卷 82, 编号 1 (2021)

«Ecclesiastical history of the English People» of Bede the Venerable traditionally serves as a basic source on the history of Britain in the 6th to 8th centuries, including the study of the spread of Christianity during that period among the German-speaking population of the island: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. According to Bede, a key role in this process played Augustine, Paulinus and other missionaries sent to Britain by Pope Gregory I the Great. In contrast, British ecclesiastics refused to preach the word of truth to their English neighbors and confronted the Roman missionaries. In Bede’s work, the Britons appear as a kind of analogue of the New Testament Jews who refused to accept Christ. However, analysis of other sources, including data from archeology and onomastics, indicates that at least in some regions (Kent, West Midlands) there was a continuity of Christianity and church life, despite the ethnic changes. In case of Northumbria there is an alternative to Bede’s story in Welsh historical text, Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. There, it is told that King Edwin was baptized not by Paulinus, but by a Briton, Run, son of Urien, King of Rheged. The British participation in the early Christianization of Northumbria is confirmed by the analysis of the figure of the deacon Jacob, who, according to Bede, was the chief assistant of Paulinus. His name strongly indicates that he not a Roman, Frank or Englishman, but a Briton. The center of his church ministry was Catterick, the place associated in Welsh poetry with King Urien. Thus, Jacob either belonged to the ruling house of Reged, or enjoyed its patronage. Bede’s silence about the relationship between Anglian Northumbria and British Rheged could not have been accidental. As a result, the question is posed about the danger that for a modern researcher conceals in an insufficiently critical perception of images of the past, borrowed even from the most authoritative medieval authors.

Patron saints of medieval ecclesiastical communities were frequently presented as legal persons. Particular saints were described as the recipients of gifts in donation charters and as the owners of property in various household records. Usually it was declared or at least implied that the saint received and possessed certain rights, while the income was destined for the maintenance of his servants. The image of the patron saint could be employed in uncertain legal situations when the ecclesiastical community itself was not regarded as a legal entity and was therefore not qualified to receive donations and to possess property. For example, a community of canons attached to a cathedral was, according to the Carolingian regulations at first and later to the common view, subject to the local bishop who acted as the head of community and the steward of its possessions. Such was the case of the cathedral chapter of Limoges, where the surviving cartulary allows to trace the development of the legal position of an episcopal community of clerics between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. The Carolingian acts attribute property rights to the ‘See of Limoges’ or the ‘Church of Limoges’, terms used to describe the indivisible ecclesiastical organization of the diocese led by the bishop. Numerous donation charters issued in favour of the cathedral community throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries tended to keep silent about the episcopal leadership, while St. Stephen, the holy patron of the cathedral church, emerged as the recipient of gifts and the owner of the ecclesiastical property. Alongside God and St. Stephen the canons themselves were eventually referred to as equal participants in property transactions (although as a group of persons only and not as a community). In the same period their right to receive income (stipendia) from the property belonging to the saint or his church gradually turns into ownership of that property, described with diverse terms. However, the existence of the community never took the legal shape, despite the expressions used in private charters. The papal privilege of 1105, issued in favour of the cathedral chapter, confirmed the property rights of the ‘Church of Limoges’ while referring to the canons as a group of ecclesiastical officials subject to the bishop. It is important to note that the canons never sought to distance themselves from the bishop and always recognized his leadership (this may be explained in part by local conditions). Thus, employing the image of St. Stephen, the community could officially acquire, possess, and dispose of property without claiming autonomy and separating itself from the episcopal see.

The article is devoted to the analysis of ideas about France in the French polemicists’ treatises of the first half of the 15th century. It is shown that the French kingdom of this time was related to the term «state». Conclusions are made about the perception of France by the authors of the studied works as a homeland. Attention is focused on the fact that in addition to the idea of Nature (a person’s «natural love» for his homeland, which predetermines the scope of his duties), the patriotic views of the polemicists were also based on the idea of a «civic» duty and the obligations of everyone to the state as a «public matter».

25 января 2021 г. от осложнений коронавируса скончался доктор исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Санкт-Петербургского института истории РАН Борис Соломонович Каганович – потеря для отечественной исторической науки во многом невосполнимая. В Санкт-Петербургском институте истории, вблизи архивов, где он черпал важнейший для себя материал, Борис Соломонович нашел то пристанище, которое позволило ему развернуть наиболее полно свои научные замыслы, охватившие со временем и период Нового времени. Надо признать, что ни по первоначальной подготовке на кафедре классической филологии Московского государственного университета им. М.В. Ломоносова, которую он окончил в 1975 г., ни по настоящему предмету его зрелых исследований Борис Соломонович не мог подходить прямо под категорию исследователя-медиевиста. Однако его мысли и находки придавали новый смысл и порою новое направление работам коллег, исследовавших конкретные явления средневековой истории.