Abstract
The article deals with one of the very complicated and controversial problematic of transitivity – the problem of the formation of a new identity of society under the passing from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The époque of Late Antiquity (the 4th – 7th centuries) having become a subject of special research comparatively not very long ago, gives a stunning pattern of replacement of social-cultural paradigm, when the deep transformation of all the social foundations, changing of mental structures, particularly, the crisis of traditional ethnocultural identity and a forming of a new one were taking place. In this article, an attempt of analysis of mechanisms of these global changes is made. Package treatment of ethnic, political, religious and cultural aspects of identity gives to the article interdisciplinary character.
The author shows how was the habitual principle of human separation in the Hellenes and the Romans on the one hand and ‘barbarians’ on the other hand, replaced in Eusebius’ work by a new principle depending on confession. Whereby the mechanisms of such mental transformation were rather soft without the need for drastic break with the tradition. The author points the two ones. First, it was a rethinking of traditional categories when their meaning moved from the ethno-geographic sphere to political one. One more mechanism was emphasis transfer from ethnic to ethical and moral characteristics.
For the Christian author the main criteria for distinguishing some people of others became now a moral characteristics, existence some moral virtues in one or another people, mode of life and behaviors. As a result, the fi rst church historian, not breaking any traditional beliefs and perceptions, came to quite new interpretation of identity of that society.
Therefore, thinking in the frames of previous paradigm, the fi rst church historian carried out a revolutionary change in oekumene perception, changing not only certain assessments of some people but also a principle itself for humanity division. In the context of the crisis of the roman identity when traditional ideals and values of Roman society became a thing of the past irreversibly, the fi rst Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea validates a new form of identity which is religious. Among the all peoples of the oekumene he distinguishes the Christian one, enduing it with all that values and merits that new society will identify itself with.
Keywords
Late Antiquity, ethno-cultural identity, Eusebius of Caesarea, Christianity, «Church History».
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