palaces of Vrias in Constantinople was built according to the plan of the palaces of Baghdad. All palaces were surrounded by parks with fountains, exotic flowers and trees. In Constantinople, Nicaea and other cities of Greece and Asia Minor, city walls, public buildings, and private buildings were erected. In the secular art of the iconoclastic period, the principles of representative solemnity, architectural monumentality and colorful multi-figured decorativeness won, which later served as the basis for the development of secular artistic creativity. During this period, the art of colored mosaic images reached a new heyday. In the IX-XI centuries. old monuments were also restored. Mosaics were also restored in the church of St. Sofia. New plots appeared that reflected the idea of the union of church and state. In the IX-X centuries. the décor of manuscripts became substantially richer and more complex, and book miniatures and ornamentation became richer and more varied. However, a truly new period in the development book miniature falls on the XI-XII centuries, when the Constantinople school of masters in this field of art was flourishing. In that era, in general, the leading role in painting as a whole (in icon painting, miniature, fresco) was acquired by the metropolitan schools, marked by a special perfection of taste and technique. In the VII-VIII centuries. in the temple construction of Byzantium and the countries of the Byzantine cultural circle, the same cross-domed composition that arose in the 6th century dominated. and was characterized by a weakly expressed external decorative design. The decor of the facade acquired great importance in the 9th-10th centuries, when a new architectural style arose and became widespread. The emergence of a new style was associated with the flourishing of cities, the strengthening of the social role of the church, a change in the social content of the very concept of sacred architecture in general and temple construction in particular (the temple as an image of the world). Many new temples were erected, a large number of monasteries were built, although they were like usually small in size. In addition to changes in the decorative design of buildings, the architectural forms and the very composition of buildings also changed. The importance of vertical lines and divisions of the facade increased, which also changed the silhouette of the temple. Builders increasingly resorted to the use of patterned brickwork. Features of the new architectural style also appeared in a number of local schools. For example, in Greece X-XII centuries. it is typical to preserve some archaism of architectural forms (non-segmentation of the facade plane, traditional forms of small temples) - with the further development and growth of the influence of the new style, patterned brick decor and polychrome plastic were also increasingly used here. In the VIII-XII centuries. a special musical and poetic church art. Thanks to his high artistic merits, the influence of folklore music on church music, the melodies of which had previously penetrated even into the liturgy, weakened. In order to further isolate the musical foundations of worship from external influences, the canonization of the laotonal system - "oktoiha" (eight-tones) was carried out. Ichoses were some melodic formulas. However, musical-theoretical monuments allow us to conclude that the Ichos system did not rule out a sound-row understanding. The most popular genres of church music were the canon (a musical and poetic composition during a church service) and the troparion (almost the main unit of Byzantine hymnography). Troparias were composed for all holidays, all solemn events and memorable dates. The progress of musical art led to the creation of musical writing (notation), as well as liturgical handwritten collections in which chants were recorded (either only text or text with notation). Public life also could not do without music. The book On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court reports almost 400 hymns. These are procession songs, and songs during horse processions, and songs at the imperial feast, and acclamation songs, etc. From the 9th century in the circles of the intellectual elite, interest in ancient musical culture was growing, although this interest was primarily theoretical in nature: attention was attracted not so much by the music itself as by the works of ancient Greek musical theorists. As a result of the second period, it can be noted that Byzantium at that time reached the highest power and the highest point in the development of culture. IN social development and in the evolution of the culture of Byzantium, contradictory trends are evident, due to its median position between East and West. Since the X century. a new stage in the history of Byzantine culture begins - a generalization and classification of everything achieved in science, theology, philosophy, and literature takes place. In Byzantine culture, this century is associated with the creation of works of a generalizing nature - encyclopedias on history were compiled, agriculture, medicine. The treatises of Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (913-959) "On the Governance of the State", "On Themes", "On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court" are an extensive encyclopedia of the most valuable information about the political and administrative structure of the Byzantine state. At the same time, colorful material of an ethnographic and historical-geographic nature about the countries and peoples adjacent to the Empire, including the Slavs, is collected here. In culture, generalized spiritualistic principles completely triumph; social thought, literature and art, as it were, break away from reality and close themselves in a circle of higher, abstract ideas. The basic principles of Byzantine aesthetics are finally taking shape. The ideal aesthetic object is transferred to the spiritual sphere, and it is now described using such aesthetic categories as beauty, light, color, image, sign, symbol. These categories help to highlight the global issues of art and other areas of culture. In artistic creativity, traditionalism and canonicity prevail; art no longer contradicts the dogmas of the official religion, but actively serves them. However, the duality of Byzantine culture, the confrontation in it between the aristocratic and popular trends, does not disappear even during periods of the most complete domination of dogmatized church ideology. In the XI-XII centuries. Byzantine culture undergoes serious ideological shifts. The growth of provincial cities, the rise of crafts and trade, the crystallization of the political and intellectual self-consciousness of the townspeople, the feudal consolidation of the ruling class while maintaining a centralized state, rapprochement with the West under the Komnenos could not but affect culture. A significant accumulation of positive knowledge, the growth of natural sciences, the expansion of human ideas about the Earth and the universe, the needs of navigation, trade, diplomacy, jurisprudence, the development of cultural communication with the countries of Europe and the Arab world - all this leads to the enrichment of Byzantine culture and major changes in the worldview of Byzantine society . This was the time of the rise of scientific knowledge and the birth of rationalism in the philosophical thought of Byzantium. Rationalist tendencies among Byzantine philosophers and theologians, as well as among Western European scholastics of the 11th-12th centuries, manifested themselves primarily in the desire to combine faith with reason, and sometimes even put reason above faith. The most important prerequisite for the development of rationalism in Byzantium was a new stage in the revival of ancient culture, the comprehension of the ancient heritage as a single, integral philosophical and aesthetic system. Byzantine thinkers of the XI-XII centuries. perceive from ancient philosophers respect for reason; blind faith based on authority is being replaced by the study of the causality of phenomena in nature and society. But unlike Western European scholasticism, Byzantine philosophy of the XI-XII centuries. was built on the basis of the ancient philosophical teachings of different schools, and not only on the works of Aristotle, as was the case in the West. The exponents of rationalistic trends in Byzantine philosophy were Michael Psellos, John Ital and their followers. However, all these representatives of rationalism and religious freethinking were condemned by the church, and their works were burned. But their activity was not in vain - it paved the way for the emergence of humanistic ideas in Byzantium. In literature, there are tendencies towards the democratization of language and plot, towards the individualization of the author's person, towards the manifestation of the author's position; in it a critical attitude towards the ascetic monastic ideal is born and religious doubts slip through. Literary life becomes more intense, there are literary circles. Byzantine art also flourished during this period. At the court of Latin emperors, princes and barons, Western customs and entertainments, tournaments, troubadour songs, holidays and theatrical performances spread. A notable phenomenon in the culture of the Latin Empire was the work of the troubadours, many of whom were participants in the Fourth Crusade. Thus, Conon de Bethune reached the zenith of his fame precisely in Constantinople. Eloquence, poetic gift, firmness and courage made him the second person in the state after the emperor, in whose absence he often ruled Constantinople. The noble knights of the empire were Robert de Blois, Hugh de Saint-Canton, Count Jean de Brienne and less noble ones such as Hugh de Bregil. All of them became rich after the capture of Constantinople and, as Hugh de Bre-gil tells in rhythmic verses, plunged out of poverty into wealth, into emeralds, rubies, brocade, ended up in fabulous gardens and marble palaces along with noble ladies and beautiful virgins. Of course, attempts to introduce the Catholic faith and spread Western culture in the Latin Empire ran into constant stubborn resistance from both the Orthodox clergy and the general population. Among the intellectuals, the ideas of Hellenic patriotism and Hellenic self-consciousness grew and strengthened. But the meeting and mutual influence of Western and Byzantine cultures during this period prepared for their rapprochement in late Byzantium. The culture of late Byzantium is characterized by the ideological communication of Byzantine scholars with Italian scientists, writers, poets, which influenced the formation of early Italian humanism. It was the Byzantine scholars who were destined to open the wonderful world of Greco-Roman antiquity to Western humanists, to acquaint them with classical ancient literature, with the true philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. It should be noted that the concept of "Byzantine humanism" denotes that cultural, spiritual-intellectual psychological and aesthetic complex that is characteristic of the worldview of the erudite layer of the XIV-XV centuries, and which, in its characteristics, can be considered an analogue of Italian humanism. This is not so much about the completed and formed culture of humanism, but about humanistic tendencies, not so much about the revival of antiquity, but about the well-known rethinking of the ancient heritage, paganism as a system of views, about turning it into a worldview factor. The widest knowledge of such famous Byzantine philosophers, theologians, philologists, rhetoricians as George Gemist Plifon, Dmitry Kydonis, Manuel Chrysolor, Vissarion of Nicaea, and others, aroused the boundless admiration of Italian humanists, many of whom became students and followers of Byzantine scholars. However, the inconsistency of social relations in late Byzantium, the weakness of the sprouts of pre-capitalist relations, the onslaught of the Turks and the sharp ideological struggle, which ended in the victory of mystical currents, led to the fact that the new direction in artistic creativity that arose there, akin to the early Italian Renaissance, was not completed. Simultaneously with the development of humanistic ideas in late Byzantium, an extraordinary rise in mysticism took place. It was as if all the temporarily lurking forces of spiritualism and mysticism, asceticism and detachment from life were now consolidated in the hesychast movement, in the teachings of Gregory Palamas, and began an attack on the ideals of the Renaissance. In an atmosphere of hopelessness generated by deadly military danger, feudal strife and defeat popular movements In particular, the uprising of the Zealots, among the Byzantine clergy and monasticism, the conviction grew stronger that salvation from earthly troubles can only be found in the world of passive contemplation, complete calm - hesychia, in self-absorbed ecstasy, supposedly granting a mystical merging with the deity and illumination by divine light. Supported by the ruling church and the feudal nobility, the teachings of the hesychasts won, bewitching the broad masses of the empire with mystical ideas. The victory of hesychasm was in many ways fatal for the Byzantine state: hesychasm strangled the sprouts of humanistic ideas in literature and art, weakened the will to resist the masses of the people with external enemies. Superstition flourished in late Byzantium. Social unrest gave rise to thoughts about the approaching end of the world. Even among educated people, divination, predictions, and sometimes magic were common. Byzantine authors repeatedly referred to the story of the prophecies of the Sibyl, who allegedly correctly determined the number Byzantine emperors and patriarchs, and thereby supposedly foretold the time of the fall of the empire. There were special fortune-telling books (bible chrys-matogics) that predicted the future. Religious mood was highly characteristic of late Byzantine society. The preaching of asceticism and anchorage addressed to the people could not but leave a trace. The desire for solitude, for prayer marked the lives of many people, both from the nobility and from the lower classes. The words of George Acropolitan could characterize not only Despot John: “He spent whole nights in prayer ... he had care to spend more time in solitude and enjoy the calm that comes from everywhere, or at least be in close communication with persons leading such a life." Leaving political life for a monastery is far from being isolated. The desire to get away from public affairs was explained primarily by the fact that contemporaries did not see a way out of those unfavorable collisions of the internal and international plan, which testified to the fall of the authority of the empire and its approach to disaster. Summing up the development of Byzantine culture in the 11th-12th centuries, we can note some important new features. Of course, the culture of the Byzantine Empire at that time still remained medieval, traditional, and largely canonical. But in the artistic life of society, despite its canonicity and the unification of aesthetic values, sprouts of new pre-Renaissance trends are breaking through, which have found further development in the Byzantine art of the era of the Palaiologos. They affect not only and not so much the return of interest in antiquity, which never died in Byzantium, but the emergence of sprouts of rationalism and freethinking, the intensification of the struggle of various social groups in the field of culture, and the growth of social discontent. What is the contribution of Byzantine civilization to world culture? First of all, it should be noted that Byzantium was the "golden bridge" between Western and Eastern cultures; it had a profound and lasting impact on the development of the cultures of many countries of medieval Europe. The distribution area of the influence of Byzantine culture was very extensive: Sicily, Southern Italy, Dalmatia, the states of the Balkan Peninsula, Ancient Rus', Transcaucasia, North Caucasus and Crimea - all of them, to one degree or another, came into contact with Byzantine education. The most intense Byzantine cultural influence, of course, was felt in countries where Orthodoxy was established, connected by strong threads with the Church of Constantinople. Byzantine influence affected in the field of religion and philosophy, social thought and cosmology, writing and education, political ideas and law, it penetrated into all spheres of art - into literature and architecture, painting and music. Through Byzantium, ancient and Hellenistic cultural heritage, spiritual values created not only in Greece itself, but also in Egypt and Syria, Palestine and Italy, were transferred to other peoples. The perception of the traditions of Byzantine culture in Bulgaria and Serbia, Georgia and Armenia, in Ancient Rus' contributed to the further progressive development of their cultures. Despite the fact that Byzantium lasted 1000 years longer than the Great Roman Empire, it was still conquered in the XIV century. Seljuk Turks. The Turkish troops that conquered Constantinople in 1453 put an end to the history of the Byzantine Empire. But this was not the end of her artistic and cultural development. Byzantium has made a huge contribution to the development of world culture. Its basic principles and directions of culture were transferred to neighboring states. Almost all the time medieval Europe developed on the basis of the achievements of Byzantine culture. Byzantium can be called the "second Rome", because. its contribution to the development of Europe and the whole world is in no way inferior to the Roman Empire. After a 1000-year history, Byzantium ceased to exist, but the original and interesting Byzantine culture did not remain in oblivion, which passed the cultural and historical baton to Russian culture. Christianization of Rus': the development of everyday and spiritual culture The beginning of the Middle Ages in Europe is usually associated with the transition from paganism to Christianity. And in our history, the adoption of Christianity has become an important milestone. The unification of the Old Russian lands into a single state set an important task for the grand dukes - to give the tribes that entered it a single spiritual basis. Christianity was the spiritual foundation of European civilization. The choice of Vladimir in this sense was correct. It showed a European orientation. Of the two most significant branches of Christianity, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, he chose Orthodoxy or orthodox Christianity. The adoption of Christianity had long-term consequences for Rus'. First of all, it determined its further development as a European country, became part of the Christian world and played a prominent role in Europe at that time. The baptism of Rus' took place in 988, when, on the orders of the Grand Duke Vladimir, the people of Kiev were to be baptized in the waters of the Dnieper, recognize the one God, abandon the pagan gods and overthrow their images - idols. In some principalities, baptism was accepted voluntarily, in others it aroused the resistance of the people. It can be assumed that the people of Kiev perceived baptism as a pagan act - purification with water and the acquisition of another god, the patron of the prince. After the adoption of Christianity, Orthodoxy gradually began to influence ethnic consciousness and culture. The influence of the Russian Church extended to all sides public life. State acts, holidays (church and state), lighting and services at the beginning and end of any event; registration of acts of registration of births, marriages and deaths - all this was the responsibility of the church. The princely power actively influenced the formation and strengthening of the Orthodox Church in Rus'. A system of material support for the church was established. The Orthodox church becomes the center of not only the spiritual, but also the social and economic life of the parish, especially the rural one. The church has taken an important place in the political life of the country. The princes, starting with Vladimir, called on the metropolitans and bishops to participate in state affairs; at the princely congresses, in the first place after the princes was the clergy. The Russian Church acted in the princely civil strife as a pacifying party, she stood up for the preservation of peace and the good of the state. This position of the church was reflected in theological and artistic works. The clergy were the most educated stratum of society. In the works of church leaders, generally significant ideas were put forward, Russia's position in the world, the ways of developing Russian culture were comprehended. The Russian Orthodox Church during the period of fragmentation of Rus' and the Mongol-Tatar invasion was the bearer of the Orthodox faith, which made it possible to maintain the unity of Rus' in the people's consciousness. From the middle of the XIV century. gradually begins a cultural upsurge, the development of education, the spread of literacy and the accumulation of scientific knowledge in all areas. External contacts are being revived through diplomatic ties, pilgrimages to holy places, and trade. As a result, people's horizons are expanding. From the 15th century the process of formation of the Russian national idea, cultural and religious self-determination of the people is taking place more actively. It manifested itself in understanding the place of Russia and the world, the ways of its further development and national priorities. A definite impetus in this direction was the Union of Florence in 1439 (the union of the Catholic and Orthodox churches). As a result of complex political and religious processes, the Russian Orthodox Church in 1539 became autocephalous - independent, with a patriarch at the head. Development of the Slavic alphabet by the Byzantine diplomat and Slavic educator Cyril writing Christianization Rus Byzantine The creation of Slavic writing with good reason is attributed to the brothers Constantine the Philosopher (in monasticism - Cyril) and Methodius. Information about the beginning of Slavic writing can be gleaned from various sources: the Slavic lives of Cyril and Methodius, several laudatory words and church services in their honor, the writings of the Black Native Brave "On Letters", etc. In 863, an embassy from the Great Moravian prince Rostislav arrived in Constantinople. The ambassadors conveyed to Emperor Michael III a request to send missionaries to Moravia who could preach in a language understandable to the Moravians (Moravians) instead of the Latin language of the German clergy. The Great Moravian State (830-906) was a large early feudal state of the Western Slavs. Apparently, already under the first prince Mojmir (ruled 830-846), representatives of the princely family adopted Christianity. Under the successor of Mojmir, Rostislav (846-870), the Great Moravian state waged an intensified struggle against German expansion, the instrument of which was the church. Rostislav tried to oppose the German church by creating an independent Slavic bishopric, and therefore turned to Byzantium, knowing that Slavs lived in Byzantium and in its neighborhood. Rostislav's request to send missionaries was in line with the interests of Byzantium, which had long sought to extend its influence to the Western Slavs. It corresponded even more to the interests of the Byzantine church, whose relations with Rome in the middle of the ninth century became more and more hostile. Just in the year of the arrival of the Great Moravian embassy, these relations became so aggravated that Pope Nicholas even publicly cursed Patriarch Photius. Emperor Michael III and Patriarch Photius decided to send a mission to Great Moravia headed by Constantine the Philosopher and Methodius. This choice was not accidental. Constantine already had rich experience in missionary activity and showed himself in it as a brilliant dialectician and diplomat. This decision was also due to the fact that the brothers, coming from the semi-Slavic-half-Greek city of Thessalonica, knew the Slavic language very well. Constantine (826-869) and his older brother Methodius (820-885) were born and spent their childhood in the bustling Macedonian port city of Thessalonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). In the early 1950s, Constantine proved to be a skillful orator, having won a brilliant victory in a discussion over the former patriarch Arius. It was from this time that Emperor Michael, and then Patriarch Photius, began to almost continuously send Constantine as an envoy of Byzantium to neighboring peoples to convince them of the superiority of Byzantine Christianity over other religions. So Konstantin as a missionary visited Bulgaria, Syria and the Khazar Khaganate. The character, and, consequently, the life of Methodius were in many respects similar, but in many respects they were different from the character and life of his younger brother. Both of them lived mostly spiritual lives, striving to embody their beliefs and ideas, not attaching any importance to wealth, career, or fame. The brothers never had wives or children, wandered all their lives without creating a home for themselves, and even died in a foreign land. It is no coincidence that not a single literary work of Constantine and Methodius has survived to this day, although both of them, especially Constantine, wrote and translated many scientific and literary works; finally, it is still not known what kind of alphabet Konstantin the Philosopher created - Cyrillic or Glagolitic. In addition to similar traits, there were a lot of differences in the character of the brothers, however, despite this, they ideally complemented each other in joint work. The younger brother wrote, the elder translated his works. The younger one created the Slavic alphabet, Slavic writing and book business, the older one practically developed what was created by the younger one. The younger was a talented scientist, philosopher, brilliant dialectician and subtle philologist; the elder is a capable organizer and practical figure. It is not surprising that at the council convened on the occasion of the Moravian embassy, the emperor declared that no one would fulfill the request of Prince Rostislav better than Constantine the Philosopher. After that, according to the story of the Life, Constantine retired from the council and prayed for a long time. According to chronicle and documentary sources, then he developed the Slavic alphabet. “The Philosopher went and, according to the old custom, began to pray with other helpers. And soon God revealed them to him that he listens to the prayers of his servants, and then he folded the letters, and began to write the words of the Gospel: from the beginning the word and the word b o God, and God used the word (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”) and so on. "Psalter" and selected passages from "Church Services"). Thus, the first Slavic literary language was born, many words of which are still alive in the Slavic languages, including Bulgarian and Russian. Constantine and Methodius went to Great Moravia. In the summer of 863, after a long and difficult journey, the brothers finally arrived in the hospitable capital of Moravia, Velehrad. Prince Rostislav received envoys from friendly Byzantium. With his help, the brothers chose students for themselves and diligently taught them the Slavic alphabet and church services in the Slavic language, and in their free time they continued to translate the Greek books they had brought into the Slavic language. So, from the very arrival in Moravia, Constantine and Methodius did everything possible for the speedy spread of Slavic writing and culture in the country. Gradually, the Moravians (Moravians) became more and more accustomed to hearing their native language in churches. Churches where the service was conducted in Latin were empty, and the German Catholic clergy were losing their influence and income in Moravia, and therefore attacked the brothers with malice, accusing them of heresy. Having prepared disciples, Constantine and Methodius, however, faced a serious difficulty: since neither of them was a bishop, they did not have the right to ordain priests. And the German bishops refused this, since they were by no means interested in the development of divine services in the Slavic language. In addition, the activities of the brothers in the direction of the development of worship in the Slavic language, being historically progressive, came into conflict with the so-called trilingual theory created in the early Middle Ages, according to which only three languages had the right to exist in worship and literature: Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Constantine and Methodius had only one way out - to look for a solution to the difficulties that had arisen in Byzantium or in Rome. However, oddly enough, the brothers choose Rome, although at that moment the papal throne was occupied by Nicholas, who fiercely hated Patriarch Photius and all those associated with him. Despite this, Constantine and Methodius hoped for a favorable reception from the pope, and not unreasonably. The fact is that Constantine had the remains of Clement found by him, the third pope in order, if we assume that the very first was the apostle Peter. With such a valuable relic in their hands, the brothers could be sure that Nicholas would make big concessions, up to the permission of worship in the Slavic language. In the middle of 866, after 3 years in Moravia, Constantine and Methodius, accompanied by their disciples, left Velegrad for Rome. On the way, the brothers met the Pannonian prince Kotsel. He well understood the significance of the work undertaken by Constantine and Methodius and treated the brothers as a friend and ally. Kotsel himself learned Slavic reading and writing from them and sent about fifty students with them for the same training and initiation into the clergy. Thus, the Slavic writing, apart from Moravia, became widespread in Pannonia, where the ancestors of modern Slovenes lived. By the time the brothers arrived in Rome, Pope Nicholas was replaced by Adrian II. He graciously accepts Constantine and Methodius, permits divine services in the Slavonic language, ordains brothers as priests, and their disciples as presbyters and deacons. The brothers remain in Rome for almost two years. Konstantin falls seriously ill. Feeling the approach of death, he takes the tonsure as a monk and takes on a new name - Cyril. Shortly before his death, he turns to Methodius: “Here, brother, we were a couple in one team and plowed one furrow, and I fall on the field, having finished my day. Love the mountain, but do not dare to leave your teacher for the sake of the mountain, for how else can you achieve salvation?" On February 14, 869, Constantine-Cyril died at the age of 42. Methodius, on the advice of Kocel, seeks consecration to the rank of archbishop of Moravia and Pannonia. In 870 he returned to Pannonia, where he was persecuted by the German clergy and imprisoned for some time. In the middle of 884, Methodius moved to Moravia and translated the Bible into Slavonic. He dies on April 6, 885. The activities of the brothers were continued in the South Slavic countries by their disciples, who were expelled from Moravia in 886. In the West, Slavic worship and writing did not survive, but were approved in Bulgaria, from where they spread from the 9th century to Russia, Serbia and other countries. The significance of the activities of Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius consisted in the creation of the Slavic alphabet, the development of the first Slavic literary and written language, and the formation of the foundations for creating texts in the Slavic literary and written language. Cyril and Methodius traditions were the most important foundation of the literary and written languages of the southern Slavs, as well as the Slavs of the Great Moravian state. In addition, they had a profound influence on the formation of the literary and written language and texts in it in Ancient Rus', as well as its descendants - the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. One way or another, the Cyrillic and Methodian traditions were reflected in the Polish, Lusatian, Polabian languages. Thus, the activities of Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius had a common Slavic significance. Wide spread of literacy in the urban environment in the 11th-12th centuries: birch bark letters and graffiti The urban culture of Ancient Rus' has hardly been studied; little space is given to it even in a large two-volume publication on the history of the culture of Ancient Rus' in pre-Mongolian times, even less in books on the history of architecture, painting and literature. In this sense, the section on the "culture of Ancient Rus'" in such a generalizing work as "Essays on the History of the USSR" (IX-XIII centuries) is very indicative. Here the thesis is quite correctly proclaimed that "Russian rural and urban material culture, the culture of peasants and artisans, formed the basis of the entire culture of Ancient Rus'." And then writing, literature and art, though in a somewhat obscure form, are declared the property of "feudal landowners" and only folklore is recognized as the property of the poetic creativity of the Russian people. Of course, the monuments of literature, architecture, painting, applied art, which have come down to our time from Ancient Rus' of the XI-XIII centuries, are works made mainly by order of the feudal lords. But after all, they reflect the tastes of the people, moreover, to a greater extent even the tastes of artisans than the feudal lords themselves. Works of art were made according to the idea of master artisans and by the hands of master artisans. The feudal lords, of course, expressed their general wishes, what kind of buildings, weapons, decorations they would like to see, but they themselves did nothing, but embodied their wishes with the hands of others. The largest role in the creation of objects of art in Ancient Rus' belonged to the city masters, and this role has not only not yet been clarified, but has not even been studied. Therefore, the culture of Ancient Rus' appears to be so one-sided in many historical works. We would search in vain for even a paragraph on urban culture in our general and special editions. The city and its cultural life have fallen out of sight of historians and cultural historians of Ancient Rus', while the urban culture of a medieval Western European city has attracted and continues to attract the attention of researchers. One of the prerequisites for the development of urban culture was the spread of literacy. The wide distribution of writing in the cities of Ancient Rus' is confirmed by the remarkable discoveries made by Soviet archaeologists. And before them, graffiti inscriptions were already known, inscribed by unknown hands on the walls of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, on the walls of the Vydubitskaya Church in Kiev, the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, the Church of Panteleimon in Galich, etc. These inscriptions were made on plaster with a sharp tool, known in ancient Russian writing as a "shiltsa". Their details are not feudal lords or churchmen, but ordinary parishioners, therefore, merchants, artisans and other people who visited churches and left a memory in the form of this kind of wall literature. The custom of writing on the walls itself speaks of the spread of literacy in urban circles. Fragments of prayers and prayer addresses, names, whole phrases, scratched on the church walls, show that their creators were literate people, and this literacy, if not universal, then was not the lot of a too limited circle of citizens. After all, the surviving graffiti inscriptions have come down to us by accident. One can imagine how many of them had to die during various kinds of renewals of ancient churches, when in the name of "splendor" they covered with new plaster and painted the walls of the wonderful buildings of Ancient Rus'. Recently, inscriptions of the XI-XIII centuries. were found on various household items. They had a household purpose, therefore, they were intended for people who could read these inscriptions. If graffiti inscriptions can be attributed to some extent to representatives of the clergy, even if they were lower, then what kind of princes and boyars made inscriptions on wine pots and shoe lasts? It is clear that these inscriptions were made by representatives of completely different circles of the population, whose writing is now becoming our property thanks to the successes of Soviet archaeological and historical science. Even more remarkable finds were made in Novgorod. Here was found the bottom of one of the barrels with a clear inscription of the XII-XIII centuries. - "jurisprudence". The barrel, therefore, belonged to some Yuri, "Yurish", according to the old Russian custom, to reduce or strengthen the name. On a wooden shoe block for women's shoes we find the inscription "Mnezi" - an apparently female name. Two inscriptions are abbreviations of names, they are made on a bone arrow and on a birch bark float. But, perhaps, the most interesting find is the discovery in Novgorod of the so-called Ivan's elbow, found during excavations at the Yaroslav's Court in Novgorod. This is a small piece of wood in the form of a broken arshin, on which there was an inscription in the letters of the 12th-13th centuries. A wooden cylinder, also found in Novgorod, is remarkable. On it is carved the inscription "Emtsya hryvnia 3". Yemets is a princely servant who collected court and other fees. The cylinder, apparently, served to store the hryvnia and was provided with a corresponding inscription). Novgorod finds show that the spread of writing was significant in handicraft and commercial life, at least this can be said about Novgorod. However, the use of writing on household items was not only a Novgorod feature. B.A. Rybakov described a fragment of a korchaga, on which the inscription has been preserved. He managed to make out most of it. The inscription in full, apparently, read like this: "Blessed is the plan of the korchaga si." The words "nesha plona korchaga si" are completely preserved on the remains of this vessel, found in the old part of Kyiv during earthworks. About the same, only more extensive, inscription on a fragment of a pot in which wine was stored, reports A.L. Mongait. Along the edge of this vessel, found in Staraya Ryazan, an inscription is inscribed in letters from the 12th or early 13th century. V.D. Blavatsky discovered a fragment of a vessel from Tmutarakan, on which several obscure letters were made in ancient inscriptions. It was not possible to make out this inscription due to its fragmentary nature. Speaking about writing in ancient Russian cities, one should not forget that in a number of craft professions, writing was a necessary condition, a need arising from the characteristics of production itself. First of all, these were icon craftsmanship and wall painting. As a rule, letters and whole phrases were placed on the icons. A master icon painter or church painter could be a semi-literate person, but he had to know the rudiments of letters under all conditions, otherwise he could not successfully fulfill the orders he received. In some cases, the artist had to fill in images of open pages of books or scrolls with long texts (see, for example, the icon of the Bogolyubskaya Mother of God of the middle of the 12th century). The study of inscriptions on icons and murals in relation to their linguistic features was almost not carried out, but could give interesting results. So, on the temple icon of Dmitry Selunsky, which stood in the cathedral of the city of Dmitrov almost from the time of its foundation, we read the signature "Dmitry" next to the Greek designations (o agios - saint). Here, the typically Russian, common folk "Dmitry" is combined with a conditional Greek expression. Thus, it is revealed that the artist was Russian, and not a foreigner. The number of small and large inscriptions on icons and frescoes is so great, the inscriptions themselves are made so carefully and so reflect the development of the living Old Russian language with its features, that no special evidence is required to conclude that writing was widely developed among master artists. Knowledge of at least the elements of literacy was also necessary for silversmiths and gunsmiths who made expensive items. This is evidenced by the custom of marking the names of masters on some objects of the 11th-13th centuries. The names of the masters (Kosta, Bratilo) are preserved on the Novgorod craters, on the copper arch from Vshchizh (Konstantin), on the cross of the Polotsk princess Euphrosyne (Bogsha). Writing had a considerable distribution among the masons-builders. Special studies have shown that the bricks used for the construction of stone buildings in Ancient Rus' usually have marks. So, on several bricks of the cathedral in Old Ryazan, the name of the master is imprinted: Yakov. We also find the spread of writing among stone carvers. The oldest examples of Cyrillic inscriptions are stone slabs with the remains of letters found in the ruins of the Church of the Tithes in Kyiv at the end of the 10th century. One of the oldest inscriptions was made on the famous Tmutarakan stone. The Sterzhensky cross belongs to 1133; almost simultaneously with it, the Borisov stone was erected on the Western Dvina. The prevalence of such crosses and stones with commemorative records of the XI-XIII centuries. indicates that writing has firmly taken root in the everyday life of Ancient Rus'. The so-called "Stepan's stone", found in the Kalinin region, also speaks of the established custom of placing stones with inscriptions on the boundaries. Let us also recall the existence of inscriptions on various kinds of vessels, crosses, icons, decorations that have come down to us from the 11th-13th centuries. It is impossible to assume that the craftsmen who made these inscriptions were illiterate people, since in this case we would have clear traces of the inability to reproduce the inscriptions on the things themselves. Therefore, it must be assumed that among the artisans there were people with certain writing skills. It can be assumed that the inscriptions on household items of princes or higher clergy, as is clearly seen, for example, from the already mentioned inscription on an Old Ryazan vessel, were sometimes made by princely tyuns or some other household servants. The salary of the Mstislav Gospel was made between 1125-1137. at the expense of the prince. A certain Naslav traveled on a princely assignment to Constantinople and was a princely servant. But does this give the right to deny the existence of writing among those artisans who were engaged in the production of other, less precious products than the Novgorod craters and the Polotsk cross? Wooden shoe lasts, a bone arrow, a birch bark float, a wooden cup with the inscription "smova", found in Novgorod excavations, indicate that writing in Kievan Rus was not the property of only feudal lords. It was widespread among the trade and craft circles of the ancient Russian cities of the 11th-13th centuries. Of course, the spread of writing among artisans should not be exaggerated. Literacy was necessary for masters of a few professions and was distributed mainly in large cities, but even in this case, the archaeological finds of recent years take us far from the usual ideas about unliterate Rus', according to which only monasteries and palaces of princes and boyars were centers of culture. The need for literacy and writing was especially felt among the merchants. "Ryad" - the contract - is known to us both from Russkaya Pravda and from other sources. The oldest private written "series" (Teshaty and Yakima) dates back to the second half of the 13th century, but this does not mean that such written documents did not exist before. This is evidenced by the use of terms related to writing in legal monuments of ancient times. Usually, in order to prove that Ancient Rus' did not know the wide distribution of private acts, they referred to Russian Truth, which supposedly does not mention written documents. However, in the lengthy edition of Pravda, "fur" is called, a special fee that went in favor of the scribe: "pissu 10 kunas, 5 kunas for the cross, two legs for fur." Such a connoisseur of ancient writing, as I.I. Sreznevsky, translates the term "fur" in Russian Pravda precisely as "leather for writing." Russkaya Pravda itself indicates that both the "transfer" and the duty "for fur" went to the scribe. We have an indication of the duty on written transactions and records in the Manuscript of Vsevolod Mstislavich ("Russian Writing"). Among the urban population there was also such a layer for which writing was mandatory - this was the parish clergy, primarily priests, deacons, deacons, who read and sang in church. The priest's son, who did not learn to read and write, seemed to the people of Ancient Rus' to be a kind of undergrowth, a person who had lost the right to his profession, along with a merchant or a serf who ransomed to freedom. From among the clergy and lower church clerks, cadres of book copyists were recruited. If we recall that the monasteries of Ancient Rus' were primarily urban monasteries, then the category of urban residents among whom literacy was widespread seems to be quite significant: it included artisans, merchants, clergy, boyars, and princely people. Let the spread of literacy not be ubiquitous; at least there were significantly more literate people in the city than in the countryside, where the need for literacy at this time was extremely limited. Among the princes of the XII-XIII centuries. there was a widespread custom to exchange the so-called letters of the cross, which were written contracts. The letter of the cross, which the Galician prince Vladimirka "returned" to the Kyiv prince Vsevolod, is reported under 1144. In 1152, Izyaslav Mstislavich sent letters of the cross to the same Vladimirka with accusations of treachery; in 1195, the Kiev prince Rurik sent letters of the cross to Roman Mstislavich; on the basis of their Rurik "expose" the betrayal of Roman; in 1196, the same letters of the cross are mentioned in relation to Vsevolod the Big Nest. It is known about the letters of the cross of Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, etc. Thus, the custom of written inter-princely agreements was firmly established in Rus' in the 12th century. Already at this time there are counterfeit letters. It is known about a false letter sent on behalf of Yaroslav Osmomysl in 1172 by the Galician governor and his comrades. The diploma in this message is one of the necessary attributes of inter-princely relations. The princely charters that have survived to our time allow us to say that they were already in the XII century. compiled according to a specific format. Two letters of the Novgorod prince Vsevolod Mstislavich, given by him to the Yuriev monastery in 1125-1137, have the same introduction and conclusion. Approximately in the same form, the letters of Mstislav Vladimirovich (1130) and Izyaslav Mstislavich (1146-1155) were written 1). These documents, which came out of the prince's office, were written according to certain patterns by experienced scribes. The skills of the prince's offices could not be formed instantly. Therefore, they must have been preceded by some period of development. The existence of treaties between Rus' and the Greeks tells us that princely offices in Rus' appeared no later than the 10th century. The relatively wide distribution of literacy in the urban environment is confirmed by the discovery of Novgorod birch bark letters. The material for writing in Ancient Rus' was such an object as birch bark. It cannot even be called cheap, it was just generally available, because birch bark is available everywhere where birch grows. The processing of the bark for writing was extremely primitive. The properties of birch bark, easily decaying and brittle, made it a convenient written material only for correspondence of temporary importance; books and acts were written on durable parchment, later on paper. Finding birch bark letters by A.V. Artsikhovsky dispelled the legend about the extremely weak spread of literacy in Ancient Rus'. It turns out that at this time people willingly corresponded on various issues. Here is a letter from the Guest to Vasily about a difficult family case. Another letter is about a controversial or stolen cow, a third about furs, and so on. These are the finds of 1951. The correspondence of the townspeople of the 11th-13th centuries is drawn to us even more fully and brighter in the letters found during the excavations of 1952. Here are the demands to send “spindles” and “medvedna” (sacks and bear skins), correspondence about the dishonor of some nobleman, orders for trade and even reports of hostilities. Letters on birch bark are valuable because they give an idea of the daily life and activities of the townspeople with their petty concerns of personal and social order. At the same time, they are indisputable proof of the relatively widespread literacy in the cities of Ancient Rus' in the 11th-13th centuries. Mathematical, astronomical and geographical knowledge in Ancient Rus' Since the XIV century, the process of unification of Russian lands around Moscow began, and at the end of the XV - beginning of the XVI centuries. this process has ended. A Russian centralized state was created. But, its lagging behind the West was significant. Universities were already operating in Europe at that time, the market was developing, manufactories appeared, the bourgeoisie was an organized estate, Europeans actively explored new lands and continents. Scientific and technical knowledge in the XIV-XVI centuries. in Russian lands, in most cases, they were at the practical level, there were no theoretical developments. Their main source continued to be books by Western European authors translated into Russian. By the XIV-XVI centuries. Mathematics has received special development, first of all, in the practical aspect. The stimulus was the needs of church and state. However, the interest of the church was limited only to the area of the church calendar, questions of the chronological definition of holidays and church services. In particular, special works in mathematics translated from Latin made it possible to calculate Easter tables, which were brought up only until 1492. The needs of the state in the field of fiscal policy also formed a closer attention to mathematics. Various land surveying works were carried out, and, accordingly, knowledge of geometry was necessary. Astronomy occupied a special place in the field of natural sciences. Its development took place in several directions: the reproduction and systematization of old astronomical ideas, supplementing them with new knowledge; development of practical astronomy associated with the calculation of calendar-astronomical tables; attempts to present the system of the world in a mathematical perspective. Geographic knowledge in the XIV-XVI centuries. not much progress compared to the previous period. A distinctive feature of this period was the increase in the number of Russian people traveling abroad. Foreign aids served as sources of geographical information. For example, the Byzantine work "Chronograph", published in 1512. This work had a touch of fairy tale. Another translated work of this period - the geography of Lucidarius - gives superficial information about Western Europe, the geography of Asia is described in some detail, although it contains a lot of mythical information about the population of India, its animal world. In the XV-XVI centuries. philosophical knowledge actively penetrates into Russia. The country got acquainted with the ideas of Plato and Aristotle through translated literature. Thus, the main source of penetration of Aristotle's ideas was the Dialectic of St. John of Damascus. Approximately in the same period, the philosophical work of the Arab scientist Al-Ghazali "The Philosopher's Purpose", which professed the ideas of Neoplatonism, came to Russia. Of the Russian philosophers, it is necessary to single out the works of Yermolai-Erasmus on the cosmic significance of the Holy Trinity. The first parish schools under Vladimir I and Yaroslav the Wise The period of development of domestic education under princes Vladimir and Yaroslav the Wise is often recognized as the initial one in the entire history of this education, which is largely associated with Christian churches. Under the year 988 in the Tale of Bygone Years: “And (Vladimir) built a church in the name of St. Basil on the hill where the idol of Perun and others stood, and where the prince and people worked for them. And churches began to be erected in other cities and priests were identified in them, and bring people to be baptized in all cities and villages. the best people children and send them to book education. The mothers of these children wept for them; for they were not yet established in the faith, and wept for them as if they were dead" (the pagans were against Christian innovations). Polish historian Jan Dlugosh (1415-1480) about the Kyiv school of "book learning" "Vladimir ... attracts Russian youths to study the arts, in addition, he contains masters requested from Greece" . To create a three-volume history of Poland, Długosz used Polish, Czech, Hungarian, German sources, and ancient Russian chronicles. Apparently, from a chronicle that has not come down to us, he learned about the study of the arts (sciences) at the Kyiv school of Vladimir. According to rough estimates, the "school of Vladimir" with a contingent of 300 students in 49 years (988-1037) could train over a thousand educated pupils. Yaroslav the Wise used a number of them to develop enlightenment in Rus'. Teachers X-XIII centuries. due to the imperfection of teaching methods and individual work in the course of classes with each student individually, he could not deal with more than 6-8 students. The prince recruited a large number of children to the school, so at first he was forced to distribute them among teachers. Such division of students into groups was common in Western European schools of that time. From the surviving acts of the cantor of the schools of medieval Paris, it is known that the number of students with one teacher was from 6 to 12 people, in the schools of the Cluniy monastery - 6 people, in the women's elementary schools of Til - 4-5 students. Eight students are depicted on the miniature of the front "Life of Sergius of Radonezh", 5 students sit in front of the teacher on the engraving of the front "ABC" in 1637 by V. Burtsov. Approximately this number of students is evidenced by the birch bark letters of the famous Novgorod schoolboy of the 13th century. Onfima. One with a handwriting different from Onfim's (No. 201), hence V.L. Yanin suggested that this letter belongs to Onfim's school friend. Onfim's fellow student was Danila, for whom Onfim prepared a greeting: "Bow from Onfim to Danila." It is possible that the fourth Novgorodian, Matvey (letter No. 108), studied with Onfim, whose handwriting is very similar. Russian scribes who worked in advanced schools used their own version of the structure of subjects, which, to a certain extent, took into account the experience of Byzantine and Bulgarian schools that provided higher education. The Sofia first chronicle about the school in Novgorod: 1030. "In the summer of 6538. Yaroslav went to Chyud, and I won, and set up the city of Yuryev. And I came to Novgorod, and having collected 300 children from the elders and priests, teach them with a book." The school in Novgorod, founded in 1030 by Yaroslav the Wise, was the second higher type educational institution in Rus', in which only children of elders and clergymen studied. There is a version that in the annals we are talking about the children of church elders, who were elected from the lower classes, but until the end of the 16th century. only administrative and military elders are known. The term "church warden" appeared in the 17th century. The contingent of students in the Novgorod school consisted of the children of the clergy and the city administration. The social composition of the students reflected the class character of education at that time. The main task of the school was to train a competent and united by the new faith administrative apparatus and priests, whose activities took place in a difficult struggle against the strong traditions of the pagan religion among the Novgorodians and Finno-Ugric tribes that surrounded Novgorod. The activities of Yaroslav's school relied on an extensive network of elementary literacy schools, as evidenced by the large number of birch bark letters discovered by archaeologists, wrote, waxed tablets. On the basis of the wide spread of literacy, Novgorod book culture flourished. The famous Ostromir Gospel, Dobrynya Yadreykovich's description of Tsargrad, and Kirik's mathematical treatise were written in Novgorod. The Izbornik of 1073, the initial annalistic code, and a brief edition of Russkaya Pravda have been preserved for posterity. The Novgorod book depositories served as one of the main sources of the "Great Fourth Menaia" - a collection of "all the books that are in Rus'", consisting of 12 huge volumes with a total volume of over 27 thousand pages. In the year 6545. Yaroslav laid the big city, which now has the Golden Gate, laid the church of St. Sophia, the metropolis, and then the church of the Holy Mother of God of the Annunciation on the Golden Gate, then the monastery of St. especially the Chernorizians, and showed zeal for books, often reading them both at night and during the day. And he gathered a multitude of scribes who translated from Greek into Slavonic. And they wrote many books, according to which believers learn and enjoy the divine teaching. As it happens that one plows the land, another sows, and still others reap and eat food that never fails, so it is here. After all, his father Vladimir plowed and softened the land, that is, enlightened him by baptism, and we reap, receiving book teaching. After all, great is the benefit of the teaching of the book; books instruct and teach us the path of repentance, for we gain wisdom and temperance in the words of the book. These are the rivers that water the universe, these are the sources of wisdom, after all, there is immeasurable depth in books ... ... Yaroslav ... loved books and, having copied a lot of them, put them in the church of St. Sophia, which he created himself " The educational reform of Vladimir and Yaroslav strengthened Christianization in the lands of the future Russia and its neighbors, but the centuries-old pagan traditions had deep roots in the peoples of the country. "Grammarists" called themselves as professional scribes of South Slavic manuscripts, as Greeks were also called teachers - teachers full course grammar. Emperor Justinian in 534 established a reward of 70 solidi for eminent grammarians and assigned a number of other privileges to these teachers. Grammars were also taught at the Kyiv Palace School; after death, according to status, they were buried in the cathedral. The relics of the "Grammar" were transferred to the monastery, where Lazarus was the hegumen (mentioned under 1088). Practical application of knowledge in crafts and construction In Kievan Rus accumulated and actively used a variety of knowledge, technical achievements used in practical life: cities, fortresses and castles were built, metal was mined, tools and weapons were forged, ships and cars were built, fabrics and clothes were made, leather and shoes were made. For all these branches of craft, a wide variety of knowledge, skills and technical devices were required. From X to 20-30s. 12th century the first stage in the development of ancient Russian craft with a rather high production technology in terms of the Middle Ages stands out. At this time, the foundations of ancient Russian production were created. In particular, there was ferrous metallurgy based on the raw iron production process from swamp ores. Metallurgists living in rural areas, supplied the cities with a sufficient amount of iron High Quality, which the city's blacksmiths converted into high-quality carbon steel. Leather and furrier production, as well as the manufacture of leather shoes, were also developed. In Kievan Rus, several types of high-quality leather were known, and an assortment of woolen fabrics was widely represented. In handicraft production, there were various woodworking technologies that made it possible to manufacture the most complex turned vessels of more than 20 types. Jewelers' products for processing non-ferrous metal were diverse and the technique of jewelry craft was at a high technological level. The second period, which began at the end of the first third of the 12th century, was characterized by a sharp expansion of the range of products and, at the same time, a significant rationalization of production, which led to the standardization of products and the specialization of handicraft industries. The number of specialties at the end of the XII century. in some Russian cities it exceeded 100. For example, in metalworking, instead of high-quality multilayer steel blades, simplified blades appear - blades with a welded edge. In textile production at the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII century. (at the same time as in Western Europe) a horizontal loom appears. Russian weavers, using broad economic ties with the countries of Western Europe, were not far behind the European masters in the modernization of weaving production. Russian weavers specialized in the production of linen fabrics. In addition to looms, Russia used a variety of mechanical devices and machines, made mainly of wood: blowing bellows, lifting lever mechanisms, drills and gates, circular sharpeners and hand mills, spindles and reels, wheeled carts and a potter's wheel, crushes and pulps, turning machine tools, stone throwers, battering rams, crossbows and much more. Thus, scientific ideas of the world around were spread through translated literature in Kievan Rus, there were many literate and educated (in general) people, and schools operated. The technique of building temples and other structures, military fortifications developed (here it was necessary to operate with accurate calculations, to know the mechanics). Handicraft production in Rus', in terms of the variety of technological operations, the development and equipment of tools, and the level of specialization, stood on the same level as handicraft production in Western Europe and the East. However, scientific schools were not created, the development of knowledge was of an exclusively practical nature. From the second quarter of the thirteenth century the development of Russian lands was stopped by a powerful blow from the East, from the Mongol Empire, and the assertion of the vassal dependence of Rus' on the Golden Horde. Batu's invasion caused terrible damage to Russian cities - centers of progress and knowledge. Among the tragic consequences is the fact that the development of the Russian craft was interrupted, and yet it was in a state of upsurge. For more than a century, some types of crafts (jewelry, glass), techniques and skills (the technique of filigree, granulation, cloisonné enamel) were lost. Monuments of Russian architecture were destroyed. Stone city construction stopped for half a century. Many monuments of writing perished. As N.M. wrote Karamzin: "the shade of barbarism, darkening the horizon of Russia, hid Europe from us at the very time when ... the invention of the compass spread navigation and trade; craftsmen, artists, scientists were encouraged by the government; universities for higher sciences arose ... The nobility was already ashamed of robberies ... Europe did not found out: but for the fact that she has changed in these 250 years, and we have remained as we were. The situation in the Russian lands began to change in the second half of the 14th century, in particular, the pre-Mongolian level of development of production was reached. The prerequisites for this kind of industrial upsurge, of course, were the rise and strengthening of Moscow's position in the unification process, the tactics of Ivan Kalita and his sons to "avoid conflicts" with the Horde. The symbol of the revival was the construction of the white-stone Kremlin in Moscow during the reign of Dmitry Donskoy. conclusions The historical role of Byzantium in the fate of Europe, Kievan Rus, is enormous, the significance of its culture in the development of world civilization is enduring and, of course, fruitful. Byzantine art was exclusively great importance. Having made extensive use of the ancient heritage, Byzantine art acted as a repository of many of its images and motifs and passed them on to other peoples. The importance of Byzantine art was especially great for countries that, like Byzantium, adhered to the Orthodox religion (Bulgaria, Ancient Rus') and invariably maintained lively cultural ties with Constantinople (the imperial and patriarchal courts). In the history of world culture, Byzantium is the first Christian empire, an Orthodox power that opens the era of the European Middle Ages. The oldest durable medieval state, Byzantium for many centuries - the most powerful country in the Christian world, the center of a multifaceted, outstanding civilization. Sources 1.Istrin V.A. The emergence and development of writing, 2010 .Rozov N.N. Books of Ancient Rus' 9-14 centuries, 1977 .Florya B.N. The emergence of Slavic writing. Historical conditions of its development // Essays on the history of the culture of the Slavs. RAN. Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies. M., 1996 .Udaltsova Z.V. Byzantine culture. M., 1988. .#"justify">. Arsent'eva A.V., Mikhailova S.Yu. History of Science: Tutorial. Cheboksary, ed. Chuvash University. 2003. .Dyatchin N.I. History of the development of technology. M.: Phoenix, 2001, 320 p. .Puzyrev N.M. Brief history of science and technology. Proc. allowance. Tver, Tver University 2003-2004. .#"justify">. #"justify">. http://www.portal-slovo.ru/impressionism/39140.php - educational portal
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