Andreae's engraving of Christianopolis
Christianopolis (Reipublicae christianopolitanae
descriptio) An exact dating of the composition of this work is not
possible. It was published in 1619 in Strasburg by Zetzner, who also brought out
Andreae's Mythologiae Christianae, Memorialia, Turris Babel,
Geistliche Kurtzweil and Civis Christianus in the same year; like
most of Andreae's other publications of this period it is a duodecimo volume
containing 220 pages in ten gatherings.
Form of the narrative
Christianopolis has the form of a travel narrative, in
which the narrator gives an account of the ideal community inhabiting the island
of Capharsalama on which he is shipwrecked. Perhaps surprisingly, in view of its
popularity in other literature, the shipwreck motif was an innovation in utopian
writing, as Held showed, and the idea of storm and shipwreck was one that Andreae
used so frequently that we may suppose it had a special meaning within his
iconography. In 1615 he observed that some arrive at the truth 'by chance, after
they have tried in all directions, or out of necessity when they have been as it
were cast out at that place by the raging sea' (Vom Besten u. edelsten Beruff
2); it is the opening gambit of Panurge in Andreae's early comedy Turbo:
'Sir, have you ever in your life experienced a shipwreck ...?' (Turbo
II,3). Women, according to the misogynist Gynaecomastix in Mythologiae
(IC,21), are 'the shipwreck of life'.
Andreae's second letter to Comenius includes: 'You may read
the tablets of our shipwreck, and improve them if you wish. We shall be happy if
our great design is not annihilated. Thus sailors comfort themselves, who
through sailing the wrong way, fortunately open up new lands to their
successors. The goal was, to destroy idols in Religion and in Science
[Literature], and to replace them with Christ'.
The stormy sea surrounding the island of Capharsalama is part
of the same image and recurs in the Christenburg, which stands on a
similar island: 'There is in the wild ocean of the world/ An island, greatly
favoured/ Both by heaven and by the earth.' In Menippus (53), too, we
have 'an island which the sea of the world attacks from all sides,' and a
Utopian colony is located on another continent which can only be reached by
those prepared to voyage there by sea. ('Utopia' Menippus 68 pp.122-3)
The church is also represented as an ark or ship: '... to contain those who are
to be saved, they prefer to concern themselves with the church rather than with
the waters of the universal flood.'(ch.72), an image which recurs in chapters 36
and 96.
Surviving the shipwreck and being cast ashore alive on
Capharsalama is not only a rebirth, it is an opportunity to live a better life
and die a better death. The visitor is stripped and cleansed by the shipwreck.
As Andreae remarks in connection with the practice of Theology in Christianopolis:
'being born again begins another childhood, another youth, and even another
manhood for us, and urges us to reject the old Adam and model ourselves on
Christ, our Book of Life.' (ch.77) At a social level, this may of course be read
as a plea for the cleansing and regeneration of the community as a whole.
Structure
The narrative of Christianopolis clearly has a good
deal in common with More's Utopia, Campanella's Civitas solis and
Bacon's New Atlantis. Following Biesterfeld (p.164) we can divide Christianopolis
into five parts: Motto, Dedication, Introduction, Main Body and Postscript. The Motto
takes the form of two verses from Psalm 83 (84 in the Authorised Version) which
in some respects serve as an epitome of the main text. An architectural metaphor
is introduced (it is better to live on the threshold of Lord's house than inside
the tents of sin) which prepares the reader for the use of location to define
relative importance in Christianopolis. That God is sol et
propugnaculum may both remind the reader that true protection comes from the
Lord - and hint at Civitas solis in its Tübingen usage as an alternative
name for Andreae's Societas Christiana. One can also interpret the motto
to imply that Christianopolis is itself the threshhold of salvation, but
no further.(Sommer 1996:116). The Dedication to Johann Arndt is brief
and, apart from claiming that Christianopolis was inspired by Arndt's
work, contains a typical plea for instruction as to what should be expanded or
amended in Christianopolis. This appears to be more than just a
rhetorical device, for the request made within the text too, in chapter 78 and
again in chapter 93, and also in the Introduction and the Postscript.
The Introduction of Christianopolis is
substantially more difficult to read than the rest of the work. Andreae presents
a history of the Reformation, which he claims many people fail to understand, in
terms of long-suffering people who wish for a better life finally rising against
their conservative and tyrannical oppressors, and suggests the need for further
reform in the face of reaction and back-sliding. His principal objections appear
to be against the corruption of religion, morals and scholarship among the
leaders of the community. This raises the question of the status of the
Rosicrucian Fama, which had been presented as a programme of societal
reform, towards which Andreae takes a sceptical stance, but allows him to
introduce the possibility and desirability of independent self-reform by members
of the Lutheran community. Christianopolis is presented as an account of
a society operating under better laws and institutions than those of
contemporary society, with an appeal for dialogue on their improvement. The work
is also introduced as a diversion, an entertainment directed at his friends.
The Postscript is really a continuation of the Main
Text which affirms the traveller's commitment to Christianopolis, rather
than returning to the detached authorial perspective of the Introduction.
The Main Text consists of one hundred short chapters,
each with a moral at the end, linked together by the fiction that they are a
description of Christianopolis by a young traveller who does not claim fully to
understand all that he sees. The structure is thus similar to a number of other
works he published while he was at Vaihingen - Menippus, Mythologiae, Turris
Babel and others consist of just such collections of short passages with
longer prefatory sections. The apparatus of Menippus and Mythologiae
includes an index, perhaps suggesting that these are works in which the reader
may browse freely; the absence of any index in Christianopolis suggests
that the chapters and topics are structured to lead the reader through a
particular sequence of ideas and experiences. The chapters are as follows:
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