The ancient heritage that I sketched in the previous chapter became part and parcel of the later medieval traditions. A series of key authors, including St. Augustine, Orosius, Cassiodorus, and most importantly Isidore of Seville with his Etymologies, transmitted central aspects of this knowledge to the post-Roman world. At the same time, the slow assertion of Christianity inevitably led to significant changes in attitude towards the individual aspects that the notion of Europe evoked. While the geographical element was quite unproblematic—in fact, it fitted into the intellectual framework of a religion whose God had a tripartite nature—the mythological motifs were quite different. This chapter will first present how early Christian authors reacted to the myth of Europa, before turning to their treatment of aspects of geographical structure and administrative order. It will conclude with a brief presentation of the surprising increase of references to Europe in a religious context.

Against Paganism: Christian Reactions to the Myth of “Europa”

The important Christian thinkers of the fourth and fifth centuries were well-versed in canonical knowledge of the ancient world. St. Augustine received an excellent education in the sense of classical paideia and the same holds true for others, who also did their best to collect and transmit the canon of knowledge. Cassiodorus, who founded the monastery of Vivarium towards the mid-sixth century, organized much of this canon in his Institutiones, and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies assembled a wealth of information in quasi-encyclopaedic form in the early seventh century.

Well acquainted as they were with the traditions in “pagan” texts, we can observe how Christian authors reacted to the myths and stories they encountered. In the case of Europa, two separate strategies can be identified: On the one hand, several authors tried to rationalize the story of the abduction (as did Herodotus). Lactancius (d. ca. 320), for example, interpreted the “bull” as imagery on the sail (a tutela) of the abductors’ boat (BE 101). Most Christian authors, on the other hand, used the story of Europa's abduction to demonstrate the moral inferiority of the pagan gods.

The title of this short monograph merits explanation. Although the name “Europe” has enjoyed immense popularity in medieval studies from the mid-twentieth century onwards, it is by no means obvious what an analysis of “‘Europe’ in the Middle Ages” might comprise. What's more, the use of the term in medieval studies is far from obvious, as we shall see. On the most general level, recent publications on “Europe in the Middle Ages” can be divided into two categories: the majority seek to describe events and developments that took place in the geographical unit that we now identify as “Europe.” Sometimes they analyze and identify the formation of what is often called a “European culture” or even a “European identity.”

Another series of studies, smaller in number, focuses on the development of the concept (or the idea) of Europe. They do not so much ask “What happened in Europe during the Middle Ages?” or “What were the characteristics of medieval societies in Europe?,” but instead focus on whether the notion (or a concept) of Europe played a role during the period we call the Middle Ages and how this role can be described.

It is the historians’ role to probe sources for answers—but the questions they choose to ask are inevitably informed by the present day. Many authors have searched for the “roots” of the idea of European political unity in the Middle Ages, but the first historians to do so, from the late 1940s onwards, were somewhat disappointed by what they found. Around 1990, when the fall of the Berlin Wall sparked renewed interest in all questions concerning the history and identity of “Europe,” medievalists began synthesizing the findings of these pioneering works. They asserted that the word “Europe” was used quite rarely in the medieval period and that it remained a “purely geographical” notion for most of the time between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries.

In the following pages I will argue that both assumptions are distorted, if not wrong. In order to make a convincing case for the modification of this well-established picture, I would have to present the available sources in much more detail than is possible in this book.

As is often the case with topics that pertain to a “history of ideas” of the Middle Ages, an analysis of the notion of Europe in this period is not possible without considering the foundations in Antiquity. In the case of Europe this begins with the word itself, whose origins are still not entirely clear. Some research-ers propose a (reconstructed) Phoenician root ‘rb, related to the Hebrew ‘ereb and referring to the “evening.” Others prefer a genuinely Greek etymology, based on eurý- (broad) or eûros (breadth), which coincides with interpretations by antique authors. Equally, a connection with eurós (mouldiness, decay) might be possible, though it seems rather unlikely.

Medieval authors, who were often fascinated by the origins of words and their etymology which they took to represent “real” meaning, hardly ever commented on Europe from this perspective. They mostly limited their reflections to the more factual observation that Europe was the third part of the world and received its name from the princess Europa—a tradition that is already attested to in Roman sources: Europam tertiam orbis partem ab Europa, Agenoris filia, certum est appellari (Europe, the third part of the world, is certainly named after Europa, the daughter of Agenor: Sextus Pompeius Festus, second century CE; BE 83). Only a few medieval texts commented on the Greek origin, such as, for example, one anonymous glossator who commented on Orosius's work and explained, at some point between the seventh and the ninth century CE: Eurupa grece tellus (Europe means “land” in Greek) (BE 84). It is only at the beginning of the fourteenth century that we find more elaborate etymological explanations: Referring to the combination of eu and ripa, for example, the author of an Ovide moralisé stated that “Europe means good shore,” and Bernhard of Kremsmünster proposed an analogous explanation at roughly the same time (BE 85).

At the end of this brief overview—which has covered no less than an entire millennium!—many questions necessarily remain open, not least what all this means for us today. In recent years, the idea(l) of the nation-state has once again become prominent. So prominent, in fact, that it visibly endangers the accomplishments of a long-term process of political, administrative, and cultural unification in Europe that had and has several objectives—including securing peace between the member states of the European Union (and beyond).

As we have seen, the experience of the World Wars was a major motivation for historians of the post-war period to analyze the Middle Ages in European terms. Several decades after the first pioneering works, the results remain ambivalent: analyses that consciously apply a European framework to medieval history are no longer rare, but many publications still tend to choose the modern borders between nationstates as their frame of reference. As to the more conceptual approaches that seek to analyze the history of the “idea” of Europe, the outcomes are equally hard to gauge. Some of the initial results presented by Fischer, Hay, and others, clearly must be revised: Europe was neither a “rare” notion in medieval texts (especially since it is hard to evaluate exactly how many—or how few—appearances might justify such a qualification), nor was it “purely geographical.” The latter insight is of some importance if we want to adequately describe the mental landscape of the people who lived in the period that we call the Middle Ages. In a cultural setting where the material world was interpreted as God's creation and where everything could acquire symbolic value as a representation of the creator's work, the very idea of the “purely geographical” seems out of touch. And while Europe basically never became a clear-cut political concept during the Middle Ages (in this respect Fischer and Hay were certainly right), it still acquired significant and wide-ranging cultural connotations.

But what might the insights into these connotations tell us today? For one thing, they allow us to avoid misunderstandings that often lead to the misuse of history: Charlemagne certainly did not perceive himself as a “European” ruler, though historians and politicians of the mid- and late twentieth century were quite successful in presenting him as such.

For a medievalist who lives and works in the early twenty-first century, writing about Europe is a highly ambivalent undertaking. Some readers might be tempted to argue that the topic hardly merits our attention, since they consider the medieval evidence too sparse or too inconclusive. Others might think that the choice of subject constitutes per se an unwelcome relapse into Eurocentric tendencies. In any case, it seems clear that the subject inevitably evokes current political debates. Whether one subscribes to the conviction that Europe merits becoming the framework for an increasingly interconnected and profound political and cultural community or, to the contrary, clings to the, historically speaking, relatively new belief that people are best organized in the form of nation-states, talking about Europe has political overtones.

Having studied the use of the notion of Europe for quite some time now, I am very conscious about these effects. It might thus be helpful to clarify my own position: Born and raised in late twentieth-century Germany, I was seventeen years old when the Berlin wall fell. I grew up to be deeply convinced that the European Union (EU) constitutes a vital means of overcoming the numerous problems that the nation-state entails—and I still stand by these convictions. As an historian, however, I am also convinced that political questions and problems cannot be solved by looking backwards: history does not furnish ready-made answers. What it can do, is provide alternative perspectives and information that helps us to better understand our problems in the first place. What we choose to do remains our own responsibility.

In this sense, I would like to stress that the material and the interpretations I present in this little book should neither be read as an affirmation of current EU-policies—nor as their rejection. My work as an historian focuses on analyzing and understanding how people used the notion of Europe in the medieval past and which ideas they connected with that term. I can see no convincing argument that would force us to accept that the phenomena we can see here determine or justify any specific modern interpretation of “Europe”.

While it is not surprising that the notion of Europe became part of the vocabulary of medieval authors—after all, it was a central element of the geographical knowledge and the mythological lore they inherited from Greek and Roman Antiquity—the fact that it was used in contexts that transcended the ancient traditions is noticeable. Although early medieval sources rarely contain any kind of overtly “political” connotation, Europe was integrated into discourses that must be considered as religious, and it also served as an instrument to perceive, describe, and interpret the surrounding world.

Without becoming central for the description and analysis of societies and their organization, Europe continued to be used in a relatively broad range of situations, including contexts that come close to what modern readers might perceive to be political. A first apogee of this development is usually identified with the Carolingians between the mid-eighth and the early tenth centuries, and more specifically with the dominant figure of Charlemagne: modern authors after 1945 often repeated that he was called “Father of Europe” (pater Europae) by his contemporaries.The first section of this chapter will demonstrate that this is not entirely false, but not wholly true either. Still, the use of the notion of Europe in the Carolingian period seems significant.

Nostalgic from the Outset—Remembering Charlemagne

Most modern historians of the medieval notion of Europe agree that the Carolingian period witnessed a first peak in the use of the term. The most prominent example certainly is the famous Paderborn Epic, which describes the encounter between Charlemagne and Pope Leo III at Paderborn in 799. Attacked and mutilated by his rivals in Rome, Leo fled to the king of the Franks to ask for his support, and Charlemagne's ensuing campaign to Italy culminated in his coronation as Roman emperor on Christmas 800. In the Paderborn Epic, the preceding events are described in detail and with lavish laudatory terms. The poet describes his king as “precious light” (cara lux—certainly a pun on Carolus) and refers to Europe in several instances. Charlemagne thus becomes the “lighthouse that illuminates Europe with his light” (Europae quo celsa pharus cum luce coruscat), the “venerable apex of Europe” (Europae venerandus apex) and finally, in the most famous phrase, the “Father of Europe” (pater Europae) (BE 138).