Chasing points, about European medieval culture

The essence of medieval culture is religious theological culture, which is mainly manifested in divine culture. God culture includes two levels: the first is the culture of heaven and afterlife, and the second is transcendentalism and theocracy, which constitute the culture of asceticism. On the two levels of god culture, the former is a denial of secularism, while the latter is a denial of humanism. The combination of the two forms an ascetic culture. God culture controls people's life by advocating reverence for God and divine right and abstinence, which restricts people's all-round development and hinders the all-round development of culture.

In order to deeply study the cultural characteristics of the Middle Ages, it is inseparable from the study of religious culture. In essence, the culture of the Middle Ages is mainly manifested in religious theology culture, especially Christian culture. Medieval culture is Christian culture. At that time, it advocated the divine right of monarchy and abstinence in the afterlife, requiring people to abandon the secular and deny reality. Literature and art are used to publicize religious teachings, and the world is a metaphor for the afterlife. In the final analysis, the essence of Christian culture is God culture, which mainly includes the following aspects:

Transcendentalism culture → theocracy culture

God culture, asceticism culture

Heaven culture → afterlife culture.

The so-called God culture means that the culture in the Middle Ages was mainly created around God, who is the source of all things, from nature to man-made products. This is the essential feature of medieval religious culture.

Transcendentalism culture refers to various religious theories constructed by religious culture beyond God. In the long Middle Ages, Christians always tried to prove the existence of God and the truth, goodness and beauty of God. In fact, even if the existence of God can be proved subjectively, it is also a priori objectively, and it is an illusory concept beyond the scope of experience, so no one can prove the existence of God.

Theocratic culture is the negation of humanistic culture, that is, the religious theological culture constructed by the supremacy of theocracy in the Middle Ages. Its performance is that religious theology is above all sciences and theocracy is greater than imperial power; Religious architecture, religious music, religious painting and religious literature are above secular art; Even the teaching content of missionary schools embodies the characteristics of theocracy. For example, the first three of the "seven arts" are grammar, rhetoric and logic, and the purpose of learning is to demonstrate the existence of God; The last four arts are arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, among which the "L" in arithmetic is interpreted as the only god; "2" means that Jesus Christ has two personalities: divinity and humanity; "3" refers to the trinity of the father, the son and the holy spirit; "4" refers to four evangelists. This shows that medieval science and culture became the handmaiden of God.

Utopia culture refers to the illusory construction of the ideal kingdom by Christianity and the value orientation and behavior pattern formed by people's belief and pursuit of the ideal kingdom. Jesus believes that there are two fundamentally different societies in the universe: one is the secular kingdom; The second is the ideal heaven. The secular kingdom is evil, and the ideal kingdom of heaven is pure. The Complete Book of Reason of the Catholic Church depicts heaven, where the floor is paved with gold and the house is built with precious stones. Seeing beautiful scenery and listening to music have their own happiness. Therefore, Christians always regard heaven as the sacred realm of people's ideal life and a happy future society.

The afterlife culture is an inevitable product formed on the basis of the culture of heaven. Since the kingdom of heaven is so beautiful and the world is so evil, living is suffering. A person's life is a journey to the kingdom of heaven, and all the hopes of happiness are pinned on the kingdom of the afterlife. In essence, the afterlife is a doubt and denial of secularism. Associated with the culture of the kingdom of heaven, the afterlife can give the suffering believers a certain degree of spiritual strangeness and comfort, although this kind of sustenance and comfort is an illusory flower.

Through the analysis of the above four cultures, transcendentalism culture is mainly manifested in logical thinking with imagination as its wings, and its thinking result must be to build a complete religious theocracy organization, thus moving towards theocracy culture; The way of thinking in the culture of the kingdom of heaven is mainly logical thinking, with imagination and image thinking as the leading factors. The result of thinking is to build an illusory ideal paradise and guide people to believe in the afterlife. Theocratic culture and afterlife culture complement each other, the former is a denial of humanistic culture; The latter is manifested in the denial of secularism culture. The two forms are different, but they are combined into one, and the isomorphism of * * * has become the ascetic culture. That is to say, in order to be a transcendent god, to be loyal to theocracy, to be an ideal kingdom of heaven, to be happy in the afterlife, and to redeem original sin, people should abstain from sex when they are alive, that is, to restrain, bind and even distort the normal needs of people's lives to complete the journey of suffering life. From this point of view, it is through god, theocracy, heaven and afterlife, and through abstinence, god culture has completed the control of mankind. In essence, God culture is an ascetic culture.

Throughout the cultural history of the Middle Ages, these cultural characteristics are not only related to the backward productive forces and modes of production in the Middle Ages, but also cultural manifestations of the slow or even retrogressive development of medieval history, which in turn hindered the development and progress of medieval social history to a certain extent and inhibited the emergence and development of advanced culture. This situation finally changed greatly in the late Middle Ages: there were a group of deviants in the culture of God; In transcendentalist culture, doubts about God and the Bible are born. In the theocratic culture, a cry of humanism was issued; Promote secular life in the culture of heaven and afterlife; In asceticism culture, eulogize the beauty of human feelings and the beauty of the world. ..... In the long silence and twists and turns, history finally ushered in the dawn of the Renaissance.

As a cultural stage and a cultural system in human history, religion has its inevitability and rationality of emergence, existence and development. It is a complex three-dimensional cultural structure, including democracy and autocracy, science and superstition, progress and backwardness, civilization and ignorance. From the aesthetic point of view, the aesthetics and anti-aesthetics of medieval culture coexist; Art and anti-art coexist. It eulogizes God and his ideal heaven with the artistic characteristics of mysterious symbol, which has become an important connotation of medieval literary aesthetics.