Debatable Middle Ages

The series of workshops, seminars, round-table discussions, and colloquia under the overarching title “Debatable Middle Ages” constitutes a part of Centre's general research program “Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: historical and cultural commonalities, regional peculiarities and the dynamics of interaction.” By exploratory discussions we aim to ruminate on some controversial problems of the comparative history of the East and West of Europe, above all on the comparative history of Rus’/Russia and Western Europe.

We hope that such discussions might help to create a new type of university textbooks that would introduce students (especially those who are genuinely motivated!) to the very core of acute, essential, and complex research problems to be attacked by everyone who takes a risk to look at the “East-West” history of Europe from a deliberately and provocatively comparative perspective. However, rigid, serious, and solid intentions and methodology are a must in our enterprise.

“Debatable Middle Ages” started working in May 2012, and by the end of 2017, a unique research line emerged: the cycle of seminars and workshops (held along with Moscow Centre for French-Russian Studies) dealing with various aspects of the Christian history of Europe in Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. We have paid particular attention to religious violence in Christian cultures in the East and West of the “larger Europe.”  

The initiator and organizer of the “Debatable Middle Ages” seminar is Mikhail Dmitriev.