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A history of European identity, by Wolfgang Schmale

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The Christian Commonwealth in the Early Modern Period

In the fifteenth century, several developments intersected with one another. Although "Europe” already existed in the Middle Ages as a geographical term, it was above all in the context of the world that the continent was seen as such. Maps of the world were popular in which the earth - consisting of three continents, Asia (which took up about fifty per cent of the surface area), Africa (the lower right hand quarter) and Europe (lower left hand quarter) - was depicted as the body of Christ: the head, hands and feet were those of the Son of God, the rest of the body was represented by the earth, the globe. It was only from the fifteenth century onwards that Europe was increasingly perceived by itself and depicted alone on maps, to some extent taken out of the egalitarian context of medieval maps, in which Jerusalem constituted the centre point. Thus cartography enables us to establish how Europe became conscious of itself.

At the same time, horizons broadened: Portuguese seafarers sailed mile by mile, year by year, along the coast of Africa, ever further until they reached the equator and then south of the equator. At the end of the fifteenth century, in 1492, Columbus "discovered” America and thereby opened up a new view of the world. Besides Asia, about which the Europeans had always known more, and in which they had always been more interested, Africa and the "new” continent, America, represented new cornerstones in the Europeans' system of reference. Europe had to be situated anew, and this in turn encouraged a new consciousness of one's self, of Europe, in comparison with other continents. The comparison led, among other things, to the conclusion that Europe and the Europeans were superior in the world system.

The advance of the Ottomans from the East finally raised the pressure on Europe to define itself. The Ottomans counted as heathens. They could not be beaten in war, they pushed back the frontiers of Christendom, and from the European perspective they reduced Christendom to Europe. Militarily, it seemed, European states had to stand together in order to get rid of the Turkish threat, as it was then called. To this extent it is no surprise if concepts like "house” and "fatherland” appeared as a way of defining Europe in the context of the "Turkish danger”. As Christendom and the European continent had become almost the same thing – the symbol for this was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 – the understanding established itself of Europe as a Christian commonwealth. By this was meant the community of Christian European states. The continent of Europe was interpreted as the geographical body of this Christian commonwealth, protected by God. Behind this there stands a completely essentialist idea of identity. This idea of identity was born by a literate population which was not even small, which was highly interconnected right across Europe, and which represented a kind of European "demos”.

It consisted of the intermarried ruling dynasties of Europe, such as the House of Austria (the Habsburgs), the Valois and Bourbons in France or the Medici in Italy. Among many other larger and smaller princely families one could mention the Stuarts, the House of Orange, the Vasa and the Wettins. "Tacked on” to this were numerous other bonds of relationship, noble and non-noble groups and those who stood in clientilist relationships with these dynasties (systems of patronage, court societies, holders of office, people with economic commissions from them like artists, scholars, artisans, religious orders and the church). These were social groups who had education and knowledge and who had political, economic, social, cultural and religious (ecclesiastical) power, or who fought one another for it, or else who, through interconnectedness within the context of systems of clientilism, patronage, commission or blood relationship, stood in relative closeness to the source of power.

Both Protestants and Catholics used the self-definition of Europe as a Christian commonwealth in a world full of heathens and infidels in the sixteenth century, the era of the so-called schism. It survived the Thirty Years' War and could be found in European peace treaties until well into the eighteenth century. The Holy Alliance, initiated by the Russian Tsar, i.e. an Orthodox Christian, at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (the alliance was initially concluded between Catholic Austria, Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia against France, but was later enlarged to include France) modernised the concept of Europe's identity as a Christian commonwealth for one last time.

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