Az érett orosz középkor emberideálja
The human ideal in Russia in the High Middle Ages

Summary/Abstract: The author wishes to find out why interest in man became so important in the 14th and 15th centuries, in the days of Tartar destruction and the rivalries of princes. The importance of the human factor always increases in time of historical disasters, so human personality comes into the foreground during times of social unequilibrium and fragility of socio-political structures. This human personality expresses itself in ideals, strives toward self-perfection and explains itself in religion since it was Orthodoxy that helped concentrate the intellectual and spiritual reserves of the vanquised. Thus the whole cultural and social life of the era gets creative impulse from the Orthodox religion. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Russian thought and literature focused their attention on man, who would not break with God, on his feelings, on his various ways to realize and improve himself, and on the importance of the self-perfection of the human spirit. This ideal can be observed in certain doctrines of rationalist free-thinkers and religious sects with ideas of individual religiousness, the active role of human personality and the requirement of high morality, as well as in hesychasm with the moral imperative of conscious inner self-perfection, the joint service of church and society and the harmony of active and worshipful life. This ideal is expressed in the image of the secular personality, determined by the change of social hierarchy and the dominance of the Orthodox Church. Ecclesiastical and secular thinking, as well as literature and the arts place outstanding emphasis on man. After D. S. Lihachev, these characteristics are called pre- or proto-Renaissance. The author intends to show that the concept of „humanitas ” is present in various degrees and with different contents throughout the historical development of mankind. Although reminiscent of the Renaissance, the characteristics and the new human ideal of 14th and 15th century Russia still remain within the limits of the Middle Ages. This novel attitude to man was a specific achievement of the Russian Middle Ages, capable of renewal, but in ways different from Western Europe. Subjective and inductive of self-contemplation, the renewal, the new human ideal in Russia emerged in the model of the common abstract, in a collective way dissolving in the Orthodox religion. Thus the new ideal of interpreting human personality does not point to pre-Renaissance, but rather means the flourishing of High Middle Ages in Russia.

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