ABSTRACT
It is commonplace to claim that the history of Europe is the history of an idea rather than the concept of a geographically demarcated unity, the Continent. Europe's borders are variable, not only in the East but also in other regions. Every one of them could have been an essential part of negotiations of Europe at any time. Emphasis on and importance of each individual topic have shifted and changed, but no single one ever was influential enough to determine the one European identity. Europe was never a unified entity in terms of religious confessions and territorial ambitions. On the contrary, this so-called "Europe" was from the very beginning a place of contention and disagreement. Juan Luis Vives's De Europae dissidiis is one of the first early modern literary documents describing the situation Instead of external observation, the hope for resurrection took place in Hofmannsthal's imaginations of Europe.
