SOCIAL VIEWS AND VALUES IN THE MIDDLE AGES IN THE WORKS OF HISTORIANS OF THE “ANNALES” SCHOOL M. BLOCH, J. LE GOFF AND A. YA. GUREVICH

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of representations and values characteristic of members of various social groups of the Middle Ages. The relevance of the work is dictated by the insufficient emphasis on the psychological aspects of the life of societies of the past in historical science. The purpose of the study is to analyze the material on this problem obtained within the framework of the history of mentalities and described by such scientists as M. Bloch, J. Le Goff and A. Y. Gurevich. In the course of the study, the socioontological views of the bulk of the population of Europe at that time as a whole were studied (belief in the sacredness of the person of kings and their ability to heal the sick; attitude to food consumed, clothing and dwellings used as indicators of social status; regulation of public relations both vertically and horizontally; common values of suffering, humility, service and loyalty; the evolution of the evaluation of labor from negative to positive), as well as its individual strata, such as the peasantry (intellectual underdevelopment, spiritual dependence on priests, limited perception of the world by the framework of the place of residence), chivalry (values of nobility, loyalty, courage, generosity and maintaining the level of dignity) and burghers (the value of self-government, collective pride and protection of the common reputation). As a result of the research, the social ideas and values of representatives of various groups of medieval societies were generalized, which made it possible to better understand the features of their cognitive, emotional and behavioral spheres; this, in turn, makes it possible to establish more reliable cause-and-effect relationships that determine the course of the historical process.