A Sense of Europe: the Making of This Continent in Early Modern Dutch News Media

Abstract

During the Middle Ages many European authors employed the word Christianitas—or vernacular synonyms such as, in English, Christianity or Christendom—instead of the geographical notion ‘Europe’ to identify their continent. Although medieval geographers continued to use the word ‘Europe’, an essentially neutral term at the time, the Roman Catholic Church was particularly influential in promoting the word Christianitas. The Catholic clergy hoped to make clear that Europe was a Christian world and Europeans were Christians. As Denys Hay concluded in his pioneering introduction to Europe as an idea, in this era the term Europe was “devoid of sentiment”, while Christendom was “a word with profound emotional overtones”. Christianity was the bulwark against the threatening world of Muslims who had conquered the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but it also represented the comfort and familiarity of home, far removed from the exotic, alien and largely unknown regions of Asia and Africa. This helps to explain why Christianitas and Christendom came into common use, while the term Europe remained comparatively rare.1 However, during the Renaissance the meaning and idea of Europe changed. Humanists made synonyms of the words Christianitas and Europe by granting an emotional content to the latter. Gradually Europe became a more popular word than Christendom as a name for the European continent. A variety of reasons may explain this change, three of which will be briefly touched on here. In the first place, since the Late Middle Ages Christianity was no longer a unified entity, ruled by the pope in spiritual matters and the Emperor in the secular sphere. Europe consisted by this time of several important states, and their princes challenged the papal and imperial authorities. Secondly, in 1453 the Ottomans conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, and occupied an important part of the Christian world. Although this area was Greek Orthodox, and regarded as very different from the Latin version of Christianity,