of personal and group identities. (Even today it remains a fragile unity without a singular linguistic, religious, racial, legal, or political identity.) Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is also skeptical, suggesting that ‘“Europe” as a unifying concept is a fairly recent fiction.48
On the other side, there have been several attempts to supply a genealogy of Europe in recent years, especially since the formation of the European Union in 1993. Jacques le Goff finds references to “Europe” scattered in a number of early and high medieval texts and argues ardently for a medieval conception of Europe.49 Robert Bartlett, in his magisterial account, argues for its emergence by the later Middle Ages. “By 1300,” he asserts, “Europe existed as an identifiable cultural entity.”50 He examines the emergence of “Christendom” (the region under the spiritual jurisdiction of the pope, following the rites and liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church) as a territory and “Christian” as a racial category, though “Europe” and “European” are not studied in the same fashion.51 William Chester Jordan’s essay on the subject, which argues strongly for a sense of unity within the Latin West from the eleventh century, avoids the terminological problem by averring that people “rarely used the word Europe (Latin, Europa)”; instead their “word of choice … was Christianitas (Christendom).”52 The view of Timothy Reuter is that “Europe” (though not “Europeans” so much) emerged “to denote the Roman, Latin-speaking lands to the north of the Mediterranean” between 300 and 600 CE and that although it appears only infrequently in medieval texts it retains a continuity as a way of expressing an “usness” (Wir-Gefühl) even within polyethnic early medieval empires and should be seen as far from negligible before the late Middle Ages.53
Particularly relevant to the present book is Felicitas Schmieder’s contention that European contact with Mongols and journeys to eastern regions in the thirteenth century constituted a “world historical moment,” as from that time some Latin Christians became increasingly aware of themselves as Europeans and chose “Europe” rather than “Christendom” to convey a collective identity.54 We might add that in 1241, according to Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora, Emperor Frederick II wrote to King Henry III of England imploring for help in countering the Mongol onslaughts, and his letter moves from speaking of “the whole of Christendom [totius Christianitatis]” to “the West [Occident]” and “the European empire [imperialis Europae].” His letter identifies Germany, France, Spain, England, Almaine, Dacia, Italy, Burgundy, Apulia, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Norway, each with its own virtues in valor and topography yet together lying under “the royal star of the West [sub occiduo cardine regio]” in a manner indicating a conception of Europe composed of autonomous powers and united not only by Christianity but also by military cause against a common enemy. However, his is not a modern way of thinking about Europe: Frederick’s “European empire” is his own domain as Holy Roman Emperor and his key conflict is with the papal leader of Christendom.55
Clearly “Europe” existed as a medieval construct: what is more difficult to determine is how widely its influence was felt among the kinds of readers who sought out travelers’ accounts of the far Orient. For our purposes, it is interesting to note that at least one Irish person in the fifteenth century, Prince Finghin MacCarthy Reagh, wanted a copy of Marco Polo’s Divisament translated into his vernacular so that he could read it alongside lives of Irish saints and a historical narrative of Patrick’s conversion of pagan locals to Christianity.56 We cannot be sure what the basis of the Irish reader’s interest in Polo’s book was, but it is intriguing that a fifteenth-century Irish prince could have found relevance in a thirteenth-century Venetian’s description of distant oriental lands. This shared interest could be called “European,” for want of a better word, without going overboard in seeking to identify the components of European sensibility. Medieval inhabitants of what we now term Western Europe possessed cultural commonalities—however loose and fragmentary—that gave them certain preoccupations and attitudes; however, they did not often seek to articulate or define these commonalities. “Europe” existed but was not yet so important that it needed detailed and frequent discussion.
More pressing, perhaps, is to seek medieval perceptions of a secular Eurocentricism. This is a different task from identifying a sense of Christian superiority. Presumption of the truth and authority of Christianity—in this case, Latin Roman Christianity—over all other religions was after all a prerequisite of the faith. Religious pluralism was not a feature of medieval Catholicism, though it was possible for medieval Christians to look favorably on aspects of non-Christian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism even if in the case of missionaries their positive views were influenced by optimism about the chances for conversions to Christianity.57 Frederick II’s letter to Henry III certainly qualifies as an assertion of European might. Another statement of European superiority has been identified in the writings of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the thirteenth-century encyclopedist, in his De proprietatibus rerum. Akbari states that his chapter on “Europa,” building on Isidore of Seville, revises notions of the primacy of Asia by arguing for the superiority of northern (that is, European) people by virtue of their cold climate. The cold breeds white men with closed pores who are “more ful and huge” of body and “more bold and hardy” of spirit than other men. Africans, because of burning sun, are black and short and the heat causes their spirits to pass through their open pores, making them “more cowards of herte.” Men of Asia are in the middle of these two extremes, though we should also note Bartholomaeus’s statement that Europe is “pere [peer]” to Asia “in nombre and noblete of men.”58
In the travel literature of our present focus, Eurocentrism of a secular sort was not entirely unknown but not a dominant motif. Jordan Catala asserts in his Mirabilia descripta that “there is no better land, no more beautiful, no people so honest, no foodstuffs so good or savoury, no dress so handsome, or manners so noble, as here in our own Christendom; and, above all, we have the true faith, though it be ill-kept,” and though he refers to “nostra Christianitate” rather than “Europa,” the former in this instance designates a worldly as well as spiritual entity.59 Another statement of European superiority, though with specifically military connotations, is Carpini’s assertion that the wily Mongol forces may be defeated if engaged in battle “because they are fewer in number and weaker in body than the Christian peoples.”60 “Mandeville” states his English nationality in the opening and closing sections of his Book in a way that might be taken for a kind of fictional patriotism, though not Eurocentrism as such. As we will see in Chapter 7, however, it was more common for medieval travelers to the far Orient to remark on the superiority of eastern realms and cultures, especially Chinese.
Early modern specialists would need to answer the question of whether imperialist and colonialist enterprises in the Americas, Africa, and parts of Asia changed European self-perception dramatically, but in 1613 English travel anthologist Samuel Purchas made an assertion of European superiority that does seem novel in its hyperbole and in the range of endeavors covered. Europe surpasses other continents, he writes, not only in climate and in geographical advantages but also in people, cities, and great powers. Where else, he asks, do we find “such resolute courages, able bodies, well qualified minds?” What other lands are so “fortified with Castles, edified with Townes, crowned with Cities?” Purchas claims superiority for Europe in its “Arts and Inventions.” Asia and Africa may have supplied the birthplaces for the “Liberall Arts,” but Christian Europe is now preeminent in learning, “Mechanical Sciences,” “Musicall Inventions,” cooking, horse management, chemistry, the making of paper, mills, guns, printing, and all manner of scientific advances. “China yeelds babes and bables in [printing and guns] compared with us and ours: the rest of the World have them borrowed of us or not at all.” The military prowess of European nations is also unsurpassed, as are their feats of exploration. Europeans, moreover, are more than any other people God’s chosen, and few others will be saved. The European right to mastery over Africa, Asia, and the Americas, “almost every where admitting Europæan Colonies,” is thus proclaimed.61 Purchas’s claim for European greatness in
