The Sutherland collection at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum includes a striking print that British and North American scholars have traditionally labeled Elizabeth I as Europa (fig. 1). It features an anthropomorphic map in which Europe's landmass appears in the guise of a queen, with her left arm aloft and an imperial orb in her right hand. The Iberian Peninsula forms her head and crown; France, Germany, and Poland make up her torso; Scandinavia shelters under her gown. In place of a scepter, she wields an unsheathed sword, as if to intervene in the scenes of conflict crowding around her body. Soldiers on horseback gallop across her chest; warships at sea engage in battle above her left shoulder. Under the hilt of her blade, a man in a broad-brimmed hat squares off with an approaching fleet. With a barge pole, he points at the largest vessel, ready to push it back into the open sea. A lion sits by his side, roaring—or perhaps yawning—from behind the cover of a wattle fence.
The 1598 engraving widely known as Elizabeth I as Europa. Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Over the last several decades, this print has become a favorite among scholars of early modern culture, being frequently cited, discussed, and reproduced. And yet, for all the interest it has elicited, it remains a mystery: though over half a century has passed since Roy Strong first popularized the image as a “Dutch engraving of Elizabeth as Europa” (114), we still know little to nothing of its authorship or of the circumstances of its production and circulation. To an extent, this is because the print does not exactly brim with information. It is an anonymous single sheet, issued without place or printer's name. It is too large to be a title page, yet too small to be a broadside (Heijden 132). It is, moreover, glaringly incomplete: the Arabic numerals scattered across the surface suggest that the plate was once accompanied by a descriptive key, but the whereabouts of that key remain unknown.
To an even larger extent, however, the mystery of Elizabeth I as Europa results from the engraving's presumed relationship to the famous English queen—an uproven presumption that has inevitably circumscribed the range of interpretations that could be brought to bear on the composition. Whether they understand the image as a power fantasy or a reflection of historical reality, scholars who identify Europa with Queen Elizabeth I deploy an English frame of reference, assume an English context of reception, and postulate an Anglocentric context of production. In short, they firmly inscribe the print within the horizon of England's national history. While this framework has enabled compelling discussions of late Elizabethan politics, it has also served as a stumbling block, effectively preventing earnest consideration of the plate itself.
For such earnest consideration to take place, I propose, we must begin by recognizing that in Elizabeth I as Europa images and words point decidedly beyond England's national borders. In other words, we must begin by taking seriously the print's overt concern with Europe as both a conceptual category and a domain of social, political, and discursive interaction. Indeed, I contend that Elizabeth I as Europa is not about Elizabeth but rather about Europa—which is to say, about the construction of an international public that could understand itself as European. The print participated in this endeavor in two distinct but interrelated ways: as an example of the cartographic genre known as Europa Regina (“Queen Europe”), it thematized Europe as a shared (if highly contested) space of discourse that could cut across national, linguistic, and confessional differences. And as a transnational piece of news in a periodical publication, it helped conjure up the public on which that space of discourse depended (Warner 94–95). Solving the mystery of the plate's origins can thus afford important insights into the dynamics of public-making that turned Europe into a meaningful terrain of activity and belonging.
From Elizabeth I as Europa to Het Spaens Europa
The print's association with Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) is as old as the Sutherland collection itself, but it seems to have become popular in the 1960s, when Strong reproduced it alongside the monarch's portraits.Footnote 1 Since then, the image has been widely construed as a celebration of England's status as a budding hegemonic power. According to Linda Woodbridge, for example, the print presents Elizabeth as a check “against papist invasion” (339). For Ton Hoenselaars, it promotes an equivalence between “the English nation” and “Protestant Europe” (236). For Rhonda Lemke Sanford, it can even be read “as a symbol of [England's] power . . . over” other European countries (55). In the print's most in-depth discussion to date, Louis Montrose reads the entire composition as “a nice retort to the Spanish monarch's recurrent attempts to master and possess England” (154). These included not just the famous armada of 1588 and the lesser-known armadas of 1596 and 1597 but also Philip's marriage to Elizabeth's half sister, Mary Tudor, which had made him king of England and Ireland jure uxoris. Working against the grain of this military, political, and sexual vulnerability, Montrose suggests, the print articulates a fantasy in which the asymmetries of power between England and its Continental enemies are neatly reversed. With her head overlaying the Iberian Peninsula and her right arm covering most of Italy, Elizabeth as Europa symbolically subsumes under Tudor rule key Habsburg possessions and all papal domains.
Several iconographic details can be mustered in support of such readings. For one, Tudor victories and territories figure conspicuously in the print: Europa's sword-bearing arm covers large swaths of Britain, while the battle scene above Europa's shoulder carries the label “Onderganck vande Spaensche Vloot” (“Downfall of the Spanish Fleet”)—a reference to England's 1588 victory over the Spanish Armada or perhaps a more general nod to the disasters that had befallen Philip II's every attempt to land an army on British soil. Furthermore, suggestive analogies can be drawn between the figure of Europa and a roughly coeval painting of Elizabeth known as the Ditchley portrait. In this canvas, Elizabeth shelters a map of England under the rim of her farthingale, as if to establish an equivalence between her “inviolate female body” and the “unbreached body” of the country (Montrose 130). In Elizabeth I as Europa, the same trope seems to be evident, even though the scope of the equivalence between land and flesh stretches well beyond the boundaries of England to embrace Europe's whole continent. Finally, it is possible to read some of the print's details as direct references to Elizabeth. For some scholars, there are correspondences between Europa's facial features and those ascribed to the queen in some known portraits.Footnote 2 For others, it is Europa's missing left breast that clinches the connection; as Winfred Schleiner has noted, references to Elizabeth's Amazonian bearing appear in both poetry and prose from the 1580s onward (164).Footnote 3 Since Amazons were often described as being one-breasted—the other breast having been cut or burned off—Europa's solitary mamma could be interpreted as a graphic analog to these literary portrayals.
And yet several iconographic details can just as readily be mustered against these readings. First, England is not the only country showcased in the print. Britain may form a part of Europa's left arm, but Spain and Portugal constitute her face and crown, while France, Germany, and the Low Countries overlay most of her vital organs. Beyond the map's bound, a lion and a round wattle garden—both symbols that the United Provinces of the Netherlands had adopted for themselves (Kempers 47)—point decisively in a Dutch direction. Likewise, the “Downfall of the Spanish Fleet” is not the only combat scene embedded in the print: across Europa's chest, three cavaliers race in the direction of a swordsman whose raised blade and legs spread apart suggest deadly resolve. The inscription accompanying this vignette reads “de Ligueuis Nederlage” (“the Leaguers’ Defeat”)—a reference to the Wars of Religion in France or perhaps more specifically to the 1590 Battle of Ivry, where Huguenot forces led by Henry IV vanquished Catholic League troops under the command of Charles de Guise.
Second, if the print bears some analogies to the Ditchley portrait, it relates far more closely to Europa Regina maps, an allegorical cartographic genre that assigned mainland Europe the shape of a woman and the attributes of a monarch.Footnote 4 Much of the print's iconography, from the sovereign orb in Europa's right hand to the overlay between her head and the Iberian Peninsula, mimics earlier anthropomorphic maps produced on the Continent, from Johannes Putsch's prototype of 1534 (fig. 2) to Sebastian Münster's oft reprinted version of 1588 (fig. 3).Footnote 5 Originating in the orbit of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand I, these maps took as their point of departure the political supremacy of the House of Habsburg, whose central figures were Ferdinand's older brother, Charles, first king of united Spain (1516–56), lord of the Netherlands (1506–56), king of Germany (1519–56), king of Italy (1530–56), and Holy Roman Emperor (1530–56), and Charles's son Philip, king of Spain (1556–98) and Portugal (1580–98), king of Naples and Sicily (1554–98), and lord of the Habsburg Netherlands (1556–97). This explains why Europa Regina maps always oriented west: this orientation placed Spain at the head of the continent, implicitly assigning to that country the role of caput mundi (“world's head”) once held by Rome as the seat of empire.
Johannes Putsch's prototype of the genre known as Europa Regina (1534). Courtesy of the Museum Retz, Retz, Austria.
Sebastian Münster's Europa Regina, from Cosmographey oder Beschreibung aller Länder Herrschafftenn und fürnemesten Stetten des gantzen Erdbodens (1588), p. xli. Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Germany.
Third, Europa's looks allow no certain identification. As Strong himself has observed, portraits of Elizabeth I are remarkably inconsistent, both about relatively minor details such as the color of the queen's hair or eyes and about more substantial ones such as the structure of her face (17). What is more, Europa's features are not particularly individualized, as was often the case with anthropomorphic maps and allegorical figures representing the continents. This means that the figure of Europa, like a Rorschach inkblot, reveals less about its putative subject than about its critics’ disciplinary biases. Where English Renaissance scholars have seen the visage of Queen Elizabeth I in this print, historians of early modern Spain have discerned the features of Isabel Clara Eugenia of Habsburg, eldest daughter of Philip II of Spain and (nominal) sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands from 1598 to 1621 (García García 161).Footnote 6
Europa's exposed breast likewise lends itself to differing interpretations. While some early modern writers did portray Elizabeth as an Amazon, no visual artist explicitly associated the English queen with the mythical warrior women—probably because the parallel was ideologically perilous to start with.Footnote 7 Since bare breasts were sometimes associated with promiscuity, moreover, Europa's semibare torso could also activate the negative semes embedded in the print.Footnote 8 This is exactly what happens in Darby Lewes's reading, which ties Europa's exposed mamma to her bare feet, “cruel expression,” and undignified posture (115). In Lewes's view, these details make the print more critical than celebratory, as their cumulative effect is to invest the figure of Europa with all the opprobrium typically reserved for the Whore of Babylon.
Finally, there is the matter of the print's title. Readings that associate the print's depiction of Europe with Queen Elizabeth I routinely ignore the Roman capital lettering centered on the image's upper edge. And yet, hovering right above Europa's head—pointedly bisected by the blade of her raised sword—there stands the phrase Het Spaens Europa (“Spanish Europe”), neatly laid out in large black type and near impossible to miss. This “mocking title,” Mimi Yiu observes, suggests less a triumphant Elizabeth than an embattled House of Habsburg, beleaguered by rebellious Protestant princes in Germany and the Netherlands, frustrated in its attempts to determine French royal affairs, and disappointed in its hope to rule the British Isles (278). For this reason, Michael Wintle concludes, while the overall print is “clearly anti-Spanish and pro-Protestant,” the figure of Europa is most likely a Habsburg-inspired construct (251n62).
The Context of Het Spaens Europa
The first thing that is noticeable on a close look at the print's lettering is its polyglossia: no fewer than three languages coexist in the same space. The print's title is in Dutch, as are the labels “Downfall of the Spanish Fleet” and “the Leaguers’ Defeat.” The map's toponyms are in Latin, as is customary in early modern cartography; the only exceptions are the cities of London, Dantzick, and Bergen, the names of which appear in the vernacular. The caption at the bottom is in German and reads as follows: “Der Holländer sonderbaere Vorgemald, und Entwerffung warumb sei den Spanischen Frieden, nicht können annemmen. Von innen in Druck auszgangen im Augustus Anno 1598” (“The Dutchmen's strange outline and sketch, why they cannot accept the Spanish Peace. Printed August 1598”). To my knowledge, no discussion of Het Spaens Europa has taken this caption into account. Yet these two lines of text provide three pieces of information that help illuminate the context in which the print was born.
The first piece of information could be described as denotational. Simply put, the caption tells us what the picture shows: a map and a drawing originally produced in the Netherlands and illustrating Dutch political concerns in the immediate aftermath of the Treaty of Vervins (2 May 1598). This treaty inaugurated a period of twenty-three years known as the “Spanish Peace,” when Habsburg Spain temporarily disengaged from the conflicts that had afflicted Europe since the early decades of the sixteenth century. Albeit nominally between France and Spain, the Vervins Treaty was something of a pan-European affair, involving Savoy, the Swiss cantons, Geneva, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Scotland, Venice, and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as allies and adherents on both Bourbon and Habsburg sides (Dumont 563–64). England and the Dutch Republic were given the option of joining in the agreement; though neither one ultimately chose to do so, the prospect of peace engendered vehement debate in both countries.Footnote 9
The second piece of information could be described as connotational, for a caption's purpose is never just to tell people what they are looking at. Rather, captions guide the eye and the mind, inviting viewers to adopt attitudes of trust, reverence, impatience, or suspicion toward the image they are considering. In the case of Het Spaens Europa, it is the caption's deployment of the adjective strange—“The Dutchmen's strange outline and sketch, why they cannot accept the Spanish Peace”—that is especially telling.Footnote 10 As scholars have noted, strangeness played an important role in early news reporting. On the one hand, it encouraged readers to exercise hermeneutical suspicion; on the other hand, it indicated that a given story “was expressively significant” (Raymond 113; see also Comensoli 208). In other words, strangeness marked off certain narratives or events as being newsworthy and was integral to news reporting as an emerging mode of storytelling. By inviting the mix of evaluative detachment and imaginative involvement typical of newssheets, the caption of Het Spaens Europa inscribes its subject matter within the domain of early modern reportage.
The third and final piece of information could be described as metalinguistic, for the German caption at the bottom of Het Spaens Europa suggests that the print's producers imagined their most immediate audience to be German-speaking. This last point may seem obvious but is worth keeping in mind, if for no other reason than that it puts into question Strong's hypothesis of a Dutch provenance. Thus, while Het Spaens Europa bears no attribution and no printing information one might use as evidence, it offers at least some clues pointing to Germany as a possible site of production and early reception. Indeed, the Mainz-based collector Klaus Stopp has recognized in the print the work of an unnamed etcher connected with the Frankfurt publisher Paul Brachfeld (circa 1560–1603).Footnote 11 It is to Brachfeld and his world, therefore, that I now turn to reconstruct the circumstances that brought the engraving into being.
A bookseller in Antwerp, Brachfeld presumably left the city after its forced surrender to Habsburg troops and by 1588 had established a firm in Frankfurt-am-Main. By all accounts, he was a prolific printer, specializing in official documents, ethical studies, and calendars of astronomical events. From the early 1590s onward, much of his output consisted of Meßrelationen (“fair relations”), a periodical news genre pioneered by Michael von Aitzing (circa 1530–98) in the 1580s.Footnote 12 Brachfeld's first Meßrelation appeared in spring 1591 as Historicae Relationis Complementum (Supplement to the Historical Relation); subsequent publications were issued under the title Historicae Relationis Continuatio (Continuation of the Historical Relation; Bender 9–13). These were initially penned by the German scholar and Lutheran pastor Conrad Lautenbach (1534–95) under the pseudonym Jacobus Francus. After Lautenbach's death, in 1595, the pseudonym was adopted by his successors, at first routinely (until 1599) and then intermittently (well into the eighteenth century).
Along with calendars, which in many cases contained summaries of contemporary events, Meßrelationen were the first news periodicals to appear in print. Issued twice a year to coincide with important trade fairs, they were essentially digests of current affairs—mostly political and military occurrences but also commercial matters and unusual happenings such as monstrous births or comet sightings. Often deemed more reliable than dailies or weeklies, these publications enjoyed remarkable success, being continuously published into the eighteenth century and beyond. In Frankfurt, they survived until 1806 (Schröder 130–31).
From the outset, Meßrelationen were transnational in nature and international in scope: they dealt largely in foreign news, relied extensively on translation, and depended on cross-border communication among groups and individuals whose identities were not always tied to a given geography or specific language. This cosmopolitanism had undoubtedly something to do with the popularity of German trade fairs and the diversity of their attendees: in Frankfurt as in Cologne and Leipzig—all towns well known for their biannual fairs—German, Dutch, French, and Italian dealers traded commodities with merchants from England, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.
More generally, the wide purview of the Meßrelationen reflected the period's appetite for foreign news. The Historicae Relationis Complementum, for instance, billed itself as an opportunity for readers to “in guter stiller gelegenheit / ohne gefahr / ohne müdes reisen und beschwerligkeit / viel unruige sachen in Franckreich / Holland / Engeland … erlernen” (“learn in good quiet, without danger, strenuous travel or difficulty, of many troubled things in France, Holland, [and] England” [sig. A2v]).Footnote 13 A typical issue of the Historicae Relationis Continuatio had even wider reach, covering news from “hoch und nider Teutschland / Auch Franckreich / Engelland / Irrland / Italien / Sicilien / Hispanien / Indien / Hungarn / Crabaten / Polen / Schweden / Sibenburgen / Wallachen / Moldaw / Tartaren / Türcken / Natolien / Arabien und Morenland” (“High and Low Germany, France, England, Ireland, Italy, Sicily, the Spains, the Indies, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Sweden, Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Tartaria, Anatolia, Arabia, and the land of the Moors”), all compressed in 132 quarto-size pages.
At first, Brachfeld's Meßrelationen did not include pictures. By 1592, however, etched illustrations began to be sold alongside the texts, possibly as a way of making the Historicae Relationis Continuatio stand out from Aitzing's rival news digests, or perhaps as a means of reaching out to wider audiences. The presence of artists such as Theodore de Bry (b. Liege, active in Frankfurt 1588–98); his sons, Johann Theodor and Johann Israel de Bry (b. Strasbourg, active in Frankfurt 1598–1609 and 1619–24); Georg Keller (b. Frankfurt, active there 1595–1634) and Philipp Uffenbach (b. Frankfurt, active there 1598–1636) made Frankfurt a convenient place to experiment with illustrated news. In any event, Brachfeld's gambit must have been successful, for from 1592 on he routinely produced illustrations to go along with the Historicae Relationis Continuatio.
As Joachim Jacoby explains, these illustrations generally fell into three categories: ready-made plates, repurposed from prior publications and often acquired from other publishers; plates made by copying existing prints; and original plates made to illustrate specific news stories (138–45).Footnote 14 Regardless of which category they fell in, images were most likely sold separately from the text, since it was common practice for buyers to have their bookbinders stitch the two together (Jacoby 138). If words and images were distinct purchases, they were still intended as complementary; illustrations invited buyers to acquire the text so that they could better understand what was in the picture, while the text, in turn, invited readers to acquire the illustrations so that they could better comprehend what was being reported.
Het Spaens Europa was one of these images, produced for the Historicae Relationis Continuatio of fall 1598 to accompany a news report titled “Staden und Engelländer berathschlagen noch wegen deß angebotten Friedens” (“The States and the English Still Discuss the Proffered Peace”). The report opens with the announcement that representatives from England and “the States” (as the United Provinces were then usually called) had gathered at The Hague to consider Spain's offer of peace and that “vielerlei selsamer Schrifften unnd Gemählte” (“all sorts of strange writings and pictures”) were daily produced to dissuade them from accepting (118). And since these pictures were openly circulated, the report goes on to say, it had seemed appropriate to reproduce them in the “beigelegtem Kupfferstuck” (“enclosed copperplate” [118–19]).
Het Spaens Europa thus constitutes a peculiar case in the early history of illustrated news. For the most part, images included in the Meßrelationen were graphic representations of real-world events such as battles, voyages, celebrations, or executions. Of the other illustrations produced for the fall 1598 issue of the Historicae Relationis Continuatio, for instance, one recycles a map from Matthias Quad's atlas Europae … universalis ac particularis descriptio (Description of Europe, Universal as well as Particular) to chart the journey of Sigismund III from Poland to Sweden, where his uncle Charles was then trying to depose him; another one offers a bird's-eye view of Nuremberg to show the entrance of the Palatine Elector Frederick IV (r. 1592–1601) into the city on 21 March 1598. Het Spaens Europa by contrast, is a graphic representation of other graphic representations—a metapicture, if you will, underscoring the power of images in the formation of public opinion and the orientation of political action. In other words, in “The States and the English Still Discuss the Proffered Peace” images are not merely a medium of reportage but are themselves an object of reportage. They illustrate how graphics could elicit the production of news reports and how news reporting, in turn, could authorize the production and circulation of graphics as historically significant events.
As befits a news report about pictures, much of “The States and the English Still Discuss the Proffered Peace” is a descriptive key to Het Spaens Europa, numbered to match the Arabic numerals scattered across the print's surface. Numbers 1 through 4 refer readers to the anthropomorphic map on the engraving's left side, purportedly showing “alle unnd iede Sachen / so sich mit dem Spanischen Gubernament zutrugen / sonderlich was das greuwliche Blutvergiessen in Franckreich / Niderland / unnd anderstwo anlangt” (“each and every thing that transpired with the Spanish government, especially the gruesome bloodshed in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere”; 118). Numbers 5 through 21 describe the flotilla on the print's right side, elucidating its meaning. In the center of the scene a three-headed figure sits in a barge of state standing for Spanish rule and the Spanish Inquisition. Tied to the barge are six smaller boats. Four of them serve as reminders of Spanish brutalities in the Netherlands, including the use of military force against Protestant populations, the attempted murders of William of Orange and Maurice of Nassau, and the beheadings of Egmont, Hoorn, and the Batenburg brothers.Footnote 15 The fifth boat represents the failed peace negotiations of Breda (1575) and Cologne (1579), which had foundered on the issue of religious toleration.Footnote 16 Finally, the sixth boat carries peace. Pulling in this ship while pushing out the barge of state, the man in the wattle enclosure declares, “Ich begere Friede / aber nicht Betrug” (“I desire peace, but not deceit” [119]). He has good reasons to be apprehensive, for the key points out that the fleet's flags and banners carry all sorts of ominous mottoes, from “Den Ketzern darff man nicht Glauben halten” (“Promises [made] to heretics need not be kept”) to “Wer nit kan dissimuliren / kan auch nit regieren” (“Who cannot dissimulate cannot govern”; 119).
Having described Het Spaens Europa in some detail, “The States and the English Still Discuss the Proffered Peace” refers readers who may wish to know more to an unnamed “Niderländischen Historischreiber” (“Dutch historian”) and two “Tractätlein” (“little treatises”) from which the report has drawn (119). As Joop Koopmans has noted, early modern news editors were generally reticent about their sources, a practice that has much hindered our exploration of how news networks operated and how news reports were gathered and repackaged (224). By revealing the provenance of the images it describes, “The States and the English Still Discuss the Proffered Peace” affords us a rare opportunity to explore not just the fluid boundaries between political opinion and early modern reportage but also the ways that national debates could become embedded in international discourse.
The identity of the “Dutch historian” mentioned in the report is difficult to ascertain, but the “little treatises” are readily identifiable as two political pamphlets published in 1598: Antwoordt op het tweede refereyn, by de overheerde Nederlantsche provintien aen Hollant gheschreven (Answer to the Second Refrain Written to Holland by the Overlorded Provinces of the Netherlands) and Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt, hier die de roos en lely docht te plucken, wel dat onder den Catolijcken tijtel vermomt, fier maer elc quam syn schilt na hem weer rucken snel (I Am Called Spanish Europe, Who Thought to Easily Pluck the Rose and the Lily, Proudly Disguised under Catholic Title, but They Each Pulled Their Shield Swiftly).Footnote 17 Both were published anonymously and without imprint information, though Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt has sometimes been attributed to Ellert de Veer, the Amsterdam councilor widely remembered as the author of popular Dutch history chronicles (Moes and Burger 3: 227, 236, 272).
As the title suggests, the Antwoordt is a reply to an earlier pamphlet, a challenge poem of twenty-five stanzas in which the southern or “overlorded” provinces—the part of the Low Countries still under Habsburg control—pleaded with Holland to accept the proffered peace.Footnote 18 In the reply, a much longer poem of forty-four stanzas, Holland insisted that peace was built on trust and that Spain's past behavior left little hope for either. Dutch cities had been sacked and torched even as Habsburg diplomats were actively engaged in peace negotiations, the pacification of Ghent was no sooner accepted than violated, and the Inquisition, which Philip had promised to abolish in 1566, still had free rein to execute Protestants. In short, the Spaniards’ peace was “Een rechten Judas kus” (“a very Judas kiss” [sig. B4v]).
Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt covered much of the same ground, but with added emphasis on Habsburg ambitions of universal monarchy. As the foreword underscores, “Europe” could mean different things to different people. According to classical mythology, Europe was a Phoenician princess whom Zeus, disguised as a bull, had abducted and carried to Crete. According to Genesis, it was the stretch of land assigned to Noah's son Japheth and his descendants. According to early modern Spaniards, however, Europe was neither a princess nor the domain of Japheth's progeny. Instead, it was all that they could conquer with the pope's blessing, according to the (allegedly Jesuit) dictum “eenen Godt eenen Paus / ende maer eenen Coninc in Christenrijc” (“one God, one Pope, and one King of Christendom” [sig. A2r]).Footnote 19 It was this peculiar understanding of Europe, the pamphlet suggests, that had inspired not just Spain's attempts against England and France—the “rose” and “lily” of the title, respectively—but also its initiatives in Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, the duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, and other places besides.
There was nothing especially novel or original about these claims; numerous publications issued both before and after Vervins covered much of the same ground using much of the same vocabulary. What is striking about these pamphlets is precisely their representativeness. They accurately reproduce the anxieties and presuppositions typical of late-sixteenth-century anti-Spanish arguments. Central to these arguments was the insatiable appetite for power attributed to Charles V and his successors. This libido dominandi (“lust for domination”) allegedly animated every thread of Habsburg foreign policy, weaving them into a scheme of universal monarchy pursued through the might of Spain with the connivance of the Catholic Church. As the argument went, the Spaniards’ goal was to make themselves lord “of the whole worlde,” and force “all other people and nations unto their Religion and discipline” (Marnix 17). Their proffers of peace were by no means a renunciation of this goal; rather, they were the cover under which they could further pursue their machinations. As Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt put it, ten years of war had amply proved that “den Wolf in syn ouderdom niet en betert” (“the [Spanish] wolf does not improve with age”; sig. A2r). Accepting the Vervins Treaty would only give the Habsburgs an opportunity to “hunnen aessem teherhalen” (“catch their breath”) before attacking again (sig. A2r).
If the arguments put forth in these pamphlets rehearse well-trodden anti-Spanish topoi, the title pages are a different matter. Both the Antwoordt and Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt bear single-scene illustrations that have no close equivalent in other pamphlets of the same period. In the title print of the Antwoordt, a man in a broad-brimmed hat stands in the middle of a wattle enclosure easily recognizable as a Dutch garden (fig. 4). By the man's right side sits a lion, the heraldic symbol of the United Provinces. Together, they face off against seven vessels festooned with flags and banners; aboard the flagship sits a three-headed figure satirically labeled “H[eilig] Verbond” (“Holy League”). The image is captioned at the bottom with the first verse of Psalm 43, “Richt my Godt, ende voert myn sake tegen het onheylige volck, ende verlost my van den valschen ende boosen lieden” (“Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation, O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man”).
Title page of Antwoordt op het tweede refereyn, by de overheerde Nederlantsche provintien aen Hollant gheschreven (1598). Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The title print of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt shows an anthropomorphic map of Europe captioned with a two-verse quotation from Luke's Gospel: “De Heere heeft de Machtige ende Hovaerdige afgetrocken / ende vernedert: Maer den Armen ende Ootmoedighen gheeft hy syn gratie. De Hongherige heeft hy met goeden vervult: ende de Rycke ledich wech gesonden” (“The Lord has brought down the high and mighty but to the poor and humble gives his grace. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” [fig. 5]). While clearly indebted to the Europa Regina tradition, the map in this title print differs dramatically from Putsch's and Münster's. Europa's right arm is now extended, covering swaths of Britain; her left leg has grown disproportionately long, bending over Norway; her skirt balloons northward, covering Scandinavia but leaving Greece exposed.
Title page of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt … (1598). Courtesy of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Some of these changes followed perhaps in the footsteps of the Flemish engraver Frans Hogenberg, whose Europa Regina variant had been published by Aitzing in 1588; in this composition, Hogenberg subsumed England into Europa's body, bucking a tradition that had hitherto excluded it.Footnote 20 Two aspects of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt's illustration, however, seem to have no precedent in the Europa Regina tradition. First, Europa's scepter is replaced by a sword, in a possible nod to Sibylla Europa, the mythical prophetess who foretold the flight to Egypt and was often depicted with a blade signifying the Slaughter of the Innocents. Both episodes of the Gospel were of special significance in the United Provinces, where Herod was readily equated with Philip II of Spain and the Slaughter of the Innocents with the Netherlands’ political tribulations (Kunzle 52–56). Second, the print incorporates as part of Europa not only England but also the Scandinavian Peninsula, a region of the Continent that other Europa Regina cartographers—Hogenberg included—had routinely left out.
From this geographic dilation derive some remarkable visual effects. For one, Europa's squatting posture has none of the maidenly decorum typical of earlier anthropomorphizations. With her feet spread wide and the Baltic Sea suggestively thrust between her legs, she looks hardly regal and not at all virginal. More important, the figure of Europa has none of the fleshy solidity typical of Europa Regina cartography. In those maps, land predominates, with streams and seas serving mostly as a background. On the pamphlet's title page, by contrast, land is everywhere punctured and partitioned by bodies of water. This iconographic dismemberment is crucial to the print's oppositional meaning, since Europa Regina maps, as political conceits, drew much of their power from humanist understandings of the body as a unified entity. By undermining the density and integrity of Europa, the title print of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt implicitly questions the very foundations on which the Europa Regina tradition was built.
The Novelty of Het Spaens Europa
If one compares the two pamphlets’ title prints with Het Spaens Europa, it becomes clear that the latter is but a reproduction of the former. The anthropomorphic map on the engraving's left side exactly mimics the shape, the position, and even the labeling of the illustration on the title page of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt. For its part, the fleet scene on the engraving's right side miniaturizes the illustration on the Antwoordt's title page. In addition, the descriptive key in Brachfeld's Meßrelation merely translates the inscriptions scattered across the Antwoordt's title print. Apart from a few typographical differences—“Breda” is given as “Bonda” and “H Verbond” fully spelled out as “Heilig Liga” (“Holy League” [119])—the German text is a slavish rendering of the original Dutch. Nothing is left out, and nothing is put in, even where additional information would have likely aided comprehension. The Dutch lion, for instance, is referred to simply as “dem Lewen” (“the Lion”), while the Dutchman facing the fleet is merely “der Mann” (“the man”). As for the Dutch garden, it is identified as a “Ufer deß Meers” (“seashore”)—a description more appropriate for the Antwoordt's title print, where the wattle enclosure actually sits onshore, than for Het Spaens Europa, where it is adrift in the North Atlantic.
Neither the plate nor the accompanying key makes much of an effort to merge, rather than juxtapose, the source illustrations. The key joins them paratactically rather than syntactically, giving the map a scant seven lines out of the report's total fifty-seven. In the plate, the figure of Europa is at a much smaller scale than the fleet scene, as if to keep the two sides of the illustration separate and distinct. And yet the juxtaposition of the two images creates a novel composition that exceeds the meaning of its sources. From this perspective, Het Spaens Europa is both a reproduction and a completely new plate. Insofar as it mimics preexisting prints, it is a copy. Insofar as it juxtaposes them—forcing them into a single space—it is a new work. Its novelty and significance can be fully appreciated only by reference to the allegorical cartographic tradition of which it is an integral (if oppositional) part.
In virtually every Europa Regina map, the region of Bohemia appears as a circular enclosure, conspicuously set off from the rest of the figure by a ring of trees or a round mountain range. The reasons for this conspicuousness are not altogether clear. Putsch had dedicated his prototype to Ferdinand I of Habsburg, who had been elected king of Bohemia in 1526, so the special place assigned to the region was perhaps intended as an homage to him: rich, populous, and strategically located astride prominent land routes, Bohemia was quickly becoming a cornerstone of Habsburg politics in the Holy Roman Empire. That the region should have kept this privileged place in altered political circumstances—not to mention in the hands of far less pro-Habsburg cartographers—is ample testament to the success of Putsch's conception. For the rest of the century, anthropomorphic maps of Europe routinely assigned Bohemia the role of axis mundi (“world's axle”) that had once belonged to Jerusalem as a spiritual center; indeed, the representation of Bohemia as a round enclosure recalls a long-standing cartographic tradition in which Jerusalem appears as a perfect circle.Footnote 21
Given its placement in the composition, Bohemia is often described by contemporary scholars as the “heart” of Europa Regina maps.Footnote 22 In the early modern period, however, Bohemia was generally understood as Europa's abdomen, as the German polymath Franz Ernst Brückmann (1697–1753) pointed out when he wrote that if Europe was a maid, then Bohemia was her navel (276). He had good precedent to make such an assertion, for Europa Regina producers such as Mathias Quad, Johann Bussemacher, Frans Hogenberg, and Michael von Aitzing had already explicitly identified Bohemia as the “umbilicus” (“navel”) of their anthropomorphic maps.
Conceptually, then, Bohemia's depiction alludes to the omphalos, or umbilicus mundi, that marked the world's center in ancient cartography.Footnote 23 In some maps, it may also nod to Aesop's famous fable of the belly and the members: the members of the body revolt against the belly because it spends its time lazily consuming the food they procure, but they soon become weak and realize that the belly is, in fact, crucial to the whole body (Detering 205–06). From an iconographic perspective, however, the rendering of Bohemia as a fenced-off space—“ein rundes Gehenge” (“a round enclosure”), as German editions of Heinrich Bünting's Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae (Travel Guide to the Holy Scripture) would have it (14)—more closely reflects the impact of Marian imagery on the development of the Europa Regina tradition.
Putsch had described his prototype as “sub forma Europa puellae” (“Europe in the shape of a maiden” [see fig. 2]), and several later cartographers had followed in his footsteps. Heinrich Bünting's map of 1581, for example, bears the title “Europa prima pars Terrae in forma virginis” (“Europe, first part of the earth, in the shape of a virgin” [12–13]); likewise, the cartouches in Matthias Quad's map of 1587 and Aitzing's pocket atlas of 1588 refer to Europa as a virgin (Quad and Bussemacher; Aitzing, De Europae virginis, sigs. A1v, A2r). Combined with the crown on Europa's head, which likely evoked images of Mary's coronation as well as her titles “Queen of Heaven” and “Empress of the Universe,” this emphasis on virginity endowed Europa with Marian associations (Carlton 34). Likewise, the Bohemian enclosure around Europa's navel must have recalled the notion of Mary's womb as a hortus conclusus, a space of chaste fertility to be cherished and protected.Footnote 24 It may be helpful, in this regard, to compare Europa Regina maps with traditional images of Our Lady of the Expectation, where the unborn Jesus (or the Christogram IHS) is enclosed in a medallion placed on Mary's abdomen. Capitalizing on the Song of Songs’ paradoxical depiction of Mary's womb as a site of both perpetual virginity and fruitful maternity, these images lent themselves to messianic as well as defensive interpretations. On the one hand, they looked forward to the coming of Christ as fulfilling God's plan for salvation; on the other hand, they emphasized the fragility of this plan, reminding viewers that salvation effectively depended on the vulnerable integrity of Mary's virgin womb.
The relevance of Marian imagery to the Europa Regina tradition is most evident in the Latin poem that accompanies Putsch's 1534 map. Addressed to Ferdinand and his brother, Charles V, this poem envisions a golden age in which the Habsburgs would give “aeternam . . . pacem /. . . percussis populis” (“eternal peace to frightened peoples”).Footnote 25 From this perspective, Bohemia could be construed as a messianic space—a fertile womb out of which humanity's redemption was emerging.Footnote 26 Elsewhere in the poem, however, Europe also complains that her maidenhood is constantly under threat: “Sum fidi custos thalami, sum maxima summae / Servatrixque pudicitiae, sed semper iniquis / Poscor, venundorque procis, modo Turca scelestus, / Nunc Arabes, iam Tartar emit” (“I am the guardian of the nuptial chambers, the strongest protector of absolute chastity, yet at all times I am offered to and propositioned by unworthy suitors, be they the treacherous Turks, the Arabs, or even the Tatar[s]”). From this perspective, Bohemia was a vulnerable space to be guarded and defended. For Putsch as for his contemporaries, this defensive reading served as a reminder not only of the proximity between Habsburg lands and Ottoman ones but also—and more specifically—of Bohemia's historical exposure to successive waves of attackers, from the so-called Mongol tide of 1234–41 to the Turkish invasion of 1526.
The Europa figure in Het Spaens Europa presents no discernible navel, but the hortus conclusus motif typical of Europa Regina cartography is still integral to the composition. If this is not immediately apparent, it is only because this motif has left Europa's body and drifted out to sea, metamorphosing into a Dutch garden, or Hollandse tuin.Footnote 27 Although by the late sixteenth century it had become an emblem for Dutch national identity, the Hollandse tuin had itself a Marian origin, as indicated by late medieval paintings where Virgin and child appear in the middle of a circular garden fenced all around with wattle (Chapman 239). By pairing Europa Regina cartography with Hollandse tuin iconography, then, Het Spaens Europa activates the messianic and defensive meanings implicit in Dutch garden imagery, casting the United Provinces in the role that Johannes Putsch had originally assigned to Bohemia: they are at once a promise of salvation and a space to be protected from invasion. As a result, the Habsburgs and their allies—the powers adumbrated in the three-headed monster seated on the barge of state—become equivalents to the “Turks,” “Arabs,” and “Tatar[s]” whose attacks Putsch's poem laments.
The novel import of “Het Spaens Europa” begins thereby to emerge. As Europa Regina cartography indicates, early-sixteenth-century understandings of Europe were intimately tied to the political ambitions of the House of Habsburg. For intellectuals in the Habsburg orbit, such ambitions were a promise of redemption, a liberation from strife and uncertainty. For intellectuals outside the Habsburg orbit, by contrast, such ambitions were a mortal threat, portending the subjugation of the European continent to the whims and rapacities of Spain. For these intellectuals, as for the artist(s) who produced the title print of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt, Putsch's redemptive vision was obviously untenable: as they saw it, Europa had less to do with the salvific promise of Mary's womb than with the “bloetvergieten der onschuldigen” (“slaughter of the innocents”) signified by Sibylla Europa's sword (Het Speans Europa ben ic ghenomt, sig. A2r).
On the surface, Het Spaens Europa repeats and amplifies this negative interpretation. Not only does the print reproduce the oppositional iconography of its Dutch sources, but, by detaching the hortus conclusus motif from Europa's body, it also advances the process of dismemberment that the title page of Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt inaugurated. As such, the plate seems deeply mistrustful of, and even polemically opposed to, Europe as a political signifier. At the same time, the Marian resonances of the Dutch garden as hortus conclusus cannot but invoke the messianism of Europa Regina cartography, even if they do so from a decidedly anti-Habsburg perspective. Read in this light, Het Spaens Europa does not merely oppose the prospect of a Habsburg-dominated Europe; rather, it envisions an alternative to it. Cathected by the redemptive promise of the Hollandse tuin, the many conflicts scattered across the composition—the “Downfall of the Spanish Fleet” off the coast of England, “the Leaguers’ Defeat” in France, the armored figure standing between Germany and the Low Countries—map transnational networks of anti-Habsburg solidarity that could themselves lay claim to Europe.
While the print allies these networks with the militant Protestantism that had animated transnational anti-Habsburg projects from the Schmalkaldic League (1530–47) onward, it is important to note that Het Spaens Europa—like Europa Regina cartography more generally—is inherently secular in conception.Footnote 28 Its subject matter is not Christendom but Europe, and the power it ponders emanates not from Rome but from Madrid. And while part of the print's iconography retains religious implications, the composition as a whole participates in the “broad trends of secularization” that by the end of the sixteenth century were already observable in much of Europe (Lockey 400).
This is not to say that confessional differences did not matter. Rather, it is to acknowledge that such differences could be tactically softened depending on the circumstances. During the Dutch Revolt, for instance, rebel propagandists “studiously avoided the impression that they were waging a war of religion, since that would prevent them from gaining the support of the Catholic majority in the Netherlands” (Pollmann and Stensland 312). Something similar seems to have occurred in Germany both during and after the Schmalkaldic War (Pinette; Hoffmeister 358). In late-sixteenth-century England, as well, anti-Habsburg arguments were generally framed in secular terms, so as to secure the “broadest confessional base of support” for war (Gajda, Earl of Essex 23).
The emergence of news periodicals no doubt contributed to these dynamics of secularization. As commercial enterprises, periodical publications such as the Meßrelationen depended on the widest possible circulation; they were unlikely to jeopardize their own viability by alienating potential audiences. Hence they routinely adopted politically detached attitudes and eschewed openly partisan confessional positions.Footnote 29 This stance inevitably added impetus to the formation of publics that could understand themselves not just as Calvinist, Catholic, or Lutheran but also as European.
More than Elizabeth
As the discussion may have already suggested, there is no early modern evidence that the anthropomorphic map of Het Spaens Europa was identified as, or even associated with, Queen Elizabeth I. Neither the German Meßrelation nor the Dutch Antwoordt makes any mention of her. While Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt refers to her, it does so only in passing, as one of many rulers threatened by Spanish guile. There is also no evidence that early modern readers saw in the image an allegory of England “as the defender of Europe against Catholicism” (Holland 24). That this should be the case is not altogether surprising: it was not uncommon for late-sixteenth-century England to be presented less as a European hegemon than as a victim of Habsburg ambition. Het Spaens Europa ben ic ghenomt, for one, makes it a point to note that there would be practically no England left if the Spanish Armada had disembarked in 1588—anyone older than seven would have been killed and all survivors “met een heet yser int voorhooft gemerct” (“branded with a hot iron on the forehead” [sig. A2r]). The idea of England as a victim of Habsburg ambition was especially suited, moreover, to the political environment of summer 1598, when the Meßrelation and its pamphlet sources were likely produced. Although months had already gone by since Vervins, Elizabeth was yet to decide whether to accept or reject Spain's offers of peace (Contarini 337).Footnote 30 England's vulnerability to Spain's libido dominandi was an essential part of any argument made in support of war.
Even if Het Spaens Europa cannot be tied to a triumphant Elizabeth or a hegemonic England, there is plenty of evidence suggesting the plate's centrality to several culturally significant developments of the period, from the spread of allegorical cartography and the advent of print news periodicals to the rise of illustrated reporting and the emergence of Europe as a secular political signifier. This, I believe, makes Het Spaens Europa important enough to warrant critical attention in and by itself. At the most basic level, the print is an especially interesting case study in the history of illustrated news reporting, showing how images could function as events worthy of coverage and dissemination. As a re-mediation of political pamphlets, it provides precious insights into the practices of news sourcing adopted during the early modern period. As a German repackaging of Dutch illustrations, it contributes to our understanding of news periodicals as transnational enterprises. Finally, as a conscious thematization of Europe—a shared space of discourse that could cut across differences of nation, language, and confession—it enriches our understanding of early modern identity formation.
It is to this complex and rapidly evolving context that Het Spaens Europa belongs—and it is only in this context that its significance can become fully apparent. Creatively juxtaposing preexisting images, the engraving moves well beyond the scope of its sources to propose something new: the possibility of a Continental order that retained the salvific resonances of the Europa Regina tradition while jettisoning its pro-Habsburg implications. In so doing, Het Spaens Europa illuminates at least some of the ways that Europe became a vital conceit of modern politics.
