The Middle Ages as an object of research of legal science

This article is devoted to the study of the concept of “the Middle Ages” as a phenomenon of legal history of mankind through the currently existing scientific approaches to its interpretation: formal-chronological, socio-economic and socio-cultural or complex. Based on the latter approach, the authors draw attention to the expediency of singling out within the framework of historical-legal research a specific socio-legal approach to the definition of the analyzed concept. Within the framework of the article, the authors note on the basis of the analysis of historical and historical-legal literature the absence in modern historical-legal and historical science of a single stable understanding of the concept of “the Middle Ages”, and offer the author's definition of this term.