Apocalypticism and socialism

(Heinrich Eiken. “History and system of medieval worldview.” Translated from German. V.N. Linda, with an introductory article by Professor I.M. Grevs. St. Petersburg, 1907. Page XL + 729.) The awakening interest in issues of religious and philosophical consciousness, naturally, among other consequences, also has the arousal of interest in the Middle Ages, as an era of intense and passionate religious life. The progress of historical science also contributes to satisfying this interest. “Only ignorance of medieval antiquity allowed the possibility of representing it as an era of deadening mental activity and hopeless decline of culture,” says Prof. THEM. Graves. “Medieval people thought animatedly and painfully, searched passionately and persistently... It would be a strange delusion to imagine them all as ignorant people. Barbarization was only a crust that then covered Europe, and even then not entirely.” Prof. Greves points out the inconsistency with the historical reality of those ideas about the Middle Ages of the rationalists of the 18th century, which are widespread even now, as a time of “general cruel barbarism, universal gloomy ignorance, a complete stop in the work of the mind on theoretical questions of knowledge of the world and practical requests for improving life.” In the mouth of superficial rationalism, the epithet “medieval” sounds disparaging (I myself have more than once heard and seen in print the application of this term to my own worldview, of course, in the sense of extreme humiliation and censure). One cannot help but be glad that Russian translated literature has been enriched with such a thorough and generalizing study of the history and system of the medieval worldview, as the voluminous book of the Jena professor G. Aiken 1, in a conscientious translation by V.N. Linda. There are not many books that can be read by an intelligent person with such exciting and almost unflagging interest as the work of Prof. Aiken 2, because it talks about the highest, last values ​​and depicts a grandiose and original attempt of historical humanity to establish and implement these values ​​in life. The Middle Ages are distinguished by their extraordinary, exceptional seriousness and passion of life, for this was the era of religious life, and every truly religious life represents something unique in its seriousness, passion and intensity. And what could be of more exciting interest than a sincere and passionate human life. Perhaps, thanks to historical distance, erasing all details and trifles and preserving only the sublime and grandiose, the Middle Ages are involuntarily symbolized with the majestic Gothic church, directed towards the sky and in its stone flight speaking of eternity, among train stations, theaters, restaurants and other architectural structures of our diverse and motley modernity. Any serious and genuine religiosity necessarily presupposes a kind of exclusivity, monoideism, which outside observers call “one-sidedness.” “I am a consuming fire,” Jehovah says about Himself, and this monoideism - whether it is beneficial or unprofitable, the assessment depends on the worldview - is extremely different from the Middle Ages, they are scorched and scorched by this flame of consuming religious fire. Pushkin brilliantly expressed this trait in his poem, and this verse just begs to be an epigraph to Aiken’s book. Intense idealism, the thirst for the transcendental and the bringing to it, seemingly invisible, of empirical, visible benefits, the unrelenting impulse of the soul upward, the tireless spiritual feat and the painful tragedy of its inevitable incompleteness - these are the features that force us to classify the Middle Ages as the heroic eras of history, although there are just as many reasons to classify them as barbaric. They scorch you with the sultry, sometimes fetid breath of clotted ascetic lips, a fold of tragedy is deeply etched on a face exhausted by fasting and agitated by prayer, this image may be heavy and scary, but it is full of greatness and those petty feelings that have bred modern philistinism and vulgarity are completely alien to it. What vision was presented to the “poor knight”, clad in the armor of a crusader warrior, dressed over it in a monastic robe? What is the ideal of the Middle Ages, for about this era, just as not about any other, it can be said that it had its own ideal, its own beacon on the way. This ideal is universal and grandiose, it wants to accommodate and realize the main Christian task - the Kingdom of God, and the means for its implementation is papal theocracy. To conquer the world to Christ, bowing it to the throne of the pope, proclaimed the vicar of Christ on earth, was the program and goal that inspired the best and strongest people of that time, and among them the most remarkable deputies of the papal throne, in a way that even the dreams of a socialist Zukunftstaat do not inspire in our days. It was not just about the ambition and lust for power of individual popes, but about a universal idea, about a whole worldview. To understand the historical features of the Middle Ages, you need to pay attention to the main features of medieval religiosity, in particular, religious metaphysics, to the unique understanding of Christianity, which is closer to the world-denying religion of Buddhism. This trait is asceticism, not as a religious rule, but as a metaphysical worldview, therefore, not as a means, but as an end. Not the sanctification of the world and the flesh, but their possible overcoming, not the deification of the earth, but earthlessness, complete and fundamental distrust of the world - this is what distinguishes the Christian worldview of the Middle Ages. It was based on the preferential isolation of only one feature of Christianity, which has significance only in connection with the whole, and on replacing this whole with it. Christianity, with its teaching about the reality and objectivity of the world’s evil, in which the world “lies,” is undoubtedly characterized by the denial of pagan spontaneity, that childish, undecayed trust in the “world” in the mind, which distinguishes, for example, the classical Greek in the early era of its existence. But in Christian metaphysics, the central place is occupied by the teaching that the world is saved and the flesh is deified by Christ, and therefore the reign of evil is only for a time and only partially, not substantial in relation to the world and the flesh, but only functional. However, the truths of Christianity are revealed vitally only in a long historical process (otherwise, what is history?); they are revealed, one might say with Hegel, dialectically. And in the historical break that Christianity experienced at the turn from antiquity to the Middle Ages, what should have been most strongly felt was the fundamental denial of forever surpassed paganism with its idea of ​​​​the existence of an “idyllic world between God, man and nature.” “For the ancient Greeks, nature was the cosmos, the soul of which was deity... Nature had a divine, and deity a natural character. The deity was in the same close relationship to man. No people merged the boundaries of the divine and the human as they did among the Greeks... The world of the gods of Greek Olympus was represented in images of sensual beauty. Sensory effects played the same role in it as in the human world, only they acted in the sphere of perfect beauty. In this latter sense, the Olympian gods were a moral ideal for the Greeks. Not abstract holiness, but eternal youth and eternal beauty were the distinctive properties of Greek deities. The moral principle of the Greeks is therefore aesthetically beautiful. Greek morality demanded the harmonious, uniform development of all mental moods and the containment of all feelings within the boundaries of order and measure... The contradiction of moral consciousness with sensual nature was unknown in the youthful period of the classical time of Greece, because the Greeks set themselves the task not of denying sensuality, but of its aesthetic ennoblement.” (Aiken, 19). That is why the ideal of Hellenic valor was formulated in the expression “καλός κἀγαθὁς,” almost indescribable for our aesthetic language. From this indifference of childish spontaneity and religious sleep, humanity had to awaken and was forever awakened by the Judeo-Christian teaching about evil, sin and redemption. It is not surprising that this side, this opposition to paganism, was felt first and most strongly by the “historical”, i.e. Christianity was involved in the process of historical development and maturation, and the first definition that it took in history was ascetic. Asceticism, world- and life-denial colors the entire worldview of the Middle Ages. “Therefore, the church teaching of morality was based not on the distinction between generally beneficial and selfish aspirations, but on the opposition of earthly interests to heavenly ones. The opposition of good and evil was reduced to the opposition exposed by Christian metaphysics between God and the world. Died 636 Spanish Bishop Isidore said: “Good is the desire for God, and evil is the desire for earthly gain and transitory glory.” Bernard of Clairvaux once inspired the fear of God with these words: “forget your people, your parental home, renounce your carnal inclinations, forget secular customs, refrain from your former vices,” etc. Catherine of Siena also put wealth and secular honor on the same level as religious sensuality. “The world,” she said, “is disgusting to God, and God is disgusting to the world; both have nothing in common with each other. The Son of God has chosen poverty, low status, ridicule, hunger and thirst, while the world seeks wealth, honor and pleasure.” The world was a “valley of tears,” and human life was a journey through this dark valley, filled with thousands of dangers and horrors, to the spiritual world of the future life, full of light and peace. Thus. the life of the soul essentially began at the moment when the life of the body ended. The death of the earthly body was the liberation of the soul. The natural relationship between life and death was reversed. This world-negative trend of the Middle Ages was most fully expressed in the essay “On Contempt for the World,” written by Pope Innocent III in 1198, when he was still a cardinal 3 . It says: “we die while we live and only then stop dying when we stop living.” Those who overcame the fear of death awaited their earthly end with passionate desire” (Aiken, 279–80). “Love (charites) is contempt for the world and love for God,” says the Cicterian abbot Ogerius. “Love for God removes a person from the world, and love for the world removes him from God.” The paradox of the medieval ascetic worldview lies in the fact that the same world-denying, earthless Christianity led to the desire to take possession of this denied world and this earth, as if to naturalize in this world. Transcendental metaphysics turned out to be associated with the clerical positivism of the Roman throne and its power-hungry plans. Those who did not know any values ​​​​in this world gave all their energy to master this world. “Asceticism and the dominion of the Church have penetrated into the very depths of the life of Western peoples. Their political and economic life, science, art, down to the smallest details of daily life, were uniformly determined by these ideas of church teaching. These two features ran through the entire structure of medieval thought; on the one hand, the suffering trait of renunciation of the world, on the other, the characteristic violent trait of worldwide conquest. A symbol of the Christian religion, the cross was in the Middle Ages the same “sign of mortification” as “victory over the world.” The Middle Ages won and conquered the world, while simultaneously denying it. Dying for the world meant the same as living for the Church... In all cases, when on the one hand the world was denied, on the other hand the Church was affirmed. The strengthening of asceticism had the necessary consequence of a corresponding strengthening of the temporal power of the Church. Both – the denial of the world and the worldwide dominion of the Church – were unambiguous concepts in the medieval worldview. The originality and essence of medieval culture lay in the full development of these two mutually determined aspirations. Only from this point of view of the equal significance of asceticism and the universal dominion of the priesthood does the spirit of medieval history become understandable. While the idea of ​​the universal dominion of the Church brings all earthly affairs into the circle of its activities, the Church itself sought, on the one hand, by virtue of its transcendental metaphysics, away from the earthly world, on the other, by virtue of its hierarchical principle, returned again to the world and its interests” (Aiken, 137). Aiken in his work gives a completely satisfactory explanation of the apparent contradiction between asceticism and the desire for power, in which others saw inconsistency or the fruit of the personal ambition and lust for power of the popes. “World denial and world dominion have their common starting point in the cross of Christ.” The reason for this lies in the desire of the medieval Church to violently save the world. Not knowing any independent values ​​in the world and believing that the only way of salvation could be its curbing and complete submission to the church organization, i.e., strictly speaking, to the clergy with the pope at its head, this latter entered into a life-and-death battle with the rebellious “world”; Denying every possibility, and, consequently, the task of enlightenment and sanctification of the world and the flesh, the church fell on them with all its then enormous weight and crushed them, suppressing them as much as it could. The Middle Ages never succeeded in completely and finally suppressing the world and giving triumph to the Church, but there was constantly a dull struggle between the rebellious world and the world-denying, but therefore world-embracing Church. Reality was a de facto compromise determined by the balance of forces. “The resistance that human nature, associated with the conditions of earthly life, offered to the supersensible world-powerful idea of ​​the Church, despite its overwhelming logic, was nothing more than a manifestation of the deep suffering of sensuality under the violence committed against it. This feature of suffering, caused by world denial, deeply marked on the physiognomy of the Middle Ages, was in popular history a reflection of the image of the Redeemer dying on the cross, in whom the Middle Ages saw an ideal example of human life. This characteristic feature of the suffering of feeling, denied by the religious idea of ​​the Church, transformed the world-powerful medieval Kingdom of God into a picture of the passion of the Lord” (Aiken, 306–07). The spiritual despotism of the Church put pressure on the entire medieval life, casting a kind of church-ascetic veil over all its areas. The main thing that he did not put up with and did not want to put up with, what he fought most fiercely, was the so familiar division of life into church and secular life. The Medieval Church fundamentally did not want to allow anything secular, i.e. alien to her and disobedient to her. As Aiken notes, “the religious spirit of the Middle Ages certainly rejected all secular culture, putting in its place the divine institutions of the Church. In its idea, the Church was not, as it claimed, unaware of its own goals, a supporter of secular education and the state legal order, but rather a principled opponent of them. The existence of the state and family, secular art and science was ensured only to the extent that they managed to protect themselves from the religious idea of ​​the Church. The destruction of existing secular institutions and the restoration of society according to the prototype of the ideal Kingdom of God - this is the main feature of medieval culture, correctly repeated in all its areas. Medieval culture created a grandiose system covering all relationships, the main idea of ​​which, the Christian idea of ​​redemption, was consistently carried out even in the smallest events of human life. From this thought all relations of the Middle Ages were derived. The entire area of ​​culture was transformed into the Kingdom of God on earth, into an allegorical image of the Kingdom of Heaven... The Church was a positive value that provided a mental image of the supersensible world. The idea of ​​the Kingdom of God meant nothing less than the worldwide power of the Church. Thus, the Middle Ages, on the one hand, trying to renounce the world, on the other hand, constantly returned to it. The denial of the world was tantamount to the transfer of all secular power to the Church, and the world power of the Church became the central point of the entire religious system. The gospel of love, since the emergence of the Church, has turned into a doctrine of domination and violence... The idea of ​​denying the world itself has become the source of the “secularization” of the Church. The more stubbornly the religious spirit tried to flee from the world, the deeper it had to plunge into worldly vanity. The denial of the world on the one hand determined an equivalent affirmation on the other. Through the Gospel of Poverty the Church has acquired incalculable riches; by its denial of sexual sensuality, it turned religious metaphysics into a system of the crudest sensual ideas; The gospel of humility helped the Church become the greatest and most powerful state of its time. This internal disintegration of the supersensible Kingdom of God contained the tragic contradiction of the medieval history of development” (Aiken, pp. 656–7). The ideal of Catholic theocracy is based on betrayal of the covenant of Christ. She fell into that temptation that was rejected by Christ in the desert, taking up the sword to create the Kingdom of God, and precisely not for some external, earthly and transitory goals, but for the establishment of holiness in people. Violent holiness, the dilemma: obedience to the Church or the fire - such was the attitude of the strongest people of this era, the spirit of which was so synthetically, with such amazing religious and historical clairvoyance, reproduced by Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor. About Pope Gregory VII, one of the greatest representatives of medieval theocracy, 4 his contemporary (Peter Damiani) once used a prophetic expression that makes one shudder: “Holy Satan.” Holy Satan! This is one of those lapidary expressions that characterize entire eras: both holiness and Satanism are equally characteristic of the Middle Ages. It is characteristic that the greatest people of the era, its “heroes” in the Carlylean sense of the word, fundamentally stand on the point of view of this “holy Satanism.” About Gregory VII we read: “He desired the dominance of the Church, but not out of personal lust for power, but out of ardent zeal for the divine idea expressed in the Church and its ministry. It was not personal arbitrariness, but the logical demand of the system that was the guiding thread of his plans for world domination.” “His life and teaching were not at odds with one another,” says Robert Wiscard’s heroic poem about Gregory. “He was distinguished in all virtues and burned with zeal for God,” notes Lambert von Gersfeld. This zeal for God forced him in 1073, when he saw disagreement with Henry IV, to write in a letter to the Duke of Lorraine Godfrey the Younger the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “Cursed is the man who withholds His sword from blood.” Then he plunged the Christian states and especially the German Empire into endless confusion and devastating wars, in order to erect a cross on the ruins of the world and establish the peace of the Kingdom of God.” A similar type of sincere devotion to the idea of ​​the Kingdom of God through the authority of the Church is represented by Norbert, the founder of the Order of Premonstratensians, and Bernard of Clairvaux, who taught: “To be killed or to kill for the sake of Christ is not a crime, but on the contrary, the greatest glory.” “A Christian is glorified by the death of the pagans, because Christ is glorified by it.” This unconscious blasphemy against Christ in the mouth of a saint of the medieval Church best characterizes its worldview. The Cicterian abbot Arno, who led the Albigensian wars of extermination, reported to Pope Innocent III about the capture of the city of Beziers: “ours did not spare either gender or rank; They killed about 20,000 people with the sword. A terrible confusion occurred between the enemies, the entire city was plundered and burned. The punitive judgment of God miraculously destroyed him.” Monk Peter of Vaud-Sermeysky described the events of the Albigensian War in the same spirit: after the capture of the city of Lavor in 1211, the soldiers of the crusader army “with extreme joy burned countless heretics.” When taking possession of another fortified place, the bishops at least first made an attempt at conversion, since the fortress was not taken by storm, but surrendered on condition. But since this attempt was unsuccessful, the soldiers rushed at the heretics and burned them “with extraordinary joy.” Later, in the thirties of the XIII century. Dominican monks walked around the North German countries and preached a war of extermination against the Stedings, and they were exterminated in the same way as the Albigensians. The terrible embodiment of “Holy Satan” is Bishop Conrad of Marburg, a real type of “Grand Inquisitor”, who fell at the hands of murderers, after which, according to the chronicle, “people sighed again joyfully and cheerfully.” The indicated distinctive feature of the Church’s worldview, namely, that it considered it completely consistent with Christianity to give it an imaginary triumph by fire and sword, this presence in it of the spirit of the Grand Inquisitor or “Saint Satan,” led it to an inevitable clash with the state. And indeed, quarrels with him over power, disputes about whose hands the sword should be in, filled the Middle Ages, until this issue received a final and authoritative resolution in the bull of Boniface III of 1302, which decreed: “both swords are in the power of the Church, spiritual and secular; one is used for the Church, and the other - by the Church itself; one by the priesthood, the other by kings and warriors, but according to the will and discretion of the priesthood.” The arming of the Church with armor, armor and the sword thus became a dogma of the Catholic faith. In its struggle with the state, the Church seeks to undermine its fundamental foundations, to humiliate and discredit it. This argumentation is curious, developing into a kind of hierocratic anarchism, the tip of which is turned towards the secular, godless, unsanctified state. What is the right of the state to exist or, since the state is the source of positive law, what is the jus juris? The religious metaphysics of the Middle Ages saw the reason for the origin of the state solely in the sinful nature of man; it had no place in the blissful primitive state. “By virtue of sin one man has power over another, but by the law of God man has power over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air,” noted the Archbishop of Milan in his greeting to Emperor Frederick I. Pope Gregory VII traced the origin of the state directly to the devil. “Who does not know,” he wrote to the Bishop of Metz in 1081, “that kings and princes come from those who do not know God, and in blind greed and intolerable insolence strive to command their own kind through arrogance, violence, treachery, murder, in general, almost all kinds of crimes, with the assistance of the devil, as the prince of this world.” Innocent IV, in a letter to the emperor, spoke as follows regarding the origin of the state: “Tyranny, the lawless and fragile power that previously operated throughout the world, Constantine put into the hands of the Church, and what he previously possessed and used unfairly, he now received from a real source in the form of a venerable gift.” According to Avarius Pelagius, “only wicked people established a secular state at the beginning of the world, which is why before the flood the first ruler among people was Cain; after the flood, those who were the first to receive worldly government came from the cursed tribe of boors” (Eiken, pp. 316–317). This was the attitude of the Church towards the state, and it was no better towards the sovereigns. John of Salisbury calls secular princes servants of the priesthood, “who must perform a part of sacred duties unworthy of the hands of a priest.” The Carthusian prior Guice of Grenoble, who died in 1137, wrote: “the mode of action of kings and princes is such that they want to exalt themselves not through their own improvement, but through the harm done to other people and their humiliation.” Pope Innocent IV called Frederick II a “dragon” and other kings “snakes.” A similar attitude was manifested in fiction. It is curious that in the Middle Ages we already encounter the theory of the contractual origin of the state, which had such revolutionary application in the 18th century. Then it was used naturally to once again discredit and discredit the state. “Know,” the Archbishop of Milan said to Emperor Frederick I in 1158, “that every right of the people to legislation has been transferred to you. Your will is right, as it is said: quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem, for the people transferred all their dominion and all their power to him.” From this position, the same conclusions were sometimes drawn as in the 18th century: “Isn’t it clear,” asked Mansgold von Lauterbach, “that it is fair to take away the assigned title and free the people from subordination to one who himself previously violated the agreement by which he was elevated to this title.” From here another conclusion was drawn, more characterizing the era, namely that “both royal power and the priesthood, as Innocent IV said, exist in the people of God, the priesthood by divine calling, and royal power by human compulsion.” Based on this idea of ​​the different nature of the Church and the state, representatives of the Church sought to consistently distinguish between these spheres. The question of the separation of Church and state was also raised in the Middle Ages, but received practical resolution in the external subordination of the state to the authority of the Church in the person of the pope. Gregory VII repeatedly stated, citing the testimony of the ancient Church, that the “freedom” of the Church was the goal of his aspirations. However, “in the name of this freedom all the Church’s incursions into the sphere of secular authorities were justified.” For the sake of “freedom of the Church,” Innocent IV ordered the deposition of Frederick II and the appointment of a new king and, finally, preached a crusade against the Staufens. Even the brutal persecution of heretics was supposed to serve to restore “ecclesiastical freedom,” as Pope Gregory IX explained in bulls issued in 1233 and 1239” (Aiken, p. 331). The Church sought to remove from the sphere of influence of the disrespected, even despised state, not only church affairs, but also all tasks in general, except for internal and external defense. The theory of the watchdog state, which F. Lassalle ridiculed and rejected in his polemics with Prussian liberals, also originated in the Middle Ages. “All ideal cultural tasks, science and art and schools promoting their study were completely transferred into the hands of the Church. Then the state was removed from the entire area of ​​charity, from caring for the poor and sick, since it was assumed that acts of merciful love primarily concerned the Church. In the same way, all those departments of civil and criminal law that, one way or another, directly or indirectly affected the interests of future life were brought under the jurisdiction of the Church. In any case, the Church had, or at least claimed the right to, jurisdiction in cases of guardianship and wills, in disputes about tithes and patronage, cases of such crimes as blasphemy, sacrilege, violation of the sanctity of marriage, etc. were subject to its trial. Conscription and warfare, monetary regalia, collection of taxes and duties, limited sovereignty of the court and police power constituted the entire content of the medieval state” (Aiken, p. 328). Having degraded the state in its functions, the Church wanted to retain supreme sovereignty over it and, in accordance with its needs, elevate or remove emperors from the throne, take away the primacy from one nation and transfer it to another. The power of the pope, of all kinds, including earthly, was, as Raymond of Sabunda’s “Natural Theology” taught, “limitless, boundless and immeasurable.” Naturally, the state could not submit to the immensity of these claims without a fight. The litigation between the church organization and the state over prerogatives has been ongoing throughout medieval and modern history, and its last acts are being played out before our eyes in the form of the final separation of Church and state in France. The clericalization of the state in the Middle Ages necessarily gives way to its laicization in modern times. But the medieval ideas about the ownership of both swords by church power are still alive in Rome and the countries associated with it, and dreams of the restoration of order, over which history has forever made an indelible inscription: mene, tekel, fares, have not yet died. As we said, the ascetic metaphysics of the Church, in connection with its desire to extend its power and authority to all areas of life, led to general paralysis, a state of oppression, under which was hidden the struggle of a rebellious, internally not defeated, but only externally conquered element against the tutelage of power. Asceticism leaves its mark both on the economic activity of the Middle Ages and on the attitude of the Church to material culture. In relation to material culture, the point of view of religious pedagogy was adopted, moreover, what is most characteristic here is its exclusively individualistic formulation, which did not at all accommodate the problem of the role of material culture and the growth of national wealth as a necessary condition for the development of world history (and, consequently, the advent of the Kingdom of God). Economic issues were considered only in connection with personal moral training. Thanks to its moralism, the Church brought greater principled rigor to the assessment of economic relations. So, for example, many centuries before any socialist criticism of capital, the Church was an irreconcilable opponent of interest on capital and fought against it through legislation, and also fundamentally denied private property and the accumulation of wealth in private hands (even Proudhon’s formula was expressed almost verbatim by Heisterbach in his homilies: “every rich person is a thief or the heir of a thief”). In general, the Church introduces a moral principle into the dark and most often immoral and usually immoral area of ​​economic relations, preaching abstinence, moderation, and philanthropy. But at the same time, due to the same moralism, reminiscent of Tolstoyism here, the Church was not only a conservative force, but also a reactionary one; Trying to maintain the primitive natural economic system for eternity and not opening up the possibility of economic progress, which was spontaneously necessary, she thereby doomed herself to the fact that this element would break through against her will and outside her influence. Individualistic asceticism is insufficient to establish an encompassing fundamental attitude towards the national economy, which is a social process that has its own super-individual laws and thereby leaves its mark on individual morality and activity. The ascetic metaphysics of the Church had a strong influence on another powerful element of life - sexual love. Needless to say, chastity was the highest virtue here, marriage was only tolerant, and the only acceptable love was transcendental, for the heavenly Bridegroom or for the Madonna, which sometimes received a sensual connotation. Of course, the Church never managed to achieve complete victory in this regard and eradicate earthly love, but it created a spiritual atmosphere full of unique erotic-ascetic experiences. These questions are closely related to the metaphysics of sex and, although this side of the Middle Ages seems to be one of the most interesting, we will not dwell on it now, afraid to touch on this important, difficult and still dark issue in a cursory magazine essay. The ascetic denial of the world and the independent value of its interests was also expressed in the attitude of the Church to all spiritual culture, i.e. to science, art. All this was recognized and allowed only insofar as it received the sanctification of the Church, was within its boundaries, and met one or another of the needs of the Church. There was only a utilitarian attitude towards spiritual culture, as a means for the purposes of the Church, but not as an independent value. This region, which was in its way even more difficult to conquer than the state, seemed to inspire the most suspicion and fear. There was an entire culture that had developed outside of any influence of the Church and was therefore alien to it; this was the ancient world. And war was declared on ancient culture, it was banned, joining it was also allowed only for the same utilitarian reasons, since it was possible to borrow an apologetic tool from there. Thomas Aquinas called the desire to know things a sin, since it did not have in mind the final goal of all knowledge, i.e. knowledge of God. Roger Bacon argued that science that had no connection with Christian doctrine “led to hellish darkness” (Aiken, p. 524). The policy of the Church aimed at implementing these requirements led to real obscurantism, for example, a number of councils prohibited the clergy from studying law and medicine. Philosophy, naturally, was assigned only a service role in theology. Historical science also served this task. It is interesting to note that the greatest idea of ​​the 19th century - the idea of ​​evolution and even progress - was characteristic of medieval historiography. “Medieval historiography looked at the state of God of the Roman Church as the goal of human development, in which the history of all peoples found its unity. It saw in the succession of peoples in time a constant approach to this universal goal. Thus, historical science, considering the destinies of peoples from the point of view of the Christian state of God, has adopted the concept of development. The exposition of the progressive development of the state of God represented the medieval philosophy of history” (Aiken, p. 569). The influence of the Church on both lyrical and dramatic poetry was similar. Regarding the first, one can note the persecution of folk songs and secular subjects, although this persecution did not achieve its goal and was not able to eradicate secular poetry. “Monasticism was both the creator of poetry and its subject. Religious songs, legendary stories and isolated dramatic experiences, with few exceptions, emerged from monastic cells. Over the course of approximately three centuries, from the 9th to the half of the 12th century, the monastery almost completely enslaved poetic literature. During this period of time, literature was, in essence, nothing more than the glorification of religious metaphysics and spiritual vocation. The concepts of beauty and ideal merged with the concept of church holiness” (Aiken, p. 621). As for epic and dramatic poetry (church mysteries), their content and themes were also narrowly ecclesiastical. “The birth, suffering and death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, the earthly life and suffering of the Virgin Mary, and the martyrdom of the saints were the source from which dramatic poetry drew its subjects” (Aiken, p. 611). In general, poetry was required to be not so much religious in its internal mood as tendentious in its choice of themes, plots and treatment, and only through smuggling, in opposition to the Church, could secular, free poetry develop. In the field of fine arts we observe the same ascetic principles. The Middle Ages did not want to recognize beauty separated from holiness in the church sense, the beauty of human flesh. “When a person finds pleasure in the beauty of the body,” says Bernard of Clairvaux, “then his heart moves away from love for the Creator. The more we enjoy the external forms of the body, the more we move away from supersensible love.” Accordingly, even the external image of Christ was a denial of external beauty, and this feature became increasingly stronger as the Middle Ages progressed: “let’s start in the 13th century, with the development of Gothic art, the subject of artistic depiction becomes the Savior, forcibly tortured by the world to death.” The attributes of torture and signs of suffering are deliberately emphasized. True, at the same time, art depicted Mary as the most beautiful image of a woman, but this was only to highlight her untainted influence of the world and sin. A distinctive feature of medieval art is also that the character of individuality was completely erased and disappeared in the images of figures; it knew only typified or stylized images. Finally, in architecture, the ascetic worldview was reflected, along with disdain for the structure of private dwellings, in the creation of churches, these eternal monuments of medieval piety, which remain unsurpassed in the intensity of inspiration of the new time with all its construction technology. “The denial of material conditions in style and technique was the guiding idea of ​​the art of construction. With its spatial proportions and its system, it achieved the point that it seemed as if it had victoriously overcome the earthly heaviness of matter. The same spirit, striving to free itself from all earthly conditions, which manifests itself in style, also appears in technology. Gothic art disposed of its material in a way that was completely contrary to the nature of that material: the filigree work of the towers, the perforated walls of the galleries, and the fine work of the window columns would have been more consistent with the nature of wood or metal than with the rough stone material” (Aiken, p. 647). The entire medieval Church has this impulse to fly upward, turning stone and lead into light wings, but their weight presses to the ground and resists the proud plan. And this is a tragedy, serious, deep, irreparable, putting its stamp on this era. She was doomed to an internal struggle with worldliness, which weakened her building energy, and to an external struggle with rebellious flesh and matter, which, like a crushed spiral or compressed steam, developed resistance, the greater the pressure. Therefore, “the world, which was an allegorical image of the hierarchical Kingdom of God, remained an unfinished work of a sublime style.” At the same time, ideological protest and denial of the theocratic idea itself have matured in history. The theocratic ideal of the Church was contrasted with the ideal of a free personality and a free religious conscience. Humanism and the Reformation usher in a new era in which we now live. Modern times can be understood precisely as a reaction against the Middle Ages, as a rebellion against their spiritual despotism and violence, as an antithesis to the thesis, which, according to Hegel, reflect on each other. The Middle Ages denied the independent value and originality of culture and did not know how to define their relationship to ancient, pagan antiquity, to all pre-Christian and extra-Christian culture in general, except by naked denial of them; antiquity was forbidden fruit. And now the first manifestation of the reaction against the medieval worldview is the restoration of antiquity; the discovery of classical antiquity, the restoration of a universal, unified human tradition is the first historical work of the era of humanism. The Middle Ages treated with undisguised contempt and fundamental denial the rights and needs of the human person as such, the natural person. They knew only the whole - the Church and the members of this Church, reduced to the role of its obedient instruments. The reaction against the medieval worldview was supposed to break this iron ring of universalism that crushed the individual, and proclaim the rights of the individual, the rights of the natural person, who was not at all transformed in the Church, but was only suppressed. This was the second and main task of humanism. As noted historian of the Italian Renaissance Jacob Burkhart notes, in the era of humanism modern man was born and, consequently, modern individualism was born. It seems to me in general that, in essence, humanism should be called not only a certain era of the Renaissance, but all of modern history, for this name, in contrast to medieval theocratism, best expresses its historical essence, and its tasks, and its one-sidedness. Of course, individualism arose not as an isolated fact of consciousness or one bare recognition of the rights of the human person, a natural person, but along with it and his entire life environment, both external and internal. Russian historian of humanism, the late professor M.S. Korelin points out the following features that characterize humanistic individualism: “firstly, a person’s interest in himself, in his inner world; secondly, interest in the outside world is mainly in another person; thirdly, the conviction in the high dignity of human nature in general and in the inalienable right of man to develop his abilities and satisfy his needs; fourthly, interest in the surrounding reality, since it has an impact on a person” 5. Humanism and the Renaissance were an actual protest and denial of medieval ascetic theocratism. Since, however, religion remained a living historical force and the Church retained its religious authority, a religious justification of the accomplished fact was also required, as well as a religious protest against the teachings and practices of the Church. This religious shell of the demands of humanistic individualism was given by the Reformation, which, on the one hand, opposed the claims of church universalism to the rights of the believer, the religious individual, which found justification in the dogmatic doctrine of justification by faith and in criticism of church teaching on the sacraments and hierarchy. On the other hand, the Reformation religiously justified the secularization of culture that had already begun in the humanistic movement. The Reformation not only contained a denial of the metaphysics of asceticism, but also generally relegated the role of the Church, which it considered a simple society of believers, to the position of one of many institutions or factors of historical life, fundamentally denying the very task of the Church to embrace all aspects of life and thereby paving the way for solitary pietism, united with the philistinism of life. Aiken quite rightly points out this significance of the Reformation. “Ascetic church morality, which derived the state, marriage, property and profit from a sinful beginning, was defeated (?) by the reformatory doctrine of justification. The latter did not put religious beliefs and concern for the salvation of the soul in conflict with worldly affairs, like the Roman Church, but looked at them as a real practical area of ​​​​action of faith. The teaching of the Reformation recognized the state as a direct divine institution, and not one that was conditioned by the mediation of the Church... The Reformer looked upon economic labor not as an institution necessary only in view of the sinfulness of human nature and an obstacle to the state of Christian perfection, but as a condition absolutely necessary for the establishment of man's right to existence. Religious edification and earthly activity were for him inextricably linked human tasks... Therefore, the Reformation separated from the Church the entire area of ​​civil order of life, the state, family and economic policy, in accordance with their legal nature and left them to their own direction. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession spoke on this issue in the following words: “this whole point about the difference between the Kingdom of Christ and the civil kingdom is usefully interpreted in the writings of our writers in the sense that the Kingdom of Christ is spiritual, i.e. gives in the heart the beginning of the knowledge of God, the fear of God and faith, eternal justice and eternal life, while in external life it allows us to use the legal and state order existing among different peoples, under which we live, just as it allows us to use the art of medicine, the art of construction, food, drink and pleasures” (Libri Symboliki ecclesiae Lutheranue). Consequently, the Reformation extended its scope as much to the state, family, and economic activities as to religious beliefs. Luther was a reformer of the first, no less than of the last” (Aiken, pp. 709, 713–14). The Reformation recognized the Church as only one of many aspects of human life, while humanism in its extreme manifestations, especially in modern times, is not averse to completely eliminating it from the historical arena. And so the majestic cathedral, aspiring to the sky, which in the Middle Ages dominated over the poor, pitiful and insignificant buildings molded around it, which was the only building in the city, begins in the course of modern history to be equipped with new and alien structures that surround it, increasingly crowd it, sometimes close it from view and actually turn from the only one into only one of many buildings in the city, according to the ideas of the Reformation, the building, moreover, is sometimes sealed and non-functioning (as in the era of the Great French Revolution), according to the aspirations of already paganized humanism. The medieval cathedral, which saw no rival in itself and was not only a house of prayer, but also a meeting hall, a theater (mystery), a court, an academy, etc., was now surrounded by palaces of secular sovereigns, museums with collections of statues of pagan antiquity and the latest works of art, theaters, universities, factories, labor exchanges, and future socialist phalansteries were being laid. Among other “attractions,” tourists visit these cathedrals. This picture of the city symbolically expressed the entire enormous change that took place in the consciousness of historical humanity during modern times. The true spiritual architects of modern times were, without a doubt, the humanists and reformers with Luther at their head who fought against the medieval Church, and modern history only develops and embodies their ideals. From the grain thrown by them, a multi-branched tree grew... The Middle Ages and modern times are so opposite and, at the same time, so similar to each other, like the concavity and convexity of the same relief, viewed from two sides. The Middle Ages knew only the divine principle in life, which, as a divine-human process, must be a total and free interaction of the divine and human principles; seeking in the name of this divine principle to crush the human principle and its freedom, they fell into holy Satanism, into blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (for “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”). On the contrary, modern times, in their one-sided reaction against the Middle Ages, tend to completely forget about the divine principle, being completely absorbed in the development of humanity, the humanistic element, and stands on the border of atheism, almost uncontrollably turning into pagan polytheism and idolatry (for religious nature does not tolerate emptiness, and in this sense one can repeat the polysemantic and mysterious expression that antiquity attributed to Thales of Miletus: πάντα πλἧραθεῷν, and from where the spirit of God departs, evil spirits appear). The Middle Ages recognized an earthless sky and only tolerated the earth as an inevitable evil; modern times know mainly the earth, and only for private, personal use, as if on holidays in a church, does it remember the sky. The Middle Ages set monastic obedience as the highest ideals, the sign of a voluntary slave in the name of the cross of Christ; modern times wrote on the banner of human freedom and its establishment in history, the free creativity of culture, for which there are no boundaries or laws except man himself. The medieval Church wanted to be everything, denying and suppressing it all; it wanted to be a positive unity, while at the same time denying all plurality. Therefore, it actually became the unity of emptiness, a bad, formal unity - a uniter without a united one, for positive unity can only be established by free unity, true conciliarity, but not by the violent discipline of clericalism. On the contrary, the new, humanistic age is plurality without unity, positive everything, still in the process of its formation - pluralism, which cannot remain final, but must be reduced to monism in thought, feeling, knowledge, life - individualism, which longs to defeat the corrupting, atomizing influence, trying different forms of external unity, a false semblance of true conciliarity, but for now unsuccessfully. For, after all, the true, the only possible conciliarity, the real overcoming, and not just the negation of individualism, is achievable only in the Church, which alone therefore belongs by right to the name of one and conciliar, but not in the state, not in the economic union. The meaning of this historical era can be expressed in the following words of Vl. Solovyov, as he said in the preface to “Critique of Abstract Principles”: “Great is the truth and prevails! The all-unified divine wisdom can say to all the false principles, which are all its creations, but in their discord they have become its enemies - she can tell them with complete confidence: “Go straight in your paths until you see the abyss before you; then you will renounce your discord and you will all return, enriched by experience and consciousness, to your common Fatherland, where for each of you there is a throne and a crown, for in the house of My Father there are many mansions." Most of our contemporaries arrogantly regard the Middle Ages as a past that has been experienced and outlived, internally overcome. This is also the view of Aiken, who in the new time sees the final synthesis, therefore, the reconciliation of the contradictions posed in history by internally overcoming them, the last, final - not in the sense of chronology, but in the sense of completeness and internal completeness - the word of history. Based on what has been said, we cannot share such an attitude: the Middle Ages remain a rejected and outlived, but not at all outlived and not overcome, era of history, and “modern time” is not at all the last word of historical development, for its incompleteness, or its relativity, is already clear to us. Moreover, this historical era is completely correlated with the era of the Middle Ages and cannot be correctly understood without this correlation, without the mutual reflection of thesis and antithesis, as we expressed above. This consciousness of the revealed relativity and internal limitations of our historical era does not at all presuppose its actual, chronological completeness, which comes only upon reaching full historical maturity. The path of humanistic culture as an “abstract beginning” (in the sense of Vl. Solovyov) must be completed to the end, and its temptations must be completely eliminated. It is necessary to complete the construction of this building, although already understanding that this is not the highest form, not the last word of architecture, but, in a certain sense, only historical scaffolding, and partly the material for the final construction. In historical development, each link in the dialectical chain seems equally necessary. Therefore, you can work on your next historical work, already realizing the limitations of these historical tasks and seeing the possibility of something completely different, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively new. In a similar way, it is now possible and must now work in Russia for the liberation movement, although the relativity of its tasks even within the visible historical horizon and what has already been achieved by cultural peoples is quite clear. The humanistic era of human history instinctively feels this main weakness of its own - the undefeated plurality, the disorder of its cosmos, and it tries to free itself from it by establishing something like a humanistic theocracy. This desire was quite clearly expressed in the religion of humanity, which was preached in the 19th century by L. Feuerbach 6 and O. Comte; for the latter, the cult of the religion of humanity even takes on the outward guise of Catholicism. “Humanity” is the deified macrocosm for the new man, and he grasps at this semblance of a church with instinctive greed in order to free himself from the oppressive and otherwise ineradicable loneliness and isolation. That is why the religion of humanity makes such progress in the 19th century, as the most recent and mature era of humanistic culture. This religion takes on different forms and in modern times is most often combined with socialist theories of progress. The greatest resemblance to a church association, the most deceptive surrogate and semblance of a church is found in modern socialist Catholicism, also, like medieval Catholicism, which claims, although with much less right and success, to comprehensively determine the life of its adherents and create its own special culture 7 . However, empirical humanity, as it exists in history in a number of changing generations, does not yet form that real unity that is attributed to it in its religions; it exists as a whole only in abstraction. In addition, any attempt to turn him into a deity leads to irremovable contradictions and simply absurdities 8. The situation is no better with the microcosm, with the human personality. The humanistic era is distinguished by the extreme development of individualism; it liberates the individual and especially cherishes it. But, losing the unity of humanity, it also loses the absolute core of personality, which is reduced to the level of an empirical fact, a simple knot in the chain of causality. An attempt to exalt a natural person, outside of his relationship to the Divine, to turn him into a man-god, faces, on the one hand, the fact of the undoubted presence in him of a man-beast, which is unbridled by this self-aggrandizement, and on the other, with the danger of turning the human personality no longer into a man-god, but simply into a god (or self-god), into the “superman” of Nietzsche or the “Only One” of Max Stirner, for whom there are no co-humans. The pendulum of modern individualism therefore inevitably swings between base bestiality or philistine vulgarity on one side and megalomania, which ultimately resolves into a cry of hysterical impotence, on the other. One of the most important reasons for this is that the age of individualism, the cult of personality, in the end, does not have an indisputable ideal of the individual, but only craves it. The medieval, church ideal of holiness, largely ascetic, was generally rejected or lost. The ancient ideal of “kalokagathia,” which they sometimes try to restore consciously or unconsciously, has already been outlived forever by humanity, which cannot erase from its history either the Middle Ages or their vote of no confidence in the world. The spontaneity and naivety of the ancient world are lost forever. Attempts to imitate Hellenism produce the same impression as bright blush applied to an aging face. The crisis of humanistic individualism, the consciousness of its groundlessness, must come sooner or later as attempts are made to find solid ground, and it has already come or is coming. In modern times, the state has also acquired exceptional importance. It seems to represent the only tangible form of universal human unity. Hence the temptation to even equate the human macrocosm with the state is understandable. For example, the main teacher of humanistic socialism, L. Feuerbach, fell into this temptation. In general, modern socialism, in essence, carries even further than other teachings the idea of ​​the salvation of the state unity of people, for it poses new complex tasks of an economic nature to the state and expects from state regulation of production and economic life the establishment of harmony and peace, in general, the real unification of mankind. However, in modern society a crisis of statehood is already brewing. Doubts are being increasingly expressed about the very right of the state to exist, i.e. on the application of the system of organized coercion that the state necessarily is, as well as on the state’s ability to resolve the tasks prescribed for it. The beginning anarchist movement is a crisis of the idea of ​​state unity of people and their forced salvation through the state; if the ideal of violent salvation was rejected even when it was presented in the name of the Church, in the guise of “holy Satanism,” it is all the more difficult to affirm it now, when only the actual self-affirmation of Leviathan is presented for it, if Satanism, then without any holiness. A distinctive feature of all humanistic culture is its spiritual fragmentation; True, this multiplicity expresses its richness and completeness, but at the same time its incompleteness. The Middle Ages exhibited one common and only shrine, which they wanted to capture in all branches of culture; modern times do not have such a common shrine; they know many special values, but these are values ​​only for specialists and for special areas that have no connection with each other, and they may even contradict each other. The Church in the Middle Ages established a completely principled attitude, for example, to economic life; it was determined by the application of the church-ascetic ideal to this area. The economic life of modern times is either subordinated to the dominance of natural instincts, or it recognizes only its own, special, by no means universal human norms, of which the main one is: increase wealth. But since wealth can receive, as a means, completely different meanings and uses, and can serve as wings and paths for the human spirit, then on its basis, along with true culture, ugly, corrosive philistinism, or disgusting pagan hedonism, develops. (I call him pagan, as opposed to pagan, for, as noted above, simple-minded paganism is now impossible). In the field of spiritual culture, the same multiplicity or the same confusion is observed. Science is turning into sciences, into separate specialties, increasingly alienated from each other 9 . In philosophy and art there are also mutually negating and mutually destroying directions. However, it is appropriate to express complete and undoubted confidence that these differentiation and fragmentation can only be temporary and transitory phenomena here. The human spirit is too thirsty for unity to easily put up with its own fragmentation, and the ideal of science and philosophy - integral knowledge, as well as the ideal of art - integral creativity, artistic transformation of the world and life, will not fade in the human soul, enlightened by the unifying Logos, but can only be temporarily eclipsed. In the meantime, all these disparate beginnings go their own ways and must go separately on their own independent path to the end. So, we cannot recognize humanistic culture as the highest product of history, as its mature fruit. We do not mean the quantitative degree of its development - of course, it can still progress far, but the qualitative insufficiency of its very foundations, its non-religiousness and therefore fragmentation and groundlessness. Her vague desire for unity is a desire to affirm the religious, divine principle in life, which was rejected along with the medieval theocracy. In it, in this theocracy, not only the false and violent historical form was rejected, but also the deep truth contained in it, at least in a hint, namely, that religion, seriously understood and sincerely accepted, cannot and should not be reconciled with the role of only one of the aspects of life, somewhere in the corner where flexible Protestantism relegates it, with the position of a hanger-on of civilization, no, it must inevitably strive to embrace everything, contain and illuminate the whole life. And formally, the Middle Ages were right in posing this problem, which they tried to solve, unfortunately, by unsuitable and contradictory means, which caused the reaction of humanism against themselves, the triumph of the free and unjustly oppressed human principle. There is no complete truth to the same extent either in medieval theocratism or in the latest irreligious humanism. The mature fruit of history can only be recognized as the free triumph of the divine principle in free human creativity, as this follows from the divine-human nature of the historical process. Religious community, religious culture, internal unity in manifested plurality, this is the fruit that is ripening in history, although, perhaps, its final ripening lies beyond its borders, under the “new heaven” and on the “new earth.” For the Christian worldview there can be no other philosophy of history. The process of history unfolding before us substantiates and clarifies our aspirations for a new religious community, the thirst for which is already beginning to torment people. These new premonitions cannot yet take shape and result in concrete images, because we are still children of this history, this culture, this society, this statehood, but we are already striving for a different life, for a different, immeasurably closer, intimate and rich communication with people in religious life. This “synthesis” of the Middle Ages and modern times, the reconciliation of the seemingly irreconcilable, will only give rise to the future revival of the Church, in which the contradictions of history will be resolved. The revived Church will reveal in itself not only “the Church-church, but also the Church-humanity, the Church-culture, the Church-public” 10 . The fact that such premonitions and yearnings are already beginning to excite people is a clear sign that the humanistic era, if not already approaching, is approaching the moment of its full maturity, after which the life of God-manhood, man-gods with the God-man begins. All human history expresses one creative thought, is subordinated to one plan, and represents a living whole. This abstract truth, always recognized by the mind, is relatively rarely experienced in direct feeling. But reading Aiken’s book, I vividly felt how close these Middle Ages are to us, and all the hoary antiquity that stands behind them, how we with our aspirations and our future deputies on the historical stage are one with all previous centuries, how close to us are the sins, and these gloomy figures of the Middle Ages, and the humanists splashing with joy. And to find oneself in this real unity of history, to feel oneself as its living cell or an atom of the divine-human body was so joyful, and a surge of cheerful feelings and uplifting hopes rose in the soul. We consider it a happy coincidence that at the same time a new edition of the translation of Jacob Burchardt’s classic book about the Renaissance, the next stage in the spiritual history of mankind, appeared: “The Culture of Italy in the Renaissance.” I-II volumes. St. Petersburg, 1906. Ed. M.I. Pirozhkova. Our scientific literature has a valuable description of the Middle Ages in the articles of Prof. V.I. Guerrier. “Medieval worldview, its origin and ideal” (V. Evr., 1891, I-IV). Wed. essay by prof. V.I. Guerrier “The Triumph of the Theocratic Principle in the West” (XII century). Pope Innocent III. (Vestn. Heb., 1892, January-February). book 1, 1907 Wed. research about him by prof. book E.N. Trubetskoy “The religious and social ideal of Western Christianity in the 11th century.” The idea of ​​the Divine Kingdom in the works of Gregory VII etc., Kyiv. 1897. "Early Italian humanism and its historiography". Critical study of Mikhail Korelin. Moscow, 1892 Volume II, page 1061 Wed. my work “The Religion of Man-Deity in L. Feuerbach. Moscow, 1906. Publ. "Free conscience." Wed. our essay “K. Marx as a religious type" (Moscow Ezhen. August, 1906). Wed. in the collection “From Marxism to Idealism”, various articles. Wed. our essay “Under the Banner of the University” (Vopr. Phil. and Psychol., 1906, V). Wed. our essay “Church and Culture” in the collection “Questions of Religion”. Moscow, 1906, p. 46.