Growing Differences between the West and the East of Europe in the Transition to the Middle Ages. Review of: Föller, C., & Schulz, F. (Eds.). (2016). Osten und Westen 400–600 n. Chr.: Kommunikation, Kooperation und Konflikt. Roma æterna: Beiträge zu Spätantike und Frühmittelalter, 4. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 316 p.

Abstract

This review reveals the conceptual and content side of a collection of works by German specialists, analysing the features and essential characteristics of the growing differences between the European West and the Eastern Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages. The reviewer emphasises the relevance of the subject chosen by the researchers within the framework of the stated problem, pluralism of methods they employ when approaching the complex material and the accuracy in the selection of historical facts necessary for understanding the transition from late Antiquity to medieval realities. Also, the reviewer points out the controversy of solving issues related to the way the researchers present the key issues of the history of early medieval Europe, especially as combined with their attempts to reach these issues through rather narrow subjects. Special attention is paid to the theses of the collection which make a new attempt at revealing the nature and content of the growing misunderstanding between the political and social groups of Western and Eastern Europe in 400–800 AD. The paper demonstrates a certain inconsistency of a number of authors of the book in their attempt to avoid projection of sociopolitical and religious and cultural differences between the West and the East of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages on apparently similar discrepancies in the development of the studied regions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Keywords

• раннесредневековая европа
• поздняя римская империя
• различия между востоком и западом европы