The Theme of Royal Court in Russian Medieval Studies: Reflections and Experiment

The paper is dedicated to the analysis of the investigations of royal court which were realized within the projects of the scientific group "Power and society" (Department of Medieval Studies, Historical Faculty of Moscow State University, prof. Khatchaturian N. A. the supervisor). The given investigations were based on the revision of politicized attitude toward royal court as an unimportant institution. The author reveals several trends of explorations regarded the royal court as the complex institution. 1. Analysis of royal court within the frames of the evolution of medieval state and in the context of the concept of "Etat moderne". Special interest is paid to the problems of correlations between public and private aspects in state government and royal court. Royal court as political form conserved the personal principle in realization of supreme power. Process of possible autonomisation of executive power as the sign of "medieval bureaucracy" naissance. 2. Social analysis of royal court as a community forming a specific type of "noble-courtesan"; court as a factor of social dynamics. 3. Analysis of cultural aspects of political history: problems of social consciousness; representations of royal power, its ritual and symbolic forms as one of the ways of its realization and form of the dialogue between monarch and society; sociological analysis of "court culture", its correlations with dominant culture; the leading role of court culture in some cases as the organization and creative centre.