Christianopolis - the Human Dimension
Edward H. Thompson, Dundee University suppedam@Tesco.net
This is a paper presented at a Table Ronde 'Publicists and
Projectors in 17th-Century Europe' at the Herzog August Bibliothek,
Wolfenbüttel, February 1996.
1. Introduction
The standard view of Andreć’s Christianopolis is that it is an account of a utopian city. It is an urbs, civitas, or oppidum in the Latin of 1619, rendered as Stadt by Georgi in the German translation of 1741, and as ‘city’ in Held’s English version of 1916. Abercrombie (1920) reviewed Christianopolis as an exercise in town planning, and only once remarked that it was ‘a small and finite community’; elsewhere he followed Held in describing Christianopolis as a city, as did virtually every writer in English, from Mumford to Eliav-Feldon. [1]
Urbs, civitas and oppidum however are words whose range of meaning widened in post-classical Latin, coming to include ‘fortified monastery’, ‘fortress’ and ‘castle’ [2] In 17th century Latin urbs and civitas could be used as synonyms for societas and politia, as in the ‘Leges Societatis Christianć’ found in the Hartlib papers, which clearly refer to a small community. A further indication of the flexibility of 17th century terminology is provided by Petty’s project of 1658 for ‘the founding of a college or colony of twenty able learned men’. (Boyle Works vi,113)
It is argued here that Andreć may not have been describing a city-state, but rather a community on a much smaller scale, akin to a college or a research institute. On this interpretation Christianopolis is distanced from such utopian cities or states as those of More, Campanella, Doni and Burton and is brought closer to the kind of institute described by Bacon as Solomon’s House, though Cowley remarks that this is a ‘project for experiments that can never be experimented’ (p.23). In this respect it would seem to lie somewhere between Cowley’s own project for a Philosophical College and the kind of small, self-sufficient community proposed by Plockhoy in 1659. That is, it provides an indication of the kind of society that the promoters of Antilia may have had in mind, an alternative to the one described in ‘Christianae Societatis Imago’, capable of being taken up and implemented;[3] there is no doubt that Hartlib and his circle, for example, were quite convinced that a college or institute on the lines suggested by the New Atlantis could be brought into being. The credibility of this interpretation of Christianopolis is enhanced by the consideration that numerous literary and scientific societies were founded, or at least proposed, throughout Europe in the seventeenth century. They were modelled on the Florentine Accademia della Crusca and the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, and included Bolton’s scheme in 1616 for a Royal Academy in Britain, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft [4] (later Palmenorden) founded a year later in Weimar, the Academia Parisiensis, the Deutschgesinnte Gesellschaft and the Elbschwanenorden in Hamburg and the Nürnberg Gekronte Blumenorden. Christianopolis can be seen as an alternative to such societies, as well as being a counter to the Rosicrucian Fama and Confessio (1615), and such groups as Simon Studion’s ‘Militia Crucifera Evangelica’.
Multiple meanings are not uncommon in Andreć, however, and it was clearly his intention that Christianopolis be read at a number of levels. It may be a prospectus, inviting like-minded people to join him in the project of forming a community dedicated to living a truly (Lutheran) Christian life of work, study and worship - in this it is evidently like his ‘Christianae societatis imago’ (1620), ‘Christiani amoris dextera porrecta’ (1620) and Verae unionis in Christo Jesu specimen (1628);[5] the last is linked with his attempts to form a ‘Unio christianae’ at Nuremberg in 1626-7. It is also an entertainment, a ‘ludicrum’ consciously written in the same spirit as More’s Utopia. Some passages are intended to amuse - the legalistic language in which he attacks the operation of the law could almost be put into Die Fledermaus in place of the the Lawyer’s list of legal options - but others are an attack on the evils of contemporary society, illustrated by comparison with the Christianopolitan alternative.
Arguably, Christianopolis is also a hermetic model of the universe, in which the concordances between man and the world, and between the world and the heavens, are explored. To the extent that Andreć’s cosmology saw the universe as a great chain of being, it follows that a community like Christianopolis could indeed also serve as a valid model of an ideal city, or an ideal state. But when Andreć suggested in the preface to the book that Christianopolis could be realised in his own body (corpusculum meum), it is implied that Christianopolis is also mutatis mutandis a model of the ideal Christian personality.
2. From Uraniborg to Christianopolis
The triangular island of Caphar Salama [6] has on it a square city, Christianopolis, built around a circular temple. This geometrical arrangement is not accidental, and we might look for clarification in Andreć’s Collectaneorum Mathematicorum Decades XI (1614), written to accompany a seminar he took part in at the Tübinger Stift, and illustrated with 110 copper plates which he engraved himself. Something of the prehistory of the Christianopolis project can be traced there.
Plate 76 (fig.1) is a meticulous copy by Andreć of the well-known plan of the main building (ichnographia [7] prćcipuć domus) at the observatory of Tycho Brahe at Uraniborg. [8]
The next plate in Collectaneorum shows Andreć’s own design for an ideal establishment set within a double garden with four fountains and a surrounding vaulted cloister ten feet wide; it is defended by a wall with four bastions (fig.2).
This is reminiscent of Serlio’s manuscript designs for a ‘dwelling for a prince’ [9] of ca.1547, but it is more likely that it was inspired by the view of Uraniborg which Andreć did not reproduce in Collectaneorum, which shows the observatory standing within a double garden with what looks like four fountains,[10] defended by a wall with four bastions.
I would argue that this reappears on a larger scale five years later in Christianopolis, where there are four similarly positioned fountains in the double gardens around the centre of the community 11] there is a ‘handsome cloister with 72 columns’ (ch.26) and round the domestic accommodation in Christianopolis there are ‘vaulted promenades’(ch.12); the dome at the centre of Uraniborg and on Andreć’s 1514 house has evolved into the domed, circular temple at the centre of Christianopolis; and the four defensive bastions remain. The workshops (officinae) which occupy the outer corners of Uraniborg are now on the outer row of buildings in Christianopolis, and the ministri are located in a similar position. (fig.3)
If the general layout of Christianopolis can be understood as a development
of the arrangements at Uraniborg, the details of the domestic accommodation seem
to be more directly Andreć’s own. Plate 79 of the Collectaneorum
depicts a much more modest kind of establishment (domus inferiora), a
small three-storied building with shuttered windows and a cellar below (fig.4).
Placed end to end, however, these buildings would seem to correspond closely
to the domestic accommodation in Christianopolis where the buildings have three
storeys, and ‘Most commonly there are three rooms in each apartment - a
sitting room, a bedroom and a kitchen. The latter two are generally separated by
a wooden partition … one gets upstairs either through one of the towers or by
way of a spiral staircase in between… The private cellars are small, for there
is little to be stored in them’ (chap.23)
The general description of Christianopolis is one of best-practice early modern accommodation: for example, the roofs are divided up by fire-walls at intervals, and the buildings are all constructed of baked bricks against the danger of fire;[12] they have double windows ‘one of glass and one of wood, set into the wall in such a way that each may be opened or closed as desired’, [13] with lifting gear - presumably of the kind found to this day in Amsterdam - to hoist heavy items to the upper floors.(chap.23) Pure spring water is channelled into the community, and divided up first into streets, then into houses,[14] the outflow of a lake runs by subterranean channels through the sewers, to empty the houses of dirt each day (chap.95) In short, the domestic arrangements may be Spartan, but they are completely up-to-date for early modern Europe.
Productive activity in Christianopolis is organised in a planned, rational way. On the outermost ranges of the community where basic production is concentrated, the four-square structure embodies linked technological processes: on one side of the square there is agriculture and stock-rearing; on another face agricultural produce is milled and baked; on the opposite face the livestock is butchered and cooked; on the final face there are smelting and firing.[15] Deeper within the community, at the level of craft production, the same square layout relates to the four materials (metal, stone, wood and textiles), and two levels of skill with which the craftsmen work. Closer yet to the centre is the college, a square building with towers at each corner to house the leaders of the community.
This kind of organisation was of course a common feature of renaissance town planning. Much the same could be said of Doni’s ‘New World’, Filarete’s Sforzinda, Dürer’s ideal city; Campanella’s City of the Sun is perhaps similarly structured, albeit for pedagogical purposes, and Burton has ‘In each town these several tradesmen shall be so aptly disposed, as they shall free the rest from danger or offence: fire-trades, as smiths, forge-men, brewers, bakers, metal-men, etc., shall dwell apart by themselves:’ (Burton p.102).[16] As Ackerman observed,[17] this was part of the spatial reconstruction of Late Mediaeval and Early Renaissance communities, corresponding to the realignment of class structures that followed the dissolution of traditional bonds. The reader of Christianopolis could be expected to understand that the size and location of buildings signal the standing of their inhabitants, allowing Andreć to show how the ranking in his ideal community differs from that in the world outside.
Technologically, too, production in Christianopolis is up-to-date. To take one example, water power is used extensively: The mills not only grind the grain which is stored on the upper floor, but indeed here they do everything that is performed with the help of rotary power in the absence of fire. Thanks to the ingenuity of the inhabitants of this place, the functions performed are wide-ranging and designed for the pleasure and admiration of observers. For paper is also made here, trees are sawed into beams,[18] and weapons are polished. [19]
If the accommodation and production facilities at Christianopolis are up-to-date, so too are the teaching and research facilities. These may be typified by an emphasis on hands-on experience, and the use of modern equipment - as in the ‘very ingenious ovens’ of the Chemistry laboratory (ch.44), or in the astronomical observatory, where the equipment is listed from the schedule at Uraniborg, with the addition of the recently-invented telescope.
In other respects the educational scheme is reminiscent of traditional university education, for it mimics the trivium and quadrivium, with the addition of medicine and law; and it has something too of the education later developed in the noble academies, with horse-riding and weapons drill as forms of exercise for the young.
2. The Fortifications of Christianopolis
Defensively, however, there is something incongruous about Christianopolis. Andreć tells us that ‘It is square in plan, with each of its sides about 700 feet long, and it is pretty well defended by four bastions and a rampart …Its strength is reinforced by eight massive towers distributed throughout the community, and beyond this there are sixteen smaller towers which are not to be despised; in the middle of all there is a citadel which is almost impregnable’ (chap.7) But the ‘almost impregnable’ citadel is less than 30 m. across - less than half the diameter of the papal Castel Sant’Angelo[20] - and the ‘massive’ towers are only 10 m. by 15 m. in size.
The square layout of the community is reminiscent of that to be found in Dürer’s plan for an ideal city (1527), [21] except that Dürer’s old-fashioned round bastions have been replaced by the triangular bastions that came into favour in the 1530s. Nevertheless, it remains rather an out-of-date defensive structure for 1619, when a polygonal arrangement had come into vogue. Andreć was in fact well aware of its military inadequacies: ‘The most important thing in fortification is to leave no point on the walls which can not be supported from one, two or more directions. To this end, therefore, are these figures shown: the triangular ones please few architects, the square ones hardly any... ’. [22] A second point is that the layout of the streets in Christianopolis would actually hamper the defender, where a radial arrangement would have allowed the defenders to muster at the centre of the community and defend it on interior lines.
It is clear that Andreć not only understood the inadequacies of the fortifications of Christianopolis, but was also familiar with the solution. In ‘Fortification’ (Menippus 81) Andreć refers to Vitruvius, Samuel Marolois,[23] Frontinus, Sebastiano Serlio, Daniel Specklin, Lovinus, Jacques Perret, Simon Stevin, Claude Flamand, Heinrich Schickhardt [24] and Bramerus; Serlio, Specklin and Flamand appeared earlier in the introduction to Coll. Math., Plates 82-89 of which explore a variety of layouts, bastions and redoubts, culminating in a trace of Specklin’s ‘perfect’ system of fortification, a circular structure which has twelve bastions on the periphery, and an inner citadel with six (fig.6).
Recognizing that Specklin’s design might in fact be no more than an
exercise in mathematical ingenuity, Andreć nevertheless adopted something very
like it in the Swabian German poem Christenburg which he probably wrote a
year or so before [25] the Latin Christianopolis. The two communities
have a similar setting: the fortress of Christenburg stands on an island like
Caphar Salama - ‘There is in the wild ocean of the world An island, greatly
favoured/ Both by heaven and by the earth/ And so it is called, and is, the
Favoured Land’[26] and, like Campanella’s City of the Sun, they
are both set up in opposition to the forces of Tyranny, Sophistry and Hypocrisy.
Indeed they share the same foundation myth, of having been established by
refugees from religious persecution. [27] This is a recurrent theme in Andreć:
in Menippus there is also ‘an island which the sea of the world
attacks from all sides ... a fortress for us from the word of God, most strongly
defended.’ [28]
Christenburg, he tells us, ‘… was in form almost a round circle, well fortified with twelve bastions of the best and strongest kind … In addition there was a citadel in the town that had also its six bulwarks … Its fortification was so diverse that no force could have conquered it’ [29] This seems to match Specklin’s ‘perfect’ fortification, but Andreć’s decision to adopt this advanced defensive structure at Christenburg owes nothing to the science of fortification. It is quite simply that the twelve bastions and six bulwarks could be used to define attributes of the Lutheran faith: the bastions of the Christian city are named Justitia, Prudentia, Amor, Liberalitas, Temperantia, Castitas, Patients, Humilitas, Spes, Labor, Obedientia and Simplicitet; the bulwarks of the inner citadel are Baptism, Faith, Prayer, Communion, Law and Holy Orders, and the whole thing is protected by the moat of Religion.
By parity of reason, we may argue that despite its very functional
specification, Christianopolis too is designed to embody aspects of Andreć’s
faith or outlook. This may seem surprising since we have described Christianopolis
in very pedestrian terms as an account of a community which is driven by
contemporary technology and which is down to earth enough to be at one level a
blueprint for a community which could in principle be established. But at the
same time it is plain that he is also operating at a metaphorical level. It is
indeed also‘a fortress from the word of God’.
Thus Christianopolis is described as having a well-stocked armoury at its centre, and the citizens are issued with weapons so that they are always ready to repel attack - but the defences are out of date and we must suspect that what Andreć is really saying is that the college which lies close to the centre of Christianopolis as its primum motor is a source of spiritual or moral weapons which must be kept ready at all times. ‘They do not forget the armour of the spirit’ (ch.40)[30]
4. The Human Dimension
If we return to Collectaneorum, Plates 96 and 97, which are clearly copied from Cesariano’s illustrations of Vitruvius,[31] depict the proportions of a human figure with the comment ‘Since man is the most perfect work of God … God Himself ordered Noah to build his ark according to the measure of the human body, 300 long, 50 broad and 30 high, by analogy with the human parts. [32] A similar observation appears in Menippus where Andreć drops satire in one dialogue and says: "next [after the Trinity] to be marvelled at is the proportion of the divine circle with the human line, from which there flows the dimension of all the creatures." [33]
Two ideas are combined here: the Classical observation associated with
Vitruvius, that a square may be constructed out of human dimensions, and the
Biblical association of the human proportions of Noah’s ark, enunciated for
example in Augustine’s City of God. This became a commonplace of
renaissance architectural theory with its publication in Alberti,[34] and it
would not be surprising if there is a correspondence between the layout of
Christianopolis and the proportions of the human body. An attraction of the use
of standard proportions was that it offered the renaissance architect an escape
from the diversity of local units of measurement - Andreć depicts 14 measures
of what might be understood as a linear foot in Pl.93 of his Collectanrorum.
If such measures are incorporated in Christianopolis, however, the purpose is
more probably that he wishes the community to share in the divine proportions
and harmony. In this, at least, Andreć may be indebted to Campanella’s City
of the Sun.
The distance from the centre of the figure to the hands may define the distance between the centre of Christianopolis and the workshops where Andreć locates ‘Work, or as they prefer to call it, ‘the exercise of the hands’ [35](chap.16); the position of the head may coincide with the location of the towers which house the heads of the community: the Religious leader, the Judge and the Philosopher. This is of course a variation on the concept of The Body Politic, and recurs elsewhere in Andreć. For example in Menippus the dialogue ‘Definitions’ has: ‘Tell me, what part of us is the Churchman? - The Eye. What is the Magistrate? - The Ear. What is the Philosopher? - The Tongue. What is the Historian? - The Nose. What is the Mechanic? The Hand.’ [36]
Similarly in the 1621 Adenlicher Zucht Ehrenspiegel Andreć refers to mathematics in these terms:
In which there are Measure, Number and Weight,
From which everything is derived,
Through which everything is brought into proportion,
According to which the the Law of Heavens is just
...
Sight, Hearing, Tongue and Hand are governed by it (p.105)
The four-bastioned structure of the defences of Christianopolis do not absolutely require the city itself to be square. Its shape, however, is almost certainly what it is because Andreć is concerned to mimic the shape of the Biblical New Jerusalem, though he warns the reader that care is necessary here for these things are not understood through any human science, but depend upon revelation. So Andreć says that it is entering a labyrinth for anyone to borrow measuring rods and compasses from human philosophy in order to measure the New Jerusalem [37] or to establish its calendar and sacred time scale, or to fortify it against the enemy.(ch.63)
Plate 96 has also a general similarity with Plate 9 of Coll. Math. which illustrates the construction ‘inter sacra inventa’ of a circle equal in area to a given square.
If the measurements of Christianopolis incorporate those of the ideal human
body, it is divinely proportioned and will parallel the heavenly city, and may
share in its merits. Campanella’s astronomical magic operated in this way,
setting up on earth a model of the planets that would counter malign influences
in the heavens above. So too in Christianopolis the choir parades round the
community because ‘they … take steps to have the angels as near them as
possible, it is their hope (which is not unreasonable) that the choir of angels
will join in with their singing in this way.’
5. Social Relations
Andreć’s intention appears to be that Christianopolis also serves as a model of the ideal personality and way of life: the outer ranges of buildings are the workshops where ‘the work of the hands’ takes place. Some crafts require more skill than others, but labour of some sort is essential for everyone. Closer to the centre is the college where scholarly activity takes place, again an essential part of life for everyone; at the heart of the community, there is the religious centre. Everyone is a balanced combination of body, mind and soul; everyone works, studies and worships; each day has its time for these activities; the community has three classes ruled by a triumvirate representing administration or justice, scholarship and religion.
A useful example of this interconnectedness is provided by Andreć's discussion of ‘Understanding’, the wife of the Judge who administers the material side of life in Christianopolis. Andreć remarks that he has never seen a less credulous woman, nor heard more profound and well-considered words than those she utters; the things which she believes and states are found to be completely certain, and she does nothing without reason. ‘Her husband is not at all ashamed to discuss difficult matters with her, and he listens willingly to what she has to say; but he reserves judgement for himself. If she is over-inquisitive about matters which are above her, he restrains her, warns her of heaven, and bids her apply her gifts more to her spinning-wheel. Thus they live peacefully and pleasantly under his rule ...’ (ch.34)
Evidently this is intended to be understood at a number of levels. It conveys a warning about the limitations to the use of human understanding, and its application to the concept of justice; at the same time it concerns the relationship between husband and wife - in this respect its antecedents clearly go back to the pseudo-Aristotelian Śconomica (chap.vii); it reminds us that in Christianopolis spinning, weaving and needlework are the special province of women, and it provides Andreć with an occasion to criticise the decadence of contemporary manners. [39] As Andreć conceives it, in the projected ideal community the relationship between God and man will be recapitulated in the political relationship between leaders and subordinates; in the household it will also be found between parent and child, and again between husband and wife; in the administration it appears in the relationship between each leader and his deputy; and at other levels it is to be found between, say, soul or spirit and body.
Christianopolis is not, therefore, regimented in quite the style of the old renaissance utopias where More had slavery, Guevara has infanticide and the death penalty for telling lies, or being more than 40 years old (woman, 50 for man) and Campanella favoured the death penalty for wearing high-heeled shoes, corsets or make-up. Where Agostini wanted spies and informers to supervise all aspects of life, and Campanella has this as a fitting occupation for the handicapped, Andreć would prefer to have people led by the example of their superiors; and he would replace coercion by the willingness to please of inferiors, a form of self-discipline. That is, the free-will of the Lutheran’s relationship with God is reproduced in the Christianopolitan’s relationship to his or her superior.
Conclusion
While Christenburg may appear to be a reworking of Prudentius’ Psychomachia and Christianopolis a revision of More’s Utopia, in fact the dominant purpose in both is identical - to combat the evils of the world through spiritual, moral and intellectual progress. This entailed a hands-on experimental/experiential and observational form of science and education which has a great deal in common with the colleges and societies projected later in the century, and it is clear that Andreć regards scientific progress as something which would ameliorate the human condition. In these respects he seems to anticipate later developments, and may have helped to pave the way for their acceptance.
In Andreć’s analysis, however, these progressive secular developments are inseparable from larger religious and moral considerations. There is a symmetry between the two aspects of Christianopolis - practical town-planning and architecture are interwoven with a modelling of the divine proportions and social relationships, and at the same time the Christianopolis project is intended to generate scientific progress which will ease daily life and also lead to a greater knowledge of God. Similarly the ideal human personality is modelled by the architecture of Christianopolis, and Christianopolis appears to be modelled in some respects at least on idealised human proportions.
Andreć was well aware of the ambivalent, paradoxical aspect of his position. In Christianopolis he more than once refers to the idea that through an understanding of the world we come to know the heavens, and thus are led to despise the world; or that those who achieve the highest levels of education turn to a kind of sacred simplicity which rejects all human knowledge. This attitude was neither new nor confined to Germany - it is analogous, for example, to Erasmus’ Praise of Folly - but a growing emphasis on this side of Andreć may ultimately have contributed to the willingness of projectors to look for a more welcoming climate outside Germany.
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Bibliography
(1) Works by J.V. Andreć
Collectaneorum Mathematicorum Decades XI. Centum et decem tabulis Aeneis exhibitae (1614) Tubingae; Typis Iohan.Alexandri Celli.
Vom Besten und Edelsten Beruff (1615) Straßburg, In Verlegung Lazari Zetzners
Turbo. In Theatrum productum (1616) Helicone, juxta Parnassum
Menippus, sive Dialogorum satyricorum centuria inanitatum nostratium speculum (1617) Helicone, juxta Parnassum
Mythologiae Christianae... libri tres (1619) Argentorati; Sumpt. Hćred. L. Zetzneri
Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio (1619) Argentorati; Sumptibus hćredum Lazari Zetzner
Christianae Societatis Imago etc in G H Turnbull ‘Johann Valentin Andreae’s Societas Christiana’ Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 73 (1954) pp 407-32;
Adenlicher Zucht Ehrenspiegel (1623) Straßburg, Lazarus Zetzner.
Christenburg: Das ist Ein schön geistlich Gedicht, darinn als in einem Spiegel klärlich vor Augen gestellt wird, die Ankunft, Zunemen und Wolstand der Kirchen Gottes. (1626) Freyburgk, Haans Krafftman
Verć unionis in Christo Jesu specimen (1628) n.p.
(2) Other Works
Bacon, Sir Francis New Atlantis
Benevolo, L (tr Landry, 1978) The Architecture of the Renaissance 2 vol
Braudel Fernand (1981 tr.) Civilisation and Capitalism 15th - 18th Century v.I
Burton, R Anatomy of Melancholy (1972 ed. Holbrook Jackson) London; Dent
Campanella, T The City of the Sun trans. A.M. Elliott and R. Millner.(1981) London & West Nyack, Journeyman Press,
Davis, J C Utopia and the ideal society: A study of English utopian writing 1516-1700 (1981)
Debus, A G Man and Nature in the Renaissance (1978)
Eliav-Feldon, Miriam Realistic Utopias, the Ideal Imaginary Societies of the Renaissance 1516-1630 (1982)
Filarete Treatise on Architecture (1965, ed. Spencer) New Haven; Yale U.P.
Grendler, Paul F. ‘Utopia in Renaissance Italy: Doni’s ‘New World’ Journal of the History of Ideas 26:4 (1965) pp.479-94
Hersey, G.L. Pythagorean Palaces, Magic and Architecture in the Italian Renaissance (1976) Ithaca & London, Cornell University Press,
Manuel, F E and Manuel, F P Utopian Thought in the Western World (1979)
Mumford, L Story of Utopias, Ideal Commonwealths & Social Myths. (1923) New York
Montgomery, J.W. Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654) (1973) The Hague; Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées 55
More, Thomas Utopia (1965 ed. Surtz and Hexter) Yale University Press
Moryson, Fynes An Itinerary (1907-8) Glasgow; MacLehose 4 vols.
Moryson, Fynes Shakespeare’s Europe (1967 ed. Charles Hughes) New York; B.Blom
Rosenau, Helen The Ideal City: Its Architecture (1974) New York
Ross, Harry Utopias Old and New (1938)
Serlio, Sebastiano On Domestic Architecture, the Sixth Book (Reproduced from a ms. in Avery Library, Columbia) (1978) Architectural History Foundation/MIT Press
Serlio, Sebastiano The Book of Architecture (Facsimile of Peakes’s 1611 London edition of Serlio) intro. A.E. Sanraniello (1980) New York, Arno Press
Thompson, E. H. ‘The Monopolistic Confraternities of Jean Bodin’ Confraternitas (1994) vol. 5(1) pp.3-8
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ENDNOTES
[1] Mumford (1923), Ross (1938), Bierman (1963), Montgomery (1973), Manuel and Manuel (1979) and Miriam Eliav-Feldon (1982). For Marie Berneri (1950) the city is ‘small but compact’ and Debus (1978) describes the ‘ideal city of Christianopolis’ as ‘a scholarly community ... a utopian metropolis’ (p.120). Davis (1981) criticised Abercrombie for ‘treating Christianopolis as a city rather than a household’ and stressed the influence of a monastic model on Andreć’s conception of an ideal state. Nevertheless he too describes it as a city-state, with such national economic features as a narrow home market and an export surplus enabling the payment of tribute to foreign powers. (p.77 and note)
[2] Niemeyer, J.F. (1976) Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus.
[3] Burton’s dismissal of ‘Resp. Christiano-politana, Campanella’s City of the Sun, and that New Atlantis’ as ‘witty fictions, but mere chimaeras’ (Anatomy of Melancholy p.101) seems to refer above all to their egalitarian character - ‘a kind of government to be wished for rather than effected’
[4] Andeć was the only Lutheran member of this society, introduced under the sponsorship of Herzog August of Braunschweig in 1646.
[5] Its impulse was the same as that which led Andreć to form a ‘Societas Christiana’ or ‘Civitas Solis’ in 1618-19. The list of members of this society was headed by Johann Arndt (Montgomery, p.176), and it was to Arndt that Andreć dedicated Christianopolis with the ambiguous statement: ‘This new Civitas of ours acknowledges you...’ - and it is a matter for conjecture whether he is referring to the imaginary community described in the book, or whether he is alluding to Civitas solis, one of the names by which the Societas Christiana which he and others were trying to set up was known
[6] Andreć sails there after boarding the ship Phantasy (Christianopolis I); he also boards the ship Phantasy in ‘Peregrinatio’ (Chr.Myth. V,37)
[7] A word Andreć spells incorrectly, both here and in the first edition of Menippus.
[8] Published at Uraniborg by Tycho Brahe in 1596.
[9] e.g. Casa di un principe, Plate 28 in the Avery MS of Serlio’s projected Sixth Book of Architecture.
[10] They are not fountains in fact, but the position of gates to the garden. The printer set them with lower-case ‘o’ and used upper case for the other features of the illustration.
[11] Also an allusion to "A river went out of Eden to water the garden ... became into four heads" (Gen.2,10)
[12] Baked brick and firewalls are also to be found in More’s Utopia II,p.120, 32-3. Building in brick ‘began precociously, though slowly, in the twelfth century’ in Germany. The 17th century saw the widespread adoption of brick in new buildings. (Braudel I, p.268) ‘... houses uniform, built of brick and stone, like Bruges, Brussels, Rhegium Lepidi ...’ Burton Anatomy of Melancholy p.98
[13] Montaigne (1580) ‘on the road to Germany, noted that from Epinal onwards "there is no village house however small that has not glazed windows" ‘ ... ‘what makes the glass (in Germany) shine so brightly is that they have no fixed windows in our fashion’ so they can ‘polish them very often’. This was in advance of the Dutch, who had fixed glass and movable wooden panels; and Geneva, where ‘at about the same time even the grandest houses were content to use paper’ in the windows (Braudel v.I p.297)
[14] (In Hamburg) Water is brought to the Cities from an Hil distant some English mile, by pipes of wood, because those of lead would be broken by the yce, and these pipes are to bee seene under the bridge, whence the water is convaied by them unto each Citizens house. I.p.5. (In Lubeck) Water is brought to every Citizens house by pipes I.p.7. (At Dantzke) There is a faire water conduit, vulgarly called Wasserkunst, where by a mill the waters are drawne up into a cesterne, from whence they are carried by pipes into all the streetes and privat houses; besides that many Citizens have their privat wels. I.p.131. Fynes Moryson Itinerary. ‘I will have conduits of sweet and good water aptly disposed in each town.’ Burton Anatomy of Melancholy p.99.
[15] The layout can be probably also be understood in terms of the elements of air, earth, fire and water. Andreć makes frequent reference to the elements, and their Christological equivalents.
[16] Almost the only exception is to be found in Bodin’s Republic, which favours the dispersion of trades throughout the city in order to counter the possibility of monopolistic collusion. (Thompson, 1994)
[17] Sebastiano Serlio’s Sixth Book intro.pp.9-10
[18] "The Germans ... have Artificiall mills, to be driven with a small quantity of water, conveyed in troughes, and falling directly upon the wheeles, which they use in theire Mines, as also for other uses, namely for sawing of boardes, with litle helpe of one workeman to fasten the tree to the Mill, which done it draweth the tree to it being never so great, till it have sawed out the same, so as for every boarde they doe but once fasten the tree to the Mill, and neede no more attend it. (Fynes Moryson Itinerary H.299)
[19] Cf (From the fish pond) ‘the water descended through certain canals arranged in such a way that they made the mills turn and grind grain most rapidly. In addition to the mills, it beat iron and copper, polished arms, sharpened knives, and (did) other things. Below it fulled cloth and made paper.’ (Filarete XX, 161v). This integrated arrangement of is not untypical of monastic practice. The use of the water-mill to power sawmills (illustrated in the Cistercian engineer Villard de Honnecourt’s sketch-book in 1270 (Forbes, in History of Technology v.II p.69)), mills for grinding cutlery, paper-mills and many more developed in the thirteenth century ‘Their abbey in southern Champagne had fulling-, paper-, and hammer-mills together with water-wheels in the thirteenth century. (Forbes, ibid p.610)
[20] Castel St Angelo is mentioned in the introduction to Christianopolis. Andreć must have seen it during his visit to Rome.
[21] A. Dürer: Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken (Nuremberg, 1527) Latin edition pubished in Paris, 1535.
[22] ‘Fortificationis summa est, nullum in ambitu dari punctum, cui non aliunde vel semel, vel bis, aut pluries succuri possit. Unde in hanc finem hć figurć depictć, č quibus triangulares parum architectis placent, quadratć vix ....’ (Coll. Math. 82)
[23] Marolois was also a member of the commission appointed to assess Jarich van der Ley’s improved method of finding longitude at sea.
[24] Heinrich Schickhardt (1558-1634) designed Freudenstadt. Benevolo (1968) drew attention to the structural similarities between the plan for a square ideal city drawn by Dürer in 1527, Andreć’s Christianopolis, and the city of Freudenstadt designed on a square plan by Schickhardt and built in 1599, and Helen Rosenau (1974) argued that Christianopolis was derived from Dürer’s plan by way of Freudenstadt. Benevolo’s illustrations suggest that Dürer’s ideal city and Christianopolis are of much the same size, while Freudenstadt is considerably smaller. This is thoroughly misleading – in reality the whole of Christianopolis could be accomodated in the city square of Freudenstadt or Dürer’s city, and is clearly very different in scale.
[25] On the internal evidence of the sequence of tyranny, sophistry, hypocrisy. Christianopolis, however, was printed some years before Christenburg, which was issued by Hans Krafftman at Freiburg in 1626. The only known printed copy of the Christenburg is in the Herzog August Bibliothek. Assuming its title page is genuine, this refutes the suggestion that ‘Andreć may have done no more than circulate it in MS during his lifetime’ (Montgomery II, p.497)
[26] ‘Es in der Wellt wildem Mehr/ Ein Insul ist begnadet sehr,/ Beedts vom Himmel vnd der Erd./ All Gutts vnd Wahrs ist Ihr verEhrt,/ Drumb heysts vnd ist das GnadenLand’ (Christenburg III)
[27] Andreć also uses this in ‘Alethea Exul’ in his Mythologić Christianć.
[28] ‘...Insula, quam Mundi mare undique impetit ... ex verbo Dei castrum nobis est, munitissimum, quod frustra huc usque obsiderunt..’ (‘Mathesis Christiana’ Menippus 53)
[29] ‘War an der form fast Circul rund, Mitt zwelff Basteien wol befest, Von Art vnd Sterckhe auf das best …Noch war das Castell an der Statt, Das auch seine Sechs Bollwerckh hatt … Sein festung war so menigfalt, In hett bezwungen kein Gewalt’ (Christenburg XIV)
[30] The Christenburg is vulnerable to external attack because its people have too much faith in material defences, and a similar point is made as late as 1628 in Verć unionis where it is through the faith of the its defenders that ‘the walls and bastions of our Zion are watched over and kept in good repair’ (p.10)
[31] Cesare Cesariano’s edition of Vitruvius Pollio De architectura libri dece [sic] was first published by Gotardo da Ponte at Como in 1521. Andreć modestly adds loincloths to Cesariano’s figures, one of which appears to have an erection, but otherwise copies them very carefully.
[32] ‘Cum homo sit absolutissimum Dei opus, jure quasi prć reliquis excellentem corporis mensuram ac concentum sortitus est, ŕ quo etiam veluti fundamento reliquć commensurationes exortć sunt. & Deus ipse Noachum Arcam suam ad humani corporis mensuram fabricare jussit. longam 300. latam 50. & altam 30. partibus homini analogis. Hic vides exprimi quadratum ab homine ista stante, cujus centrum uti vides’ (Coll.Math 96)
[33] ‘dein admirandam esse Divini circuli cum humana linea proportionem, ex qua creaturarum dimensio omnis fluat’ (‘Mathesis Christiana’ Menippus 53). These passages invite comparison with ‘Man is the most finished and beautiful work and image of God, and a smaller version of the world. Therefore in his more perfect form and sweeter hamrony, and in his more sublime dignity, he has all the number, measures, weights, motions and elements, etc. ... from this commensuration, temples, shrines, houses, theatres ... and buildings ... were born.’ Cornelius Agrippa 2.27.160 cited in Hersey p.92
[34] Alberti XI,7. cf Augustine City of God XII,26
[35] The term parallels that used in the Rule of St Benedict ‘the work of the hands’ (opus manuum)
[36] By contrast, the evil equivalents of these people are equated not with parts of the human body, but with animals: Sacerdos - pavo, Satrapa - Lupus, Iudex - Vultur, Literator - Cercopithecus. (Menippus 88)
[37] Harlequin enters ‘a labyrinth of confusion’ through Naometrianism, studying ‘serpents, dragons, the Behemoth, the Menetekel ... the 15 different Jerusalems ... Each of us sits in his corner and calculates with little crosses, spirals, angles, suns, moons, stars, serpents, orbits, flying angels, crowns, pillars, candleabra, waggons, trees, swords, cords, teeth, comets, eggs, fish, berries, rings, mitres, spears, the 7 openings, flasks, eagles and lions.’ (Turbo IV,iv) Similarly ‘Calculator’ confirms the Astrologer’s reading in (Turris V) ‘I have it for a certainty in my Naometria, which for a long time now has through mystic numbers clearly announced the restoration of Jerusalem and the destruction of Babylon’
[38] Andreć refers to the divine proportion in the section of Christianopolis which deals with ‘mystic numbers’: ‘It is certain that that Supreme Architect did not make this immense machine, the universe, at random, but incorporated measurements, numbers and proportions into it most wisely, and added divisions of time to it in a wonderful harmony. Above all, He placed His mysteries for us in His workshops and typical buildings, so that we may unlock the longitude, the latitude and the depth of divinity using the key of David, and we may observe the presence of the Messiah in all things. Thus we may also find out how He joins all things together in a harmony which words can not express…’ (chap.63)
[39] In the Netherlands at this time women seem to have achieved a considerable degree of economic independence; by contrast, in parts of Italy some women lived in a kind of purdah. See e.g. Fynes Moryson Itinerary IV 58,95-6,468