Europe: 1500–1914

Abstract

In 1500 the unity of Christendom was still Europe’s ideal. Christian unity lasted as long as it did because of the constant challenge of the non-Christian world. In the seventh and eighth centuries it had been attacked by Muslim invaders who struck at Europe through Spain and later through the Balkans. In the ninth and tenth centuries Asiatic nomad Magyar horsemen had raided deep into Europe. From the eighth to the eleventh centuries Europe had been threatened by the pagan Vikings, whose dragon-prowed ships had penetrated its waterways, and whose plundering and murdering had spread terror throughout Christendom. In the thirteenth century Europe had been battered by the Mongols, who swept from the heartland of Asia through eastern Europe to the shores of the Adriatic. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Christian Europe had turned back the Turks at the gates of Vienna. Only with the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century did the Turks cease to threaten Europe and its unifying faith. By then the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had long since passed the peak of their spiritual and temporal power; the unity of the Church had given way to the unity of the nation.¹