“Europe” and “Christendom” a Problem in Renaissance Terminology and Historical Semantics

Extract

The term Christendom (Christianitas) meaning a territorial area took many centuries to establish itself, but by the twelfth century it had become part of the regular vocabulary of the Latin-speaking and -writing world. During the long period of the emergence of Christendom the world Europe was not a competitor, for it was used only in a geographical sense in scientific works and in exegesis on those passages of the Bible which described the peopling of the world. There is, however, a marked change in the fourteenth century in this regard. Europe is a rare word in Dante: in Petrarch it is frequently found. It is true that there is one isolated example of the adjective in the eighth century, in a chronicle describing the united resistance to the Moors. Thereafter there is, I believe, no further example until the fourteenth century. Dante in fact, who has no inhibitions about using the words “Asian” and “African,” deliberately avoids “European.” The next generation sees Boccaccio use the word “Europaic”—an old invention, which was not to have any parallels either in Latin or in vernaculars. And it is not till we come to Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini that we find Europaeus emerging. The adjective is found more than once in his voluminous writings. In the following generation we find Erasmus using Europaeus and in the next generation again we find the word entering the vernacular languages of Europe. It is, of course, true that Christianitas (or more commonly respublica Christiana) continues to be used with great frequency during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, together with the vernacular equivalents of these expressions.