The Origins of Antemurale Christianitatis Myths: Remarks on the Promotion of a Political Concept

The metaphor of a bulwark has infl uenced the political imagination in Eastern Europe for centuries. Literally, it constituted and maybe still constitutes alleged frontiers between civilization and barbarity, faith and heresy, liberty and despotism. It can be described as a semantic code that identifies the right side in the dichotomy of Self and Other, right and wrong, good and bad. To look at the bulwark metaphor as a semantic code, therefore, means to look at the emergence of this discourse and its semantic frame, which can be applied to various contexts. This differs slightly from antemurale myths, which are