Lights in the “Cimmerian Darkness”: Journey to Eastern Europe in the 15<sup>th</sup> Century
The article examines the journeys to Eastern Europe in the 15<sup>th</sup> century - in the period of “Dark Age” of the East Slavic Middle Ages. The author aims to observe the Eastern Europe in the 15<sup>th</sup> century from the perspective of people of that time in order to ﬁnd out, how they structured their geographical and political space. The article presents information about eight travellers, some of them are well-known in the historiography (Gilbert de Lannoy, Metropolitan Isidor and etc.), the others (Johannes de Galonifontibus, “meister Johannes Rellach”) are provided to research community for the ﬁrst time. For the ﬁrst time in historiography the journey reports to Eastern Europe in 15<sup>th</sup> century were considered through the systematic approach. Putting the question this way helps to understand, how the western people perceived this region. The research suggests that such perception didn’t have the East-West divide, which we are used to. It had a form of the peculiar network structure of the important urban centres as the key points (Novgorod, Vilna, Kiev, Lvov, etc.) as well as historical regions. The establishment of the “new borderland” or the “new frontier” relates to another period - the “long 16<sup>th</sup> century”.