Byzantine court culture in the political and spiritual dimension

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the characteristic specifics of the court culture of Byzantium and its correlation with the court culture of England in the first half of the XVII century. The research methodology assumes the unity of such methodological approaches as the system-historical and the analytical method. Systemic-historical and analytical methods make it possible to identify the court’s cultural traditions of Byzantium in the context of the political and spiritual sphere. The scientific novelty lies in the comparison of the Byzantine court culture with the court culture of England in the first half of the XVIIth century. Conclusions. Byzantine culture was a fusion of ancient Greek (Hellenistic), Roman, and distinctive Byzantine-Orthodox traditions. The duality of the cultural and spiritual sphere of the Byzantine Empire was expressed in the unity of opposites and the close interaction of the material and spiritual. In Byzantium, Orthodoxy was the cementing foundation. The court culture of Byzantium is a highly centralized hierarchical system. The Byzantine tradition of laudatory odes and musical and theatrical performances timed to coincide with the holidays of the Nativity of Christ and the Epiphany of Christ, can be correlated with the traditions of the court culture of England in the first half of the XVIIth century, where the glorification of the monarch and court entertainments of the Masque, as a spiritual and political unit, formed the fundamental basis of court culture in England.