SPP 1173: Integration and Disintegration of Civilisations in the European Middle Ages

“优先计划”的指导思想是这样一种假设：欧洲从来就不是由一个单一的文化组成的。因此，该计划驳斥了一种普遍的观点，即欧洲中世纪几乎只有一种文化，即拉丁基督教文化。这一观点显然是建立在对身份的当代和有时间限制的追求的基础上的，这种追求在当前的复杂性面前失败了，无法应付当前和未来的挑战。因此，研究计划的目的之一不是发现甚至肯定欧洲身份，而是以严格的科学方式，要求整合和分裂过程的辩证法。我们认为，这些相互矛盾的过程总是相互制约并不断相互交替，它们始终是欧洲历史的标志，并构成了欧洲历史的特点。

The guiding idea of the Priority Programme is the presumption that Europe has never been made up of one monolithic culture. Thus, the programme rejects the widespread opinion that the European Middle Ages were characterised almost exclusively by only one culture, the Latin Christian culture. This opinion is clearly based on a contemporary and time-bound search of identity that fails in the face of the present complexity and is not able to cope with current and future challenges. Therefore, one purpose of the research programme is not to discover or even affirm a European identity at all, but rather to ask, in a strictly scientific way, for the dialectics of integrating and disintegrating processes. We believe that these contradicting processes, that have always conditioned one another and continuously alternated with each other, marked European history all along and made up its specific character.