Volume 81, Nº 1 (2020)

The article defines and juxtaposes relationist and system approaches to the phenomenon of the power. Relationist concept/s («power over smth.») consider power and power relations as a possibility for an individual / group to change the behavior of another individual or group. In the system approach, or a concept of «power for smth.», power is defined as a specific impersonal quality of political system, as an internal functional, not joined with an individual or group of individuals. The authors put some considerations on the possible advantages of the system approach to power as applied to Medieval and Early modem studies. Key elements of the conceptual scheme proposed by the authors are the following: 1) power as substantial phenomenon; 2) pro-power discourse; 3) contra-power discourse; 4) power practices, generalizing original discourses, in other words, power as process.

This article is dealt with the development of some trends and subjects of power in modem domestic Medieval Studies and early modem period. The importance of the historical-anthropological approach, microhistory method in learning the practice of people’s consciousness and behavior in 15th-17th centuries is concretized. To this end, researches of E. Brown «Wars of Roses. History. Mythology. Historiography» and A. Palamarchuk «Civil Law in the Early Stuart England: Institutions and Ideas» are analyzed. E. Brown researches English society by stratifying levels of internal communications of gentry’s community. The chain of gentry’s horizontal communication ensured the realization of gentry’s interests, in particular, endless litigations in land disputes. In the A. Palamarchuk’s study of ideological and political search of English society on the eve of the English Civil War within the context of opposition between connoisseurs and adhemts of Civil Law and Common Law is learnt. Two models of monarchical state are formed in public consciousness of intellectual elite: «national» based on Common Law’s values and «institutional» based on the Roman law’s heritage.

The review deals with the problem of the medieval political system definition using the term feudalism. The case of Castile and Leon of the mentioned period demonstrates that in spite of some disadvantages the term feudalism seems enough adequate to define the sense of file political organization which existed in the Latin Medieval West of the Central Middle Ages. The main attention is paid to the part of the institute of agreement (Latin pactum, placitnm, hominiitm and some others) between the influential centers of power (Crown, Church institutions, secular lords, territorial communities (concilium, conqeio) etc.), which was the main foundation of the medieval political organization in Castile and Leon from the 11th to the middle of the 14th centuries. In the situation of the legal order fragmentation, the agreement (an institute of the private law) appears as the main instrument to organize and to divide administration, authority, military and fiscal power between file mentioned centers. The feudal character of this divided and dispersant power based on the net of private agreements seems obvious. The fief (tenentia, tenengia, honor) appears in the sources as a possession of some power fragment received by the royal vassal (lord or some influential Church institution) from the king’s hands - «de manu regis». Cities, castles, fortresses and territories were objects of the rights of the lord as the possessor. The legal base of the vassal’s power over the fief was the vassalic contract. The fief as a type of possession was not in contradiction with the other type of possession which had much more universal character, the allodial (or hereditary) one (hereditas, heredat). The institute of hominium (homenaie, pleito e (h)omenaie) of the Catalonian origin was use in Castile and Leon since the 13th century to formalize obligations (including ones of file non-vassalic character) as a mean to decide the problem of non-compliances or direct violations of agreements, because the violation of this type of contract was qualified as the direct treachery and had to be punished by the same way. The part of file learned feudal law as a part of ius commune is emphasized because the Bolognian lawyers (glossators and commentators) of the 12th-15th centuries and their Castilian and Leonian disciples and followers systematized the legal order, including the law of feudal agreement

«Bastard feudalism» is a system of patronage relations in late medieval England, contrasted with vassal-seigniorial relations of the classical feudalism. The degree of influence of this phenomenon both vertically (in a different stratum of English society) and horizontally (in local communities) is actual problem. In addition, the question of the specificity or universality of «bastard feudalism» in comparison with the social history of other European countries (France, Castile, Aragon and so) has not been studied at all.

The article deals with a particular theoretical question: is property a legal or an economic notion? The need to study it is explained by the situation in the Russian social sciences in which, from mid XX century onwards, the notion of property plays an exceptional role, hardly perceptible to scholars accustomed to reason in other paradigms. Unlike their colleagues from other countries, many Soviet, then Russian specialists in social sciences believe that along with property in the juridical sense there is also property in the economic sense understood as the basis of the socio-economic structure of a particular society. The article explores the genesis and the development of this concept which we owe to the Soviet interpretation of Marxism in the age of Stalin. To this aim the author analyzes how this problem is viewed by the leading Russian medievalists, lawyers, economists and philosophers. He demonstrates the internal contradictions of this concept and the problems which scholars face when trying to apply it to the realities of long bygone days and to those of our times. The author argues that property is definitely a legal notion, and that its study by the methods of the juridical science permits to learn a lot about law, society and file economy of both ancient and contemporary worlds.

Archival documents are published, highlighting the main points of the election of the world-famous historian P.G. Vinogradoff as a supernumerary professor at Moscow University in 1908. The publisher describes in detail the peripeteia of the process, in which differences in the understanding of the conditions of normal educational activity by the historian living in England, and professors of Moscow University, as well as different attitudes to the situation among the latter. P.G. Vinogradoff was supported, first of all, by his colleagues in file university’s professorial council who knew and remembered him well, while young historians were wary of the return of the world-famous colleague, perceiving him as a competitor. But the opportunity to increase the number of professorships in file Department of General Elistory at the expense of supernumerary funding identified support for file initiative of the council by representatives of the Faculty of Elistory and Philology. Elowever, differences in the understanding of the principles of professional activity not within the university community, but between professors and Ministry Interior officials turned out to be the most revealing: often what the former considered as professor’s merits, the latter were attributed to Vinogradoff’s misconduct. Elowever, without official grounds in the form of penalties or punishments, the Ministry of the Interior was unable to prevent the approval of the decision of the Council of Moscow University by the Trustee of the Moscow School District and the signing by the Minister of Public Education of file relevant order. Published documents were found in the fund of the Moscow Imperial University of file Central State Archive of Moscow and in the fund of the Ministry of Education of the Russian State Elistorical Archive in St. Petersburg. Their texts are brought into line with modem standards of spelling and supplemented with the necessary detailed comments to better reveal their meaning and significance.

The reader is invited to the letters of Nicola Ottokar, a graduate of St. Petersburg University, student I.M. Grevs, who became a professor of the University of Florence during his emigration, to his colleague, the famous Italian medievalist and politician Gioacchino Volpe. According to the author of the article, when Nicola Ottokar was in exile, he rapidly «built into» the Italian intellectual environment. This was facilitated by a wide acquaintanceship with representatives of Italian science, such as Antonio Anzilotti, Gaetano Salvemini, Ernesto Codignola and others. But the greatest role in Nicola Ottokar’s integration was played by Gioacchino Volpe, who known as one of the controversial and complicated representatives of Italian historiography in the XX century. The published letters, which are stored in Gioacchino Volpe’s archive in Santarcangelo di Romagna, characterize not only the subject, related to the personal relationships of the two historians, but also raise a very complex question about the relationship between Nicola Ottokar and Italian fascism. Moreover, the published letters are interesting for determining the general nature of the development of Italian historical science in the first half of the 20th century. At first, the author of the article finds interesting the element of Ottokar’s reflection about his work. At second, we can see a very curious attempt to start a discussion about the place of Gioacchino Volpe in Italian historiography and his belonging to «School of Economics and Law», which was formed in Italy in the XX century. The immediate cause for this discussion was several articles that were published in the early 1920s by the famous Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. He ranked Gioacchino Volpe as one of the main representatives of «School of Economics and Law» of Italian medieval science. Nicola Ottokar was disagreeing with this conclusion of his colleague. In letters to Gioacchino Volpe and in a theoretical article, published in 1930s in «Civilta moderna» journal, Ottokar tried to show that unlike most of «School of Economics and Law» representatives, Volpe’s work is characterized by the fundamental depth of the problems considered. But the discussion about the place of Gioacchino Volpe in modern Italian science did not take place: there were not any responses, and Volpe himself, as we could see, rather agreed with Benedetto Croce’s interpretation of his work. Letters ofNicola Ottokar, addressed to Gioacchino Volpe, are published by written autographs, which are stored in Fondo «G. Volpe» (Biblioteca comunale di Santarcangelo di Romagna (RN), Italy, Fondo «G. Volpe», Carteggi) in the original language with translation into Russian by the author of this article, with permission of the archive administration.

In September 2019, Saint Petersburg hosted an international conference on Latin paleography and diplomatics, organized by Saint Petersburg Institute of History (Russian Academy of Sciences) and German Historical Institute Moscow. The conference venues included Saint Petersburg Headquarters of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian National Library, Saint Petersburg Institute of History, and the State Hermitage Museum. About a half of the talks were held by Russian scholars, another half by paleographers from other European countries. The papers can be divided into three groups. The first one comprised presentations regarding Western European manuscripts kept in Saint Petersburg, as well as related codices or fragments from other places. A second group of papers considered charters and juridical codices. In the third group, running and recently terminated paleography-related projects from Western Europe were presented. Also, the participants discussed the perspectives of joint Russian-European projects concerning the study of manuscript fragments, as well as restoration and digitization of earliest Western European charters kept in Saint Petersburg Institute of History. Besides, the participants enjoyed four exhibitions of manuscripts, specially prepared at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian National Library, Archives of Saint Petersburg Institute of History, and the Hermitage.

The text is a review on Russian edition of Jack Hartnell’s book «Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages» (London: Wellcome Collection, 2018). The structure of the book is analyzed with special attention on the quality of its translation into Russian and the mistakes made by the editors.

The reviewed textbook contains an historical survey of the Benelux countries from prehistory to 1830. It is hard to describe the history of this region just following patterns designed for the history of centralized nation-states, and there are many reasons for that. However, the unique complexity of the historical development of this territory, wealthy in all senses of the term, may in itself become a key to the enigma of the «European miracle».