This book is about the continuity of time, the cultural continuity of civilisations, and the ideological struggle that generated the growth of medieval culture. It explores the confrontation and interaction between Christianity and paganism, and between the Roman and barbarian worlds. More importantly, this book is about the Last of the Romans—those whose fame through the ages may not have been prodigious, but who, through their tireless labours, linked successive generations and succeeded in resisting barbarity.

About the author

Her study of Boethius, a thinker of the early Middle Ages, earned Victoria Ukolova a prize at the Second USSR Contest for Young Social Scientists in 1973. She was the last of Academician Sergei Skazkin’s students of the Middle Ages at Moscow University. After a few years at Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk, at the local university, she returned to Moscow. Today, she is head of the Chair on the Cultural History of Foreign Countries at the General History Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. More than a hundred of her works on the history of medieval European culture have been published so far, including monographs, articles, and translations of medieval authors into Russian.

Translated from the Russian by Vic Schneierson

You can get the book here and here.

This is a cleaned, optimised scan of this version
A 1989 Soviet work. Scanned by Ismail, sent to him by Leftypaul.
From Thomas Mrett’ Internet Archive collection.

Contents

A Few Words in Lieu of an Introduction 5

Chapter 1. The Eternal City, Christians and Barbarians 8
Chapter 2. From the Altar of Victory to the Holy City 25
Chapter 3. Pagan Wisdom and the Triumph of Authority 39
Chapter 4. Free Will and Providence 66
Chapter 5. Reticent Historians and Impassive Poets 90
Chapter 6. Scipio’s Dream and the Cosmic Riddle 119
Chapter 7. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury 151
Chapter 8. Political Zigzags and the Beauty of Logic 170
Chapter 9. The Wheel of Fortune and the Admonitions of Philosophy 236
Chapter 10. Three Defeats or the Happy Life of Flavius Cassiodorus 259
Chapter 11. The First Medieval Encyclopaedist 295
Chapter 12. Atoms and Angels 337
Chapter 13. Love of Wisdom or Saintly Simplicity? 361
Chapter 14. Homer’s Golden Chain and the Birth of the Medieval Culture 382