The book is an outline of the Christian culture of the West from the era of the Church Fathers to its apogee at the turn of the 13th–14th centuries. Without claiming to be a complete description and analysis of all aspects of the spiritual life of the period under review, the author reveals those in which thinkers and artists left the most noticeable mark. Along with generally recognized masterpieces, the reader will find here little-known, recently discovered and almost unstudied monuments. Many works of art are illustrated with the author’s photographs, medieval texts are given in the author’s translations from Latin and other ancient languages and are often accompanied by polemical notes about opinions, assessments and methodological positions existing in modern art history and medieval studies.O. Voskoboynikov is a full professor at the Higher School of Economics, a member of the Laboratory of Medieval Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, PhD at the Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris, and an associate professor at the Department of History of the Middle Ages at Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov.