The article analyzes the specifics of the spatiotemporal representations of the medieval people of Western Europe by A. Y. Gurevich. Being the successor of the research tradition of the French school of “annals”, a domestic researcher introduced into scientific use the term “categories of culture”, offering theoretical and empirical basis for the concept of studying the mentality of the people of the medieval era by identifying the basic categories of their consciousness. This gives you the ability to understand different areas of social life of the era, as well as to explain the characteristic behavior of the investigated socio-cultural environment. Approach A. Y. Gurevich research content categories culture is based on detecting a coherent picture of the world of medieval people by appealing to the study of various factors affecting the mentality of the era. In addition, a holistic picture of the perception of space and time built as a result of submitting the researcher to earlier stages of development of Western European culture, thanks to which revealed deep layers of consciousness that affect the mentality of the people in the subsequent period (medieval), and taking into account the interaction of features of the thinking and worldview of the educated and illiterate part of the population.
