Mark the meanings and essence of the Middle Ages. General characteristics of the Middle Ages

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the 17th century Professor at the University of Halle in Germany I. Keller introduced the term “Middle Ages” into the general periodization of world history, dividing it into antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times. The chronological framework of the period was designated by him as the time from the division of the Roman Empire into the Western and Eastern parts (ended in 395 under Theodosius I) until the fall of Constantinople under the attacks of the Turks in 1453.

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

The romantic trend in historiography, which emerged at the beginning of the 19th century. largely as a reaction to the ideology of the Enlightenment and the value system of the new bourgeois world, it sharpened interest in the Middle Ages and for some time led to its idealization. These extremes in relation to the Middle Ages were overcome by changes in the process of cognition itself, in the ways European people comprehended nature and society as a whole.

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

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

A significant deepening of the content of the analyzed terms was given by the science of the mid-late 19th century, the achievements of which were primarily associated with the formulation of a new philosophy of history - positivism. The direction that adopted the new methodology was the first most convincing attempt to transform history itself into a science. It was distinguished by its desire to replace history as an entertaining account of the lives of heroes with the history of the masses; attempts at a comprehensive vision of the historical process, including the socio-economic life of society; exceptional attention to the source and the development of a critical method of its research, which was supposed to provide an adequate interpretation of the reality reflected in it. The development of positivism began in the 30s of the 19th century. in the works of O. Comte in France, J. Art. Mill and G. Spencer in England, however, the results of the new methodology in historical research were felt later, by the second half of the century. Summarizing the results of the historiography of the 19th century, it should be emphasized that most often historical thought continued to define feudalism along political and legal grounds. Feudalism was depicted as a special political and legal organization of society with a system of personal, primarily seigneurial-vassal, connections, conditioned, in particular, by the needs of military protection. Such an assessment was often accompanied by the idea of feudalism as a system of political fragmentation.

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

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

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

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

In the 19th century In historical science, the structural term “formation” also appeared, associated with the design of Marxist methodology. This concept, on the contrary, expanded the boundaries of human community to the scale of the planet as a whole, highlighting the temporal division of the historical process, where the method of production and the form of ownership became the unit of reference. The systemic principle in the Marxist understanding connects different levels of social development with a single economic dominant. In the Marxist interpretation, feudalism was one of the methods of production, which is based on the ownership of land by feudal lords, realized through the medium of a small producer; At the same time, the fact of exploitation of the peasant by the land owner was especially emphasized. The monism of Marxist methodology, which was also highly politicized, was not accepted by most researchers at that time. The rigid determinism of the historical process with its division into primary - basic and secondary - superstructural phenomena, indeed, concealed the danger of its simplified understanding. In Soviet medieval studies, this danger was aggravated by the sacralization of the Marxist method, which enslaved science. The absolutization of the method violated the complex vision of the historical process and led to excessive enthusiasm for sociological schemes, which in a certain sense replaced the analysis of real life.

Historical knowledge of the 20th century has significantly enriched system analysis, in particular in relation to feudal society. The decisive impetus for its development was given by the “battle for history”, started in the 30s by representatives of French historical science, who created their own direction around the journal “Annals”. Having accepted the most important achievements of sociology of the 19th century. and, above all, the recognition of the systemic nature of the world, existing according to its own objective laws of development, they at the same time noticeably complicated the idea of the complexity of the historical process. The “sense of the great drama of relativity” characteristic of these historians (in the words of one of the founders of the movement, Lucien Febvre) led them to recognize the multiplicity of connections - material and personal - within the social system. This attitude broke the mechanical understanding of causality in history and the idea of unilinear development, and introduced into historical knowledge the idea of unequal rhythms of development of various aspects of the social process. A more complex interpretation of the concept of “industrial relations” was given, emphasizing their inextricable connection with the components of inquiry, since relations in the sphere of production are built by people who are guided by their ideas about them. New approaches returned a person to history, not necessarily a “hero” or creator of ideas, but an ordinary person with his everyday consciousness.

The synthesis of the achievements of world and domestic historical science of the 20th century allows us to give a deeper and more complete definition of the concepts of “feudalism” and “Middle Ages”, to the description of which we move on.

2. Give a comparative analysis of policies in Greece

3. Place events in the correct chronological order

A) Peloponnesian War

B) Solon's reforms in Athens

B) the reign of Pericles

D) the reign of Alexander the Great

D) the conquest of Greece by Rome

Write down your answer

6. Put events in the correct chronological order

A) Punic Wars

B) the founding of Rome

B) the collapse of the Roman Empire

D) the reign of Octavian Augustus

D) the reign of Gaius Julius Caesar

E) division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern

G) the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire

Write down your answer

7. Read a fragment from a work on the history of Ancient Rome and complete the tasks.

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

The long war in all areas around the Mediterranean Sea tired most of the people: many were looking for peace and crowded close to a strong man, hoping for his protection... Residents provinces accustomed to obey Rome; they didn't care if they sent a boss roman senate or a military ruler from Rome. The population of Rome itself put up with the ruler who was ready to give him the most.

But Octavian also achieved power through his patience and skill. He didn't accept the title dictator, which resembled the triumph of Sulla and Caesar; he did not want anything in the title or in the setting that would resemble a king, so as not to irritate the old habits and concepts of the Romans.

By the way, he accepted the title tribune. At the same time, Octavian constantly repeated that his main concern was to restore the ancient order in Rome. Octavian called himself princeps, i.e. the first person in the state. This meant that he was, as it were, considered authorized to exercise his power by the people. He decided not to frighten the population of Italy with military forces: the soldiers were taken away and placed along the borders. Finally, Octavin shared with the old gentlemen, nobles. In important cases princeps consulted with the Senate, as they used to do consuls.

It was decided that, as before, the Senate would dispose of the ancient provinces: the Senate would send there governors from its midst. The newly annexed border regions remained with Octavian... The troops were subordinate to Octavian, the soldiers swore allegiance only to him. He appropriated the old title of military emperor to himself alone; it now meant the power of the supreme commander-in-chief. Emperor was his name in the provinces. Octavian sent his officers and clerks to his regions to govern.

The people stopped convening meetings. However, the new ruler also had to please the capital's population, as the popular leaders or the Senate had previously done. He only took into his own account all the expenses that had previously been made for the benefit of the people by various persons. The princeps took upon himself the organization of entertainment, which the people persistently demanded...

When the new order was established, Octavian also accepted the new title of Augustus, i.e. sacred. This title turned to his name: the ruler clearly rose above everyone as a higher being.”

1) Write down the highlighted words and find definitions for them

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2) When did Octavian seize power in Rome?

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3) Why was he able to strengthen his power after winning the civil war?

4) What are the common features between the power of Octavian Augustus and the monarchy?

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5) What elements of the republican system were preserved during the period of the Principate and why?

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

When completing assignments on this topic, you must refer to the materials in the textbook by S. Samygin, S.I. Samygina V.N. Sheveleva, E.V. Sheveleva “History”: a textbook for secondary vocational education. M.: INFRA-M, 2013, p. 75−119.

1. Using the “Great Migration” map, write the names of the Germanic tribes that settled in the territory of the Western Roman Empire

2. Mark with a “+” sign the meanings and essence of the Middle Ages

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

4. Place events in the correct chronological order

A) the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe

B) the emergence of parliament in England

B) communal revolutions

D) formation of the Frankish kingdom

D) the creation of the Estates General in France

E) the beginning of the Hundred Years' War

G) War of the Scarlet and White Roses

H) Jacquerie

Write down your answer

6. Mark with a “+” the features characteristic of the feudal system of Europe in the X-XV centuries.

1.formation of large land ownership
2. agricultural production was based on the labor of small producers endowed with land, tools, livestock, and household property
3. Reduction of cultivated area
4. Internal colonization
5. Population decline due to the plague epidemic
6. The emergence of manufacturing
7. Expansion of the domestic market
8. Decline of overseas trade
9. economic and personal dependence of the peasants on the feudal lord
10. subsistence nature of the economy
11. the presence of feudal rent: in the form of labor and quitrent in kind or money
12. growth of crafts and cities

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

A) absolute monarchies

B) barbarian states

B) feudal fragmentation

D) estate-representative monarchies

8. Fill out the table. Estates of medieval society.

9. Mark the main true statements about cities with a “+” sign

1. Cities arose at the intersections of roads, at river crossings, near fortified places
2. Medieval cities were larger than ancient cities
3. Medieval cities were initially subordinate to spiritual and secular feudal lords
4. The growth of cities was associated with the rise of agricultural and craft production, and the development of trade
5. The communal movement led to the liberation of many cities from the power of the lords
6. Most medieval cities obeyed the king
7. All residents of the city were considered full citizens, regardless of property status
8. Craftsmen of the same specialty united in workshops, and merchants in guilds

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

Write down your answer

A	B	IN	G

§ 1 The concept of “Middle Ages”

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

The Middle Ages was a centuries-long period of the emergence, dominance and decay of feudalism. In European countries it lasted for the 12th century, in Asian countries even longer. It should be noted that the remnants of medieval traditions and customs in some Asian countries have not yet disappeared.

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

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

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

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

2. The middle of the 11th - the end of the 15th centuries - the heyday of feudal relations. There is a massive growth of cities, and after a period of feudal fragmentation, centralized states are formed. Commodity-money relations are developing. A new form of state emerges - the feudal monarchy. The ideology of early humanism and the culture of the Renaissance are being formed.

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

§ 2 Transition to feudalism

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

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

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

§ 3 Development of culture

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

It was in the Middle Ages that Christianity became one of the world's largest religions, exerting a tremendous influence on the development of medieval European civilization, which is what makes it unique.

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

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

§ 4 Brief summary of the lesson

The further the history of the Middle Ages is studied, the more complex and multifaceted it appears. To date, historical science does not represent this period as dark years of violence and ignorance. The medieval world appears before those who study it, not only as a natural stage in the development of society, but also as an original, unique era in the history of Europe with a unique culture - both primitive and sophisticated, which undoubtedly can spiritually enrich modern man with its acquaintance.

List of used literature:

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

Images used:

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

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST

Basic literature

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