Antemurale Christianitatis. Zur Genese der Bollwerksrhetorik im östlichen Mitteleuropa

What is it about?

Against the backdrop of the Ottoman threat, a very common motif in the diplomatic language of the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period was the topos of a Christian Occident surrounded by innumerable enemies of the faith and protected by lands such as Poland, Hungary, and Livonia, stylized as ‘bulwarks of Christianity’. The emergence of this notion and the corresponding ideology was connected with the political and religious situation of the time. The presumed existence of an antemurale implies the existence of a murus, and of an area protected by it. This was believed to be inhabited by members of the Christian community. This western Respublica Christiana – subordinated to the secular power of the Emperor and the spiritual power of the Pope – bordered on heathen, Muslim and schismatic countries to the East. This contribution seeks to take a closer look at the medial diffusion of the East Central and South Eastern European ‘bulwark’ topoi under the dynasty of the Jagiellonians in the rest of Europe at the threshold of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Relevant single-leaf prints, frontispieces, woodcuts and copperplate engravings representing the respective outpost-countries as antemuralia Christianitatis ensured that the bulwark idea was also spread beyond the circles of humanistic scholars. Thanks to the new technique of printing, numerous writings were circulated (the so called Turcica) which focussed on the Ottoman expansion and on the role which Hungary and Poland in particular had to fulfil in the defence of Latin Christianity. The development of the printing press meant that a far larger public could now be reached, and the Turkish Wars belonged, alongside the Italian Wars of the early sixteenth century, to the military events which awakened the greatest interest among the European public.

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