Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

28 Bernhard Giesen
of the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean (Delanty 1995; Pirenne
1987). Until the sixteenth century and the conflict with the expanding Ottoman
Empire, this eastern frontier was the focal point of reference for Christianity. Instead
of merging Greek and Roman traditions in a common civilization of late antiquity,
both were now separated by the great schism.
The political transfer of the imperial tradition from Byzantium to the West
was backed by the cultural appropriation of the Christian heritage as embodied in
the relics of the Christian martyrs that were traded or stolen in Byzantine or Muslim
cities in the East and in the crusaders’ attempt to conquer the holy places in Palestine
(Geary 1978). Here, too, the translation of culture was closely connected with
material objects and localities – the sacred was not everywhere, but concentrated
in particular objects, in statues and churches, in relics and sacred sites.
The translation of an imperial heritage was not only embodied in movements of
conquest and transfer but also supported by a discourse about the unity of Europe
‘avant la lettre’. This discourse was carried by monks and scholars such as Widukind
of Corvey and Lupold von Babenburg, Dante Alighieri and Marsilius of Padua,
who advocated the imperial cause – frequently in opposition to the papal claim
of supremacy (Gollwitzer 1964; Leyser 1992; Reuter 1992; Wallach 1972). The
hegemonial claim of the Holy Roman Empire was not just a matter of political
power but it had to be grounded in a spiritual unity of Latin Christianity and the
papal claim to represent the invisible god in the visible world had to be respected
by the power holders. Thus imperium and ecclesia embodied in pope and emperor
clashed in the claim to cultural as well as political leadership. Their claims were
supported and challenged, debated and denied by intellectuals, by scholars, jurists
and theologians.
These intellectuals referred to each other by a transnational network of
communication. Monks travelling between the centres of medieval scholarship,
knights on a crusade or on a pilgrimage, bishops convening on a papal council or
humanist scholars debating at a princely court discovered not only regional
differences of origin but experienced also a strong commonality of Latin-speaking
Christians in contrast to the local commoners and their vernacular tongue on the
one hand, and to the non-European foreigners on the other. Europe appeared not
only as a translation of imperial authority but also as a transnational community
of Latin-speaking monks and scholars, noblemen and office holders, clergymen
and artists.
The third major translation of Europe can be seen as a turn towards a western
frontier brought about by Portuguese and Spanish conquistadors a well as by
Dutch and English traders who crossed the Atlantic for the lure of the New
World’s treasures or the pursuit of religious perfection. Here, the constitutive
boundary did run between the savages of the New World and the Christian
conquerors who ventured out from the Western shores of the Old World and
– despite their internal competition – kept an awareness of their common European
identity (Bitterli 1993; Chiapelli 1976; Gollwitzer 1964). Religious mission and trade
capitalism transformed the Atlantic Ocean into an Inland Sea of the European
colonial empires. Here too, the movement of European culture was originally