Europe in 1300

Conclusion

So, there you have it. Europe in all of its messy glory.

I'll close with a fourth point: there was in 1300 no such thing as Europe. There was a word, Europa, but it was almost never used. The humanists started to adopt it, but never when they were talking about practical politics.

Rather, the term used to talk about Europe in general was Christendom. The difference is significant.

If you say Christendom, you emphasize religion and you embrace all your co-religionists. They all happen to live in a common geographic region; that's the difference between "Christianity" and "Christendom". By comparison, "Islam" means something along the lines of the community of all believers, but it never had the geographic specificity that "Christendom" had.

In any case, when you say "Europe" you are saying something that is purely political, or cultural-political. That term starts to come into common currency in the 17th century, well after our course. I'll still talk about Europe, of course, because we're comfortable with the term, but it's worth noting that the people of 1300 didn't have such a concept.