About the identity of Europe : why it is a problem ? (1)

Certainly, we may assume that everybody who speaks about Europe knows that “Erep” is an ancient Syrian (Semitic) term meaning sunset, or west ; and that its opposite is “Assu”, the sunrise, or east.

 Hans-Peter Geissen lives in Koblenz (Germany), at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers. Interested in all what concerns faunistics (data about animal species) of the Midrhine region, he is the author of many scientific publications on these issues. He bent on the Turkish issue with a very specific approach so as “to prevent a self-definition of Europe on the grounds of historical or religious mythologies.”

It is therefore clear that Europe is not Asia, just as East is not West. Moreover, there is no difficulty to understand that the term means a direction on the surface on the earth and therefore is geographical. The difficulty lies in the fact that it is a relative term, depending on the viewpoint of the observer. From a North American viewpoint, for instance, Erep is what we commonly call Japan and China, and Assu may start in Iceland or France. But for orientation as to what may be meant in global terms we may take the ancient city of Assur, which is in today’s northern Iraq.

The “Christian Club”

It may then seem astonishing that quite a many of people claim that Europe’s identity would be harmed by a religion, Islam. Or that “the European Union must decide whether it is a Christian Club”, as Mr. Erdogan had put it some times ago. Religion is not a geographical term. Then, how can it determine or harm something geographical ? That seems quite nonsensical.

Nevertheless, we may look at this from an empirical viewpoint and establish that here the term has been shifted from a geographical to a spiritual meaning.

We cannot henceforth discuss the issue in geographic terms, and it would mean a serious confusion of mind were we to determine geographical borders of spirit.

As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had it: “The Spirit blows wherever it wants so.” Or not, as we might add.

However, we might move to a common denominator of geography and human spirit, which we may find in history. It may reveal which spirit was blowing where, and even when. And more.

Of course, then, we must restrict ourselves to times when Christianity at least was in existence. In this sense, Cesar or Cicero, Socrates or Aristoteles, Vercingetorix or Armin(ius) were not European. And in fact, the term “European” was not in use in these times.

It came into use in the Middle Ages, when indeed spiritual and geographical terms mingled. It is difficult for us today, to understand what exactly the term “Holy Roman Empire” meant. Perhaps, it would be wrong to search for accuracy in this context. But it is clear that “holy” is a spiritual term and “Rome” a geographical one. And “empire” relates to space, too, at least in effect.

However, “European” did not just relate to that empire, which roughly contained what today is Germany and (north to central) Italy, and some neighboring regions. “Europe” in this sense also contained France, Britain and (northern) Spain as well. “European” was a political term meaning those lands who provided warriors for crusades against the Muslims, then established in what was not “Europe”.

The very term “crusade”, of course, related to the Christian cross, so we may guess that the spiritual meaning is quite obvious. “Europe”, then, is a bigger “Holy Empire”, or, in German, a “Reich”.

Moreover, it is anti-Islamic by definition. But if we look at crusades in a broader context, they were, at times, also directed against the “pagans” in eastern regions of what then became “Europe”, and against the Orthodox church. “Crusades” were also directed against deviant Western Christian groups like the Catharians, Albigensians, or Waldensians.

We can, thus, not describe this Europe as simply Christian. It is more precisely Roman-Christian.

The Problem

We may then ask why this should be a problem today. Didn’t we have developments like Humanism and Enlightenment, which surpassed the boundaries of (Western) Christianity. Hadn’t already the Anglicans, the Lutherans and Calvinists, and finally the French Revolution succeeded in breaking free of Roman domination? Hadn’t the popes even been removed from Rome to Avignon and then, already in 1338, even been denied a role in the elevation of the “Holy Roman” emperor?

Don’t we include Orthodox Christianity in Europe, relate our thinking to Aristotle and Cicero, or even mention a “Jewo”-Christian heritage? Aren’t we secularists today, isn’t even the Roman Church in favor of secularism?

Yes. And yet, we inherited antiislamism. It is this inherited antiislamism that is motivating the fundamental-opposition against Turkey’s EU-accession, and it is in many of the more subtle forms of opposition or even of apparent approval.

A matter of “evil”

It may be fatal to underestimate the consequences. Spiritually, what is inherited here implicates the eradication of the evil. The physical appearance of the evil may be Albigensians, Iberian or Balkan Muslims, or witches, or wolves, or the “Jewish World Conspiracy”. Indeed, the “Third Reich” may be explicable best in terms of this heritage. We may ask wether Stalinism isn’t just another of its distant consequences, irrespective wether some historians call it “Asiatic”. Stalinism is about eradication of the (perceived) evil and is quite alien to any Asian culture, as far as my limited knowledge can reach.

There are more subtle forms of this heritage. Despite we know well about the importance of Islamic societies in the Iberian peninsula and Sicily for the development of both European Humanism and Enlightenment, and we don’t bother to use Arabic numerals and Arabic terms like algebra and chemistry - “European History” ist mostly described as if it were without an Islamic heritage. But in fact, its development is not at all understandable without.

Not without Islamic cultures and not without antiislamism.

That is, we are dealing with an interaction, with synergistic and antagonistic aspects. This in turn is of course just one of the interactions that formed Europe, both on a European and global scale.

In fact, Islamic rule in Iberia tolerated large Christian and Jewish populations, and here it was that ancient Greek and other (Roman, Persian, Arabic) authors were translated from Arabic to West-European languages. Ironically, while “the evil” was eradicated in the Iberian peninsula, it expanded in the Balkan peninsula. And, still, in the Anatolian peninsula, where however it had started earlier.

The Ottomans

Ottoman expansion in the Balkans caused a flood of antiturkish and antiislamic propaganda that is an essential part of our “European Heritage”. The Ottoman proceedings in this conquest gave considerable reasons for deepest fears. First, they were militarily superior due to combined use of the disciplined (and quite Roman) Jannissary phalanx and Turkmenic light cavallery, superior logistics on campaign and in finance, and by the early use of cannons and musquets. Moreover, they allied with and co-opted Christian princes of the Balkan people, and finally the whole “Byzantine” (Orthodox) church.

For the commoners, things depended on their geographic position. In the respective borderlands, they were subjected to the never-ending “Akinci” raids, which were among the reasonable grounds to name “the Turk” “terrible”. “He” indeed was.

Which doesn’t mean that “Christian” raids into Ottoman lands were much different.

Whatsoever, once inside the Ottoman Empire, the “Pax Ottomanica” had considerable advantages. Exploitation of the peasantry remained comparativly low and didn’t imply serfdom. Nor were they forced to change their religious creed. Even many of those who had been enslaved in Akinci raids could hope to be manumitted some years later and find acceptable conditions of life. However, in their case conversion to Islam was strongly advisable.

Peasants and other commoners living further apart from Ottoman frontiers could compare the rumours coming in from the “Turkish empire”, relating to the absence of serfdom and of religious persecution for instance, with their current conditions.

This in turn was probably reason enough to rain down as much defaming propaganda against “the Turk” on the boorish people as possible. Most efficiently from the church pulpits and at times in daily rhythm. Not much fantasy is needed to imagine why the effects may still be seen easily in Austria and Southern Germany, whereas they are much weaker in Northern Germany, or in Scandinavia.

Ottoman effects on European Christianity

There were several political effects of Ottoman policies on European Christianity. First, they inherited from the Seljuks and other Islamic principalities the sympathy with the monophysite churches, especially the Armenian and Syrian, and their protection against the impositions of the Greek (Orthodox) church. Even more importantly, they first weakened but then protected the Orthodox themselves. Rather decisive for European history were their wars against Catholic Habsburg, without which the survival and establishing of Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism would in all probability not have been possible.

And then we have the example of Transsylvania, which under Ottoman suzerainity saw the Orthodox, Lutherans, Catholics and Calvinists (and a few Armenians) live together quite peacefully. Which means that the first peaceful coexistence of the major European Christian denominations was possible under Ottoman rule, and only under Ottoman rule it was even thinkable.

One should probably not underestimate the pedagogical effects on the whole of Europe. The autonomous principality of Transsylvania was at that time a major trade post between Central and Southeastern Europe, extending to Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands, Anatolia and the Balkans, the northern Black Sea region, even to Italy and Sweden.

Unforeseen, or nearly so, here we are back in geography. Once again, admittedly. History is used here as a common denominator of the two. Spiritually, there were virtually no Muslims in this “second convivenza”, and Jews were largely excluded from the public sphere. And nonetheless, it was again Muslim request that enabled coexistence of Christians.

Next we will see that secular Christians still imagine that they developed secularism without the help of Muslims, and even against “Asiatic Despotism”. Historically, of course, this is just a silly and self-serving imagination.

 To be continued