Nataliya Dmitrievna Nikolaevа,
Graduate Student, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Experience of Understanding Political Cataclysms of the 12th Century: Aberrations of Historical Vision
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-6-15
The 12th century for the history of relations between the Christian East and West was a “point of bifurcation”, due to its position between the two key events in the history of the Crisianity: the Schism of 1054, the beginning of the Crusades (1096) and the Fourth crusade (1202–1204). Accordingly, this century in historiography was a natural stage of increasing contradictions between the two Christian civilizations. For these reasons, the 12th century remains rather neglected by researchers and is considered by them as “intermediate”. The author adheres to the hypothesis that such a tendentious consideration of the 12th century is the result of a teleological approach to the problem of relations between the Christian East and West in the 11th–13th centuries. Using the method of comparative analysis of scientific works on this topic, the author has established that the aberrations of the historical vision led to in ignoring the internal heterogeneity of the Eastern and Western Christian worlds. This was a consequence of the inevitable development of the historiography of the issue in the line of the civilizational paradigm. This paradigm gave science the concept of the Christian East and West as separate, internally unified civilizations.
Publishing: 28/12/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 18/09/2021
How to cite: Nikolaevа N.D. Experience of Understanding Political Cataclysms of the 12th Century: Aberrations of Historical Vision // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 6 (20), pp. 179–192. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-6-15.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2021
Keywords: Byzantium; Holy Roman Empire; Russia; Poland; Periphery; Civilizational Split; historiographical tradition
Funding: The research was funded by RFBR and Novosibirsk region, project number 19-39-90057.