Consideration of the issue of light and space in the culture and art of Antiquity and the Middle Ages allows us to reveal the specific features of the eras under consideration in their comparison with each other. Earlier in the scientific literature the specifics of understanding of space and the perception of light were investigated very discretely. The author of the article proposes to consider light and space in their relationship. Not only the breadth of the use of the luminosity of materials in the monuments of art is analyzed, but also the nature of the perception of this luminosity by contemporaries, on the material of literary monuments that have come down to us. In the research are used the methods of comparative, artistic, stylistic and iconological analysis. The article shows that the interpretation of light and understanding of space are closely related. Ideas about them and their connections changed dramatically from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Only in the culture of Byzantium space began to be understood primarily as a single indivisible whole filled with divine light. Light was not only a symbol of the transcendental for Christianity, light became a way of uniting the space of the temple into a single entity, which was perceived as a symbol of God. Western Europe came to this understanding in the Gothic era, passing the traditions of the perception of space as a whole to subsequent eras.