The Bastion of Christianity

Standing alone against foreign conquerors from the 1456 to 1945, from the Siege of Belgrade to the Siege of Budapest

"National identity is the myth that built the modern world" wrote the New York Times a couple of years ago. Whether or not this is the case there are a large number of myths intertwined with our national identities. Today I focus on a central aspect of many European nations, called Antemurale Christianitatis. Antemurale, meaning bastion or bulwark, is a class of myths that define a nation’s burden, mission, or destiny as protection against foreign nations, ideas, and religions. Antemurale Christianitatis is its original manifestation present in the nations of Southeastern Europe that were conquered or stood against the expanding Ottoman Empire. There are several other, much more recent Antemurale-myths which seek to recapture the same narrative. Some of the most recent ones are Nazi Germany standing against the bolshevik hordes of the Soviet Union post-Stalingrad as a Bulwark for European culture, or Great Britain standing alone against all of Axis-occupied Europe in 1940 as a Bulwark for Democracy. In this post I take a look at the origin of these myths, why they are so persistent, and their current harmful effects on Europe.

Historical background

The title of Antemurale Christianitatis, meaning “The Bastion and Bulwark of Christianity” was given by the Pope to kingdoms that, for a time, successfully resisted Ottoman advances, especially those that indirectly defended Italy. Albania received this title from Pope Pius II during Skanderbeg's rebellion, as did Croatia in 1519 from Pope Leo X, but Hungary, the city of Belgrade and, much later, Poland was also described by history writers as Bastions of Christianity. To this day the valiance of the peoples of Southeastern Europe and their centuries fighting against the Ottoman Turks is held in the highest esteem: monuments of Skanderbeg, Janos Hunyadi, Stephen the Great, Vlad the Impaler, Jan Sobieski, Nikola Zrinski/Zrinyi Miklos, Eugen of Savoy, and many, many others cover the squares of the region in a much-romantized memory of these times.

The title itself served two purposes. It was Christianity's version of "One for all, all for one" packed in a single phrase. "One for all", because it was a recognition of a series of heroic acts that benefited all of (Catholic) Christianity by keeping the Islamic conquerors away from Western Europe, and "all for one", because it was a rallying cry for Christian commoners and warlords to put aside their differences, come to the Bastion together and fight Islam. In this second function, I would argue the more important one, is where Antemurale had its biggest successes and its biggest failures.

The biggest successes of course came when the rallying cry, together with all the political and economic considerations of war and peace, successfully brought the feuding Christian kingdoms together and halted Ottoman expansion. It was an international coalition of crusaders and regulars that won the 1456 Siege of Belgrade, and it was three separate international Holy Leagues that crushed the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto in 1571, fought the Long Turkish War of 1593-1606 to a bloody standstill, and finally lifted the Siege of Vienna in 1683, going on to fight Great Turkish War, the first ever time that the Ottomans actually lost European territory.

The biggest failures were all the other times of the 300-odd years of Ottoman expansion. Every time the popes, emperors, kings, and doges failed to coordinate, refused to cooperate, or flat out threw each other under the bus, the idea of a shared Christian cause diminished under the weight of realpolitik. After every betrayal and every ignored call for help, the struggling nobles of Southeastern Europe felt more isolated from the West and from each other, causing permanent damage in the relations between noble houses. This became an inseparable experience from being an Antemurale Christianitatis. In fact the Pope would hail a kingdom as a Bulwark just to offer kind words instead of material aid to it, an early and quite literal version of sending "thoughts and prayers".

Romantic revival

Flash forward to the 19th century, the birth of national identities. The history of the feudal nobility becomes the history of nations. Kings and military leaders become national icons, centuries-old defeats become national traumas as nations carved out of territories, formerly under Ottoman rule become self-appointed martyrs for Christianity. As for the century-old victories, the countries participating in the conquest/liberation all take more than their rightful share of credit for the victory. Austrians, Croatians, Hungarians, and Poles of the 19th century claimed that their ancestors saved Europe from Islam, while Bulgars, Greeks, Montenegrins, Romanians, and Serbs, still under Ottoman overlordship in the romantic period, framed their respective bids for independence as fighting for the Christian world.

There's a number of reasons why the Ottoman periods live and have lived so strongly in the collective memories of these countries: the fate-changing battles, the length of the occupation, the dichotomy of West vs East, Christian vs Muslim. My favorite reason is that, for most people of Southeastern Europe there wasn't much military glory to be had between the period of resisting the Ottomans and the romantic period, and one might extrapolate this to the modern day. These countries only regained their full independence after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires and have barely fought a successful campaign, let alone war after the Ottoman conquests. They weren't cultural hubs, nor did their failed revolutions bring in new sociological improvements. To these fledgling new countries, recalling those few moments of victory, especially against such a powerful opponent in such dire times, is the only source of fuel for their national glory.

The flip side of this increased remembrance, of course, is that defeats are also a part of it and they need to be explained away in order to preserve the fragile collective egos. And here, JFK's maxim applies:

"Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan"

Luckily, the excuse comes ready-made with Antemurale Christianitatis: Through our victories against Islam, our country was the Bastion of Christianity, but our spiteful neighbors and the ungrateful West left us alone in a fight we could not win. The formula is the same from Dalmatia to Galicia, from Thrace to Moravia. The most common scapegoats were the Kings of Hungary who failed to protect their Balkan allies and vassals in the 15th century, even going as far as seizing Belgrade from the Serbs and imprisoning Vlad III (the Impaler) of Wallachia to appease the Ottoman sultan. Afterwards it was fashionable to blame the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors who were more than happy to use Croatia, Hungary, and the Danubian Principalities (today's Romania) as buffer states between the Ottomans and their core holdings, then take over Upper Hungary (today's Slovakia) and making it the source of their European power.

This retroactive finger-pointing gained further traction from then-current developments. At the time Balkan peoples, Christian or not, were just as eager to fight each other as the Ottomans. The idea of Christian brotherhood behind the call Antemurale Christianitatis was thus forever lost and has been replaced by self-aggrandizing, a sense of entitlement, and the cult of martyrdom.

A little comparison of nationalist romantic art from Hungary and France

Left: The Women of Eger (1861) by Bertalan Székely depicting the Ottoman siege of 1552, a symbol of Hungarian patriotic defense against the external enemy.

Right: Liberty Leading the People (1830) by Eugène Delacroix, depicting the July Revolution of 1830, a symbol of French self-determination even against the tyranny of their own leaders.

Relevance today

Antemurale is still a huge part of the national spirit of the nations it affected. As such it makes up a large part of primary and secondary school education which pretty much ensures that it will stay there in the foreseeable future. The main reason for this is that the 18th century was quite boring in this region and the grand conflicts of the 20th century and the Balkan's role in them are highly controversial. The Turkish Wars, fused with the 19th century views of nationhood, are therefore quite salient. Their naive understanding -- our ancestors: cartoon heroes, their ancestors: cartoon villains -- is thus not in much popular dispute. And that's not a good thing.

Any national myth, no matter how detached from the current reality, has its effects on a nation's psyche. As much as I love the French, I doubt they'd face regular pointless country-wide disturbances without their fixation on revolution. Even my greatest love, the Dutch, who are about as healthy as a modern society can get, would profit from reevaluating the role of Protestantism in their history to improve their national unity. Antemurale brings two problems to today's Europe: it undermines the unity and growth of the EU, and provides a breeding ground for fascism.

The EU's relationship with Southeastern Europe is probably more complex now than it ever has been. For one, since 2004, some of its countries are inside the EU while others are out. Even those who are in vary in their level of integration with the EU core, while those who are out have various levels of (non-)association. Add to that the history of distrust that Antemurale, three Balkan Wars, and two World Wars have left the region with. Now add a couple hundred thousand Muslim refugees. How do you coordinate efforts effectively and distribute costs fairly with partners who grew up on stories of how it is their mission to defend against foreign religions, how their neighbors screwed them over, and how the powers of Western Europe ignored them?

The answer is, of course, that you don't. The fiction of a villainous horde invading, our leaders standing strong against it, and Europe judging from the sidelines is too strong to overcome for a people whose national identity is built upon these exact foundations. We just have to wait and hope that these people grow out of Antemurale, either by finding other, better stories to fixate upon, or by putting less stock on nation and religion altogether.

The second current problem with Antemurale it opens up these countries to fascism even when the country's history is otherwise not suited to it. Fascism is, among other things, a will to return to the glorious past, when our people were safe, their morals were clean, and our country was respected. But it's very hard to want to go back to a good period of history, if history hasn't been kind to your country. The only ones in the region who had any Great Power-like experience are Austria and Poland, and both held religiously diverse, decentralized, and multi-ethnic empires with, to put it mildly, mixed results on the battlefield. The other countries were even less successful with their imperialistic ambitions, so it would appear that fascism has a harder time to take hold here than other, bigger countries.

Antemurale helps overcome this hurdle by glorifying the martyrdom of resistance and elevating even minor or temporary victories to nation-defining events. "This fortress here is (representing) the whole country" says a fictionalized version of Istvan Dobo, the defender of Eger in the 1899 Hungarian book, "To die for your homeland is such a delight" says Nikola Zrinksi, defender of Szigetvár/Siget in the 1876 Croatian opera. "There is only one country: that of my ancestors. Europe? I don't care about it. What has Europe done when times were harsh for me?" says Michael the Brave, brief restorer of Wallachian independence from the Turks and mayflower ruler of Transylvania and Moldavia in the (otherwise excellent) 1970 Romanian movie.

All the ingredients of fascism are there in Antemurale: a fascination with death for your country, a disdain for establishment, conveniently shifted away from the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor to the liberal elites of Europe, and, most importantly, the foreign enemy.

75 years ago, on February 13, 1945, the Siege of Budapest ended. Its last episode saw the remaining defenders, some 20.000 Germans and Hungarians, soldiers and civilians make an attempt to break through Soviet lines and flee westwards to the German positions. About a couple hundred of them made it, the rest were cut down by machine gun and artillery fire or were captured. It was one of the bloodiest actions of the whole war. It was also a doomed, desperate, and tragic event. Here's how a Hungarian right-wing (propaganda) site, 888.hu reflects upon it:

"The Hungarian and German defenders of Budapest gave witness to their idealism and heroic approach to life - they gave their lives, standing and weapon in hand on the altar of European culture. We owe it to their extreme perseverance that the Bolshevik beast "only" got as far as Berlin and the middle of Austria. And yet, when it comes to the Hungarian and German soldiers defending Budapest, posterity's Europe, instead of gratitude and thanks, stigmatizes these men and disputes their heroism."

And there you have it, Hungary, one of the Bulwarks of Christianity became a Bulwark against Bolshevism. I don't know what the next Bulwark will be for or against but I do know that I don't want to be on it.

There are two ways to eliminate bullshit like this from our current discourse. We can either take the easy way and simply wipe our public discourse and education clean of Antemurale. The problem is that this only works in the short-term, the narrative is so simple and attractive that it will keep coming back no matter how deep we try to bury it. The alternative is to take the hard way, sit down and finally have an adult conversation about bulwarks, history, religion, and war.

February 15, 2020.

Footnotes and comments:

1. For commoners, life under Ottoman occupation was pretty okay. In many ways it was more okay than in a Christian kingdom. Ottoman justice system was far less partial than those of feudal courts and there was a far greater degree of religious freedom afforded to Ottoman subjects than in Catholic kingdoms of Europe. To give one example, Buda (the better half of Budapest) was never sacked by the Ottomans but was thoroughly done so by the Holy League armies at the time of (re)conquest who butchered its Muslim, Jewish, and Protestant population.

2. It is becoming my mantra that it is a mistake to view modern nations as continuations of their feudal counterparts. History before 1789 is the history of noble houses. They should be no more relevant to our national or personal identities than the characters in Game of Thrones.

3. My translation of the paragraph in the 888.hu article is horrendous. Sorry about that. The paragraph barely makes sense even in Hungarian and, as I keep finding out, the language is not super-duper-compatible with English, so it was a tradoff between accuracy and sense.

4. In an earlier version I erroneously wrote that 40.000 people participated in the breakout. I thank Laci Csato for pointing out the correct number with references.

Links:

• 888.hu's article:

https://888.hu/szabad-vasarnap/dicsoseg-a-hosoknek-75-evvel-ezelott-vette-kezdetet-a-kitores-4227951

(It became unavailable on February 14, but the cashed copy is still up)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://888.hu/szabad-vasarnap/dicsoseg-a-hosoknek-75-evvel-ezelott-vette-kezdetet-a-kitores-4227951/

• The New York Times' video on national identity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9qF6FvwrHI

(the article it belongs to is paywalled).

Comments and questions should be addressed to peter.bayer7@gmail.com.