Felix Koneczny undoubtedly occupies an crucial place in Polish historiography. His works devoted to any periods of Polish and Russian past are highly recommended.
He was peculiarly curious in the past of Silesia and the past of Slavics. He tried to justify Poland's historical rights to advanced and Cieszyn Silesia, he was the first author of “Dzeje Śląsk”. He collaborated with Silesian activists specified as Korfanty and Napieralski. As a historian, he held interwar designation in Poland. He took over the Chair of East European past at Stefan Batory University. However, his explanation about civilization raises quite a few controversy. In 1929, despite a request from the Faculty and legislature of the University of Batory, the Ministry of Confessions and Public Enlightenment transferred Koneczny to a state of rest. This decision, according to the grandson of the historian, had to do with the abandonment of Piłsudski turanism.
Arnold Toynbee in Introduction to the English translation of the book “About the Multiplicity of Civilizations” besides wrote about political motives of sending Koneczny to retirement. Koneczny moved to Krakow, where he wrote his most crucial works: “About the multiplicity of civilization” and “About the improvement of morality”. Apart from this researcher, it is not possible to pass indifferently, but it seems that any environments in Poland brown this character without going into the content of its legacy. Here we will undertake a polemic with Koneczny on the importance of law in Christian civilization and Rusi turanism,
Research studies covering the past of long-term cultures and large areas are always the most controversial. specified studies require the application of 1 or more cultural criteria. As a rule, these criteria are an attribute of only 1 of the described cultures, but in the opinion of the investigator they become an nonsubjective criterion of value for the others. An example of specified a criterion is that Felix Koneczny's law, which remains system-dependent with 4 another factors having an influence, as described by Koneczny, on the quality of civilization.
However, a more detailed analysis of the work of the Polish investigator raises any concerns. It can be noticed what is characteristic of comparative studies, that Koneczny omits, circumstantial to variations of civilization, constitutional values. This leads to the creation of a simplified image of data civilization. The focus on 1 civilization is not a solution either, due to the fact that it forces a narrow perspective. J. Huzing drew attention to this. The description of 1 civilization, in isolation from others, does not let us to announcement certain properties that may prove its specificity.
In spite of these objections, it is appropriate to agree with the General Cone Thesis and examine comparative civilizations utilizing respective constitutional criteria for them. It must not be forgotten that the dominant importance for civilizations of the Mediterranean basin, Asia insignificant and Europe, regardless of the circumstantial collective life regimes of these peoples, has been Christianity since the mediate Ages. It is so appropriate to separate the sphere of culture from the sphere of civilization, which found a strong argument in Florian Koznaniecki's work. The Polish collective life theorist claimed that culture, not the state, is the foundation of social solidarity. The essential origin to keep the existence of culture is, according to the researcher, solidarity of the organized community, which cooperates in the production and preservation of cultural values. Collective solidarity and the continuation of the culture of this collective are based on symbolic communication. The differences between cultures are based on ways of spreading an perfect culture between surviving members of the community. specified differences are observed between varieties of Christian culture.
The last pillar of Felix Koneczny's method remains to be considered – his declared usefulness of the induction method, which he utilized as a protective shield in the fight against the hegemony of nineteenth-century apriorism. Felix Koneczny, recognizing the induction, empirical and aposterior method in his investigation into the past of civilization, believed that historical truths could be discovered by studying human actions and applied the same to moral teachings. Any deviation of reasoning from empirical reality was considered dangerous. It was a mistake in his view to search to realize and describe past through the prism of ideas and thus besides theological thought. The concept of civilization has the meaning of an apriorical category for the investigator and, utilizing specified terms, it is impossible to stay with the induction method in a logical dimension. You gotta have insight into tradition.
Therefore, let us effort to reconcile the demands resulting from the comparative intentions of Felix Koneczny, with the request of knowing the metaphysical content which carried with it on the basis of the Christian law culture – the basic criterion of assessing civilization chosen by the researcher.
Law in Christian Culture...
It remained closely related to the ontological and epistemological foundations of faith. specified a position is beyond the possibilities of universalising knowledge, utilized by law historians, who focus on analysing elements of empirical reality, on the constitutional function of law. If we highly measure cultures where property rights have developed, as Koneczny does, we mean that this situation leads to the building of strong civilizational foundations – the stableness of the social structure. If, on the another hand, we presume that culture is more than a civilization4, we must note that the law that co-creates culture is supported by the axiological foundation. due to the fact that it is not a legal norm that creates culture, but values that form the basis of a given culture, which are circumstantial in law. But the law never exhausts the content of these values.
Truism is the claim that law is simply a phenomenon as old as human communities. It is frequently forgotten, however, that people convinced of the rightness of specified a doctrine of being make a given kind of culture, and the law becomes only a part of it. Consistently, he assumed the causal other of this rule by recognizing Roman law as a origin of civilization-creation. This presumption of Koneczny raises another question. How could Roman law, being a pagan law, become – as F. Koneczny argues – the basis of Christian culture? The answer is in Christendom itself. Since the 4th century, Christianity has been the decisive event for “human imagination of the way of a collective life device”. The universality of Incarnation, allowing to explain the essence of all pre-Christian cultures, made Christianity assimilated many elements of these cultures, giving them a fresh sense. 1 of the most crucial was Roman law. It besides took a local character due to differences in the historical experience of Christianized societies.
The birth of Christ is besides a large shared experience of the people of the Empire, which has so closely blended in human consciousness with the past that the Christian image of the planet has merged with the form of a Christian empire already identified with the "world." due to the fact that the Empire, as a historical fact existed, was given its elements, including the law and the ruler, a figure corresponding to Christian consciousness. The Christian Empire created a kind of culture for which it was characteristic that it manifested a Christian sense of liberation.
Felix Koneczny, writing that the superiority of Christianity was that it was universal and did not gotta build a single model of civilization, he rightly noted that the Christian Church was not tempted to argue the highly developed civilization of the Mediterranean. However, the mission of the Coneczny Church limited to respective purely legal principles – to 4 moral demands: the insolence of monogamous marriage, the efforts to abolish slavery, the abolition of private justice for the public and the independency of the Church from state power.
Recognizing differences in the structure of the law (so-called three-law: family, succession, property) as the basic determinant of civilizational differences, The Conclusive nevertheless referred, like another theorists, to the higher super-legal categories which actually belong to the doctrine of the law. But erstwhile he wrote about Byzantium in the context of distinctions of civilization, he did not mention them, for he applied a strict discrimination between causal and philosophical categories, let alone theology.
This is characteristic of the Coneical Studies, that it does not mention at all the outstanding achievements of theology, mystical spirituality, monastic culture and art of Byzantium. After all, German historiography has already had a crucial investigation achievements in this area, not to mention the Russian acquis. It is to be believed that Koneczny deliberately omitted these areas from silence, so separately, outside the spiritual context, he listed 5 values that form civilization: good (moral), health, prosperity, fact and beauty. He recognized the highest importance due to the fact that his attitude toward him expresses differences in moral judgment. The law resulted, according to Koneczny, from morality, but as the highest expression of designation for natural law the Polish historian was just reading his liberation from sacrilege. due to the fact that Koneczny claimed that civilization is simply a strategy in which the uniformity of all elements is required, the primacy of good, according to him, does not release another components from taking the right place in the system. The discrimination of good in moral context is characteristic of Latin civilization, due to the fact that it is related to the law, while in Greek and Russian thought and theology the beauty from which the good originates is placed first (kalocagathia).
Byzantium dispute
This unambiguous imagination of civilization in terms of moral and legal strategy results from Koneczny's opposition to German philosophers, introducing a division between spiritual and external civilizations. A affirmative perfect for the Polish historian was the Roman civilization. But within the Empire he distinguished 2 models: Eastern-Christian, in which religion adapted, in his opinion, to civilization, and Catholic, where civilizations adapted to religion.
In the work of Koneński, the Byzantine civilization received a definitely bad rating. In particular, as he put it, "the discussion of public affairs through dogmatics" led to civilizational chaos, a distortion of the separation between secular and spiritual authority. The investigator powerfully favored the Roman-Latin civilization model. In relation to the east part of Roman Christianity, which in the time of the first 7 universal Councils was united with the western one, he made negative conclusions. He claimed that East-Roman ethics had usurped Roman law.
Unlike Cone, Lande wrote that it was in Western-Roman culture that Christian ethics was adapted for practical-political purposes, and that state power proposed religion as doctrine. East-Roman Christianity, according to Landy, attempted to reconcile the affirmative law with the extremist ethical commandments of the Gospel (cf. Clement of Alexandria, “Can a rich man be saved”). It besides introduced a discrimination between the law of nature derived from God, which is the basis of the Christian community leading all to salvation, and the state law having human pedigree. However, this rightfully noted demarcation did not mean a division between the secular and Christian authority of law. The deficiency of this discrimination on the basis of Byzantine culture Koneczny considered it just as usurpation of religion in relation to Roman law, due to the fact that in fact the affirmative state law since Constantine's time began to Christianity. The Emperor issued a number of regulations proving this, announced Sunday as a vacation day, gave Christian communities legal personality. In addition, he gave the bishops legislative and judicial power in civilian matters, so that the household was protected by law. Not to mention the fact that the first always Roman codified law, was made by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century.
Roman law in Byzantine culture was oversaturated with the thought of philanthropy. The state and ruler have been desacralized. Bishops thanks to their courage and uncompromisingness created natural competition for corrupt Imperial officials. The procedures for establishing bishopric sovereignty were completely democratic, and its mission was based on principles from outside the planet and for all people. It was the bishops who were the actual leaders of the people, and they besides influenced the Christianization of Roman law, taking in the defence of Christians following the principles of religion. The Church, writes Ch. Dawson, "Saved... an individual from being completely crushed under the force of a servillist state and opened a fresh planet of social and spiritual activity to it." Therefore, after the fall of the Western Empire, bishops in this area were the main bearers of the erstwhile Roman civilization and the fresh Christian culture. In the east Empire, the Emperor, in addition to secular legitimacy, received only the sanction of the ruler, but was deprived of his erstwhile divinity. The highest sanction was the Christian truth, which prevailed over the emperor and bishops. Hence so many spiritual disputes that the past of Byzantium abounds in. They are evidence of the large commitment of the Church, the Emperor and society to establish the truths of faith, which is the basis of life.
The doctrine of the coexistence of the state and the Church matured with the crystallization of the Trinitary Dogma. These facts show changes in phenomena. They were a higher reason for being, which completely changed the content of eternal elements of human culture specified as power, the law of the way of knowing good and evil. Christendom’s absorption of valuable elements of ancient culture and its overcoming of errors is comprehensively described by Charles Cochrane in his book Christianity and ancient culture.
Impact of Byzantium on Europe
Bulgaria and Serbia were the first effort to reflect Byzatian culture in the Slavic world. They created a cultural pattern for young Christian states that were introduced through baptism into the area of the Byzantine tradition of Christian state culture. They've been in the Empire's sphere of influence for centuries. They created civilizational bridges and developed a linguistic basis for adopting the content of Christianity. The proximity of Chersones, as stressed by Felix Koneczny, besides raised the cultural-civilization standard of Kiev Rusi, which was much higher in the 10th century than in Krakow.
It was not insignificant that the actual continuation of the civilization of the Empire in the west of Europe was Papacy. It, alternatively than the Empire, developed legal sciences in order to establish rational foundations for the management of the Church (Cracian Decrees), which favored the emergence of a suprastate and supranational Church in the West. He sought, as Dawson notes, to make a theocratic universal order that contrasted with: “a barbaric anarchy of feudal Europe.” In the West, only St. Thomas' doctrine created an intellectual framework for the coexistence of the authority of the ruler and pope, while in the East it was based on dogmatic grounds. St. Thomas's statement: "The law of God, which comes from grace, does not destruct the human law which comes from human reason" caused that in the Christian West, the "law" of the Gospel was separated from the law created by man faster than in the East. This was the beginning of the way to admit a man as the creator of the law, the creator of the secular order. Dawson cites St. Thomas's notable words: "In the order of worldly goods it is better to perceive to secular power than spiritual power." They best reflect the essence of the difference between the West and the East in complex problems concerning church, law and power.
The function of Mystics
In the Byzantine Empire we are dealing with a continuation of the tradition of Roman law modified since Emperor Constantine by Christianity. The basic principles of Byzantine law were distributed throughout the Empire territory along with young recently baptized communities. The characteristic feature of Byzantine Christianity was the growth of mysticism. The hesichastic theology preached by educated monks was a Christian consequence to Greek neopoganism and spreading in Renaissance Europe Judaism. The renewal of Christological issues and the consideration of them on the plane of man's debacle helped to see the law in the Gospel horizon.
The conduct of discourse at the level designated by Renaissance thinkers created the request to enter philosophical matter. Moral theology popularized in the works of the creators of monastic life proclaimed that by doing evil, man violates not only God's law or social norms, which took into account Roman law, but spoils God's order, which he cannot reproduce himself. Byzantine culture attempted to reduce the distance between pagan ethics, from which Roman law and Christian ethics appear on the basis of the ethics of a Christian state, creating syncretic legal codes and extending Christian ethics to many areas of life.
However, she failed to replace her punishment with penance or destruct her pre-Christian attachment to the concept of work and justice. Theorists of law are of the opinion that the normative nature of the law is incompatible, as the applicable provision of the procedure (the concept of the norm includes the categoricality of its application and rigid clarity of interpretation) with spiritual ethics which does not apply but binds. Therefore, even in the settlement of property cases, appeals were made to the ecclesiastical courts, sensing that ethics could not be full included in the "material" content of the standards, and that in the judgement of guilt there should be a connection between affirmative law and Christian truth. Christian law strives to anticipate a bad act by influencing man’s will.
The monastery's regulation and ascetic practice enabled us to learn the nature of sin with the discrimination of individual figures: deed, inclination, thought. It functioned in a form attributed to the well-known Byzantine renewal of the Basel regulation – Theodor survey (759-826).
An inevitable match?
Felix Koneczny is the author of categorical claims about inevitable conflicts between neighbouring civilizations. specified cases Conecial commented as follows: "Neither society can be organised at the same time according to different social structures, nor the state can bring its various states." According to the historian, civilizations adjacent to each another are doomed to fight until the triumph of 1 of them, but no emerges intact from this fight, for it causes “the introduction of a abroad body into its own body, from which diseases must occur” (p. 48). quite a few space was devoted to Consecutive creation of a negative image of the “tranch” of Russian civilization.
In order to trace the influence of the Turkish civilization on Russia in terms of legal culture, we should look at the administrative forms introduced by the Mongols, the evolution of the law during this period and crucial historical facts. These influences are most evident in relation to the main centres of power, legislative and judicial bodies, and in relation to the fresh situation of the Church. At the same time as Russian cities became increasingly dependent on the Tatars, the Church was successful in the work of Christianity. For then, to a large extent, pagan customs disappeared. Russian society has surrendered to Christian law. In Mongolian times, the Church besides retained its judicial powers, guaranteed earlier by the Włodzimierz Act (X c.) and Jarosław Act (XI c.), but had to search their extension.
After the analysis of the legal codes from this period, and the post-writing messages, it can be concluded that Russia has maintained continuity as a historical object, not as a historical phenomenon. This was most striking in the violation of the symphony and the ethics of power, which in Russia had not yet developed well. The unevenly distributed civilizational and cultural changes to Russia during the 13th and 14th centuries were besides the origin of many interior frictions, which, due to the doctrinal unity of the Church and States, had a mediocre impact on the mission of the Church and its legal competence. The church alternatively of christianizing the state, itself began to participate in the political game.
The case of Russia
Feliks Koneczny in his book entitled “The Acts of Russia” has identified six centres which from the 13th century have developed in the east Slavic area: Polish-Russian, Lithuanian, Nowogrodsko-Smolenski, zaleski, straight Tatarski and Kiev-Czernihowski. The student adopted legal-ownership criteria in the assessment of these districts. He claimed that legal relations in Lithuania, where the prince was the only owner and holder of the land, had a strong attraction for the Russian principalities. In Russia, however, the land became the property of those who occupied and developed it, which was not easy due to deficiency of hands to work.
The basic difference between the Moscow Rusia and the Polish-Lithuanian State was to specify in Polish-Lithuanian law the peasant's dependence on the owner of the land – a privileged right of nobility. This was not, as in Rusi, a ‘kriepost’, that is, the debtor’s dependence on the creditor, a kind of slavery for debts, but a attachment to the land as a essential worker, whose presence was a component of the noble privilege.
The Moscow State had a comparatively well-developed private law in the late 15th century. On the another hand, it had no public law, but the doctrine of the Christian Empire, which it took over from the falling Byzantine. Moscow tried to usage it in shaping the foundations of its own statehood. However, the neighbouring countries, which developed in accordance with the established western political culture, forced Moscow to adapt to the patterns of neighbours. It was consistent that this situation forced Russia to adopt any even barbarous public law. The historian meant the dynastic law introduced by Moscow according to the Lithuanian pattern. However, he did not mention that the solution was ad hoc. For Ivan III's Code of 1497 – the first law in force in Moscow Rusi – contains quite a few valuable information about, above all, the organisational framework for the ethics of the developing state. Although the earlier principles of the powers of the princely and ecclesiastical courts and Christian sources of ethics stay intact, there is simply a fresh organization of secular judicial apparatus and a desire to replace many judicial systems – one.
The Russian culture of the reign of Ivan IV has made the state a fundamental value. He was to be served by all others. Human actions were directed at his welfare. The law, on the another hand, gained the rank of the primary guarantor of this value. On the 1 hand, the widest possible scope of civil, administrative and judicial matters was regulated by law, and on the another hand, efforts were made to safe an adequate standard of surviving for the poorest. The Code of Ivan IV of 1550 demonstrates the will of strict demarcation of ecclesiastical and secular powers. This was supported by a crucial expansion of the secular judicial apparatus. There was a qualitative and quantitative difference between church and state law. This disparity must have been felt as onerous, as the Council and the Tsar themselves sought to correct it at the Council of the 100 Chapters. Despite these demarcations, the Church's influence on state law is visible primarily in the direction of abolishing slavery. The Code is simply a evidence to the fact that the law on Moscow Rusi reacted to a changing political situation, so it became an ad hoc tool. However, the content of the Code reflects the purity of the intention of the legislature, which extends the competence of local governments, takes into defence the impoverished, as a consequence of the policy of princes and boyars, care to preserve the ancestral property of the earth. The papers of the Ivan IV era are proof of the Tsar's conflict against political and social evil, will, private and corruption.
Ivan IV had to be aware that the changes he made went beyond the framework of tradition, and so expected the Holy Council to take a position on the relation between the Church and the Tsar and the law. The Council's provisions show that the Church in Russia had to be aware of the changes in the state, and so the bishops in the council's resolutions put the question of the human well-being guaranteed by the keepers of faith: the Church and the Tsar. They considered the place of both centres to be yet determined in the days of Emperor Justinian. It is clear that the Church clearly stood in the position of defending tradition.
Moscow and the Republic of
Changes within the law have been in Russia since the end of the 15th century for half of the 16th century a manifestation of modification of the basic pattern of culture under the influence of the civilisational influences of the Republic. This caused Russia to adapt to the culture of the western neighbour.
The Duchy of Novgorod, which Koneczny writes about, which was of interest to both Lithuania and Moscow, served as an intermediary. At the same time, we see the strengthening of the conventional current in Russian culture, which has been found to be based in the eschatology of history. For about a 100 years (second half of the 15th century – the first half of the 16th century), the eschatological direction did not go beyond the justifications of the Byzantine pedigree. They saturated the full culture, even its manifestations, which were partially modified due to non-Byzantine influences. In time, the eschatological flow of culture of this period broke distant from its metaphysical sources and became a prerequisite for the Russian conservative idea. On the another hand, the current culture connected in the first Moscow period, with the phenomena of political and social life, reflected in state institutions and law, adapted Russia to the civilizational standards of neighbouring countries.
Both of the currents outlined at this time after a short period of symphony will begin to drift apart and will lay at the foundation of 2 patterns of Russian culture: conservative and occult. Conservative divers will mention to Christian Byzantine sources of metaphysical unity of culture, where everything is subject to an eschatological purpose. In this he will see the superiority of Russian culture. On the another hand, the Octidentalist Divert, critical of its own tradition, will place specified spiritual values as state, ruler, law and Church in a civilizational plane. The origin of these phenomena lies in the gradual separation of the sphere of civilization to which alien patterns penetrate, from the space of culture.
Prof. Hanna Kowalski-Stus
Literature:
- Koneczny, “The Acts of Russia”, Vol. 1, Warsaw 1917.
- Conclusive, “Byzantine Civilization”, London 1973,
- Koneczny, “About order in history”, Warsaw-Struga 1991.
- Hejzinga, “Both the Istoriche Żiznennyh ideals and second lessons. Periev. I. Mikhailov’, London 1992.
- Notable, “ Modern Nations”. Introduction by J. Szacki. Warsaw 1990.
- A. Krąpiec, “The basis for knowing culture”, Lublin 1991.
- Lande, “Studio of the doctrine of Law”, Warsaw 1959.
Ch. Dawson, "Skice on Medieval Culture", by J. Sulowski, Warsaw 1966.
Ch. Cochrane, “Christianity and Ancient Culture”, by G. Pianko, Warsaw 1960.
St. Thomas, “Summa theologica”, Fr. II, part 2. Cit. for Ch. Dawson.
St. Thomas of Aquinas, Commentary on the "Sentence" of Peter Lombard, part 2, puzzles. 2. Quotes behind Ch. Dawson, there.
- Gilson, “The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy”, Warsaw 1959.
- Kowalska, “Old Russian Culture. Tradition and Change”, Kraków 1998.
Think Poland, No. 49-50 (7-14.12.2025)