Castle (structure): what the dream is about. Sleep and Dreams in the Middle Ages

The medieval era is rich in all kinds of contrasting moods. This is related to a number distinctive features this historical period in the context public life and the worldview of man as a whole. On the one hand, the Middle Ages are about balls, knights and countless feats in the name of beautiful ladies, on the other hand, an era of unjustified cruelty and bloody clashes, inquisitions, confrontation religious movements. With such a variety of factors, it is difficult to determine positive and negative traits of a given historical period of time. In any case, to say that this era was significant is to say nothing.

Features of the “Medieval Dream Book”

« Medieval dream book" is a shining example what the literature of that difficult time was like. This publication is replete with eloquent interpretations of dreams that carry a unique atmosphere of the Middle Ages. The symbols and images of the medieval dream book are colorful and bright, they bear the imprint of that period of time, reflecting the views of the enlightened on the very phenomenon of dreams.

It should be noted that this dream book was for a long time is inaccessible to a wide range of people, because in the Middle Ages all kinds of activities related to mysticism or the knowledge of something unexplained by religion were considered charlatanism. For writing something like this literary work one could instantly be on the list of those destined for a place at the stake.

Only isolated noble people had access to the invaluable knowledge of dream interpretation. “Medieval Dream Book” is a collection of interpretations, presented in almost literary language. It should be noted that the images and stories presented on the pages of this publication, for the most part, relate directly to the life of a man, this is explained by the fact that in the Middle Ages women did not have sufficient recognition, and the position of men was more honorable and significant. The interpretations of this publication are intended to give advice to a man as a warrior and a knight, to warn him against bitter mistakes.

As a result, we can say that the circle of people who could be useful is very narrow. At this stage, its relevance is completely questionable, because the medieval mentality is very different from modern views person.

The dream highlighted the fragile emotional world of the Dreamer and her still unconscious social attitudes, where reason rules more than feelings. So, in order to successfully arrange your life now, you need to understand that Feelings must always be connected with Reason, otherwise everything will be like in this dream. Good luck to the Dreamer!

Dream Interpretation - The Middle Ages in our heads

Good morning! Beautiful dream. All information about the past is stored in the energy information fields of the Earth. You have connected to these databases. A wonderful experience, and one might even say beneficial for the health of the human psyche, as it makes it more flexible and more adaptable to rapidly changing conditions. This is important in our time of hyperspeed.

Dream Interpretation - Fighting demons

Dear Maria, prophetic dream it happens that if it reports future events, there are also pictures of the past and apparently not fulfilled historically (karmicically) ancestral debt. Such a dream is a signal about choosing a path, about past mistakes made, and a senseless fight against evil. You need help. Every living person can fall into the pit of circumstances, no matter what, and the ways out are always known - there are three of them: you can resign yourself and live, you can climb up, fall and climb again, turning your life into a struggle for survival, or you can ask for help and they will definitely give you a hand or a rope ladder so that you can get out of this pit of circumstances. If you are really tired of struggling with the vicissitudes of fate, realizing that you can’t cope, contact us.

Dream Interpretation - Sword Fighting

Perhaps you are currently going through some life difficulties or internal experiences. They show you that you have a protector who helps you. And the fight at the end is what you're in this moment forced to defend themselves from someone or something. The fact that you came out of a dream alive means that everything will be fine for you, you just need to hold on.

Dream Interpretation - Sword Fighting

Combat may mean having to fend for yourself, decisive action. Pure water or a swamp may indicate reflection, experiences. The horse is your way of moving into the future. You may lose it due to too much attachment to the past (water). Darkness may indicate a lack of direction in life - you do not yet know where to move, or you cannot yet move. You hide your dreams about the future, or temporarily forget about it at the end of the dream (hiding a horse in a ravine) in order to cope with pressing matters (repel an attack from enemies). Good luck!

M.E. WITMER-BUTSCH. SLEEP AND DREAMS IN THE MIDDLE AGES //

M . E . WITTMER-BUTSCH. ZUR BEDEUTUNG VON SCHLAFEN UND TRAUM IM MITTELALTER // MEDIUM AEVVM QUOTIDIANUM. SONDERBAND 19. KREMS, 1990. 400 S.

(Part one)

The monograph of the Swiss researcher M.E. Witmer-Butsch can be considered, perhaps, the first experience in historiography of recreating the picture of the perception of the phenomena of sleep and dreams, interpreting their causes and the meaning that was given to them in different layers society in the era of the Christian Middle Ages (500-1500).

The topic of sleep and dreams has traditionally been developed by psychologists. Psychoanalysis by S. Freud gave the first impetus to the study of sleep and dreams as an independent historical and cultural phenomenon. One of the earliest studies in this direction was the book by P. Sentiva (1930), which contained a critical analysis of the dreams described in the “Golden Legend” by Jacob Voraginsky. Using the methods of psychoanalysis, P. Sentiv made a number of interesting assumptions about the origin of some motifs in medieval hagiography.

Since the late 40s. works about visions and dreams begin to appear medieval people, and there are undoubtedly more studies of this kind than works simply about dreams. This is not surprising: the Middle Ages themselves did not distinguish between a dream of religious content and a “vision”: the ambivalent term “visio” is translated by the words and “dream”, II “vision”. Today, literature about visions and dreams in the Middle Ages, about the meaning of these phenomena in religious and political life of that time was very extensive. It is characteristic, however, that with all its diversity, reflecting literary, medical, theological aspects and the aspect of the history of mentalities, there is still no holistic idea of ​​dreams as an essential component Everyday life medieval society (an exception should be considered the essay by J. Le Goff on the place and role of dreams in the culture and mass psychology of the Middle Ages).

Witmer-Butsch has made it her mission to provide a comprehensive review of sleep-related issues. The first chapter of the work under review is devoted to the formulation of the problem, review of historiography and sources. Sleep, like illness, hunger, death, is an anthropological constant; people have slept at all times, but their behavior associated with sleep necessarily bears the imprint of the era and allows us to look into their spiritual world, to comprehend something that they themselves were hardly aware of, this the main task Witmer-Butsch. Despite the fragmentation of the data contained in the sources (autobiographical evidence, hagiography, medical and medico-theological writings, etc.), she managed to put them together into a kind of mosaic picture, giving an idea of ​​stereotypes, sleep-related behavior, and medieval theories , explaining the nature of sleep and dreams, and how these theories related to everyday life different layers society and how the realities of this everyday life were in turn reflected in dreams.

The researcher also poses a number of methodological problems related to the need to study information that seems to lie on the surface in detailed descriptions dreams in lives, biographies, chronicles, but nevertheless in need of decipherment. Getting to know modern theories sleep and dreams helps Witmer-Butsch decipher messages from sources.

However, she constantly questions the extent to which modern explanatory models apply to medieval material; what is common between the dreams of a medieval person and our contemporary; Is it possible to identify the same structural features, which modern psychologists observe, primarily the processing of daytime experiences into nighttime experiences.

In Chapter 2, “Sleep in Everyday Life,” Witmer-Butsch. based on materials from biographies, letters, medical recommendations, monastic regulations, also drawing on data from archeology and iconography, he conducts something like sociological research sleep-related behavior.

Such a deeply private and, moreover, “self-evident” sphere of life to contemporaries, such as the organization of sleep, is illuminated by sources very poorly: where, how, on what, with whom, for how long did you sleep? The author shows that before the 11th-12th centuries. even in cities, housing was very simple, people slept in one room (and in the countryside, even until the 16th century, houses rarely had more than one or two rooms). In the cold season, even in relatively wealthy families, people slept together in one room, heated by a brazier or an open fire (stone stoves appeared in the 13th century), and therefore beds, if they existed at all, were designed to accommodate and parents, and children, and their unmarried aunts. Cradles for babies came into use by the nobility back in the Merovingian era, but in the lower strata of society they took root extremely poorly until the Late Middle Ages, and adults preferred to take small children into their bed.

Sometimes the bed was shared between strangers - pilgrims, poor travelers, counting on cheap overnight accommodation in hotels and inns. By the 14th century There are complaints about the greedy owners of inns in Rome: taking advantage of the influx of pilgrims, they managed to put in one bed not two or three people, as was customary, but five or six. Old people and the sick in hospitals and shelters were also in similar conditions.

In monasteries, this area of ​​life was regulated to the smallest detail by monastic charters. The brethren had to sleep in the same room; if there were too many people, they occupied several bedrooms. Cells for one appeared for the first time among the Italian Eremites in the 11th century, in other orders - later, from the 11th century)