As Russian missiles pound Ukrainian towns, another combat, one of words, rages over the meaning of this three-year-long war. President Putin and his supporters argue that Ukraine has always been a part of Russia, and that the existence of this western polity is an aberration resulting from post-Soviet chaos. They also maintain that Russia is not part of Europe and therefore not bound by European commitments to treaties and unchanging borders. Ukraines, on the other hand, defines itself resolutely as European, and it is precisely that European identity it wishes to defend from Russia.

We can well ponder the questions: Who is right? Is Russia in Europe? Are Ukrainians Europeans? And for that matter, what are Europe’s frontiers?

These questions, which are at the heart of the Russian-Ukrainian war, have troubled students of geopolitics for centuries. To understand the origins of this conflict, one must reach far back into history, to a peaceful, if remote, corner of Europe: Miechow.

The small town of Miechow lies 20 miles north of Kraków. In the 16th century, an imposing monastery, founded by crusading knights from Jerusalem, dominated the settlement of just 70 houses. Though it had been incorporated under a city charter in the 13th century, the town, built of wood, burned down several times. These fires left it sleepy and overshadowed by nearby Kraków, the royal capital. The region of Little Poland, however, strategically situated on the plains between hilly Silesia and the lofty Tatra mountains, enjoyed prosperity at the time, with bustling trade across the international frontiers of the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary.

From Kraków, the Polish-Lithuanian Jagiellonian dynasty ruled over the largest state in 16th-century Europe. Their royal writ ran more than 500 miles to the east, as far as the badlands known in Polish as ‘Dzikie Pola’ and in Latin as ‘Loca Deserta’. No authority prevailed there. The Poles also called this area the ‘kresy’, which carries the same connotations as the American Wild West. The local people in the badlands called it in their Ruthenian tongue, ‘Ukraine’ – ‘the frontier’.

Ruthenian, of course, is the Latin form of the endonym ‘Rus’, which applied indifferently in those days to the ancestors of the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians. The official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was originally Ruthenian, not Polish.

This land was coveted by Ottoman Turks, Wallachians, Tatars, Cossacks, and Muscovites, before Polish-Lithuanian forces battled all the way to the River Dnieper and captured the old Ruthenian capital of Kyiv in 1362. Even so, the Polish-Lithuanian soldiers’ experiences of these eastern frontier lands, and their hostile populations, did not find their way into printed accounts for the reading public.

At the height of the Renaissance, the age of Copernicus, Gutenberg, Mercator, and Montaigne, a thirst for knowledge was driving scholars to fill the vast gaps in human knowledge. Until then, they had often been circumscribed by what they could learn in the books of ancient Greek and Latin scholars. But the Greeks and Romans had little to say about the geography of these ‘wild fields’ or even about Poland itself. The poet Ovid, who had been exiled to the Black Sea by Augustus, simply complained about the cold and fog. The metaphorical fog that obscured this part of the world would, inevitably, be lifted, but via an unexpected source.

Miechow saw the birth of a boy in 1457. His middle-class parents christened him Matthew in the local church. It was this boy – the citizen of a town that had failed to grow beyond a handful of houses – who would lift the veil of obscurity from the wild fields, and from Poland itself, though little in his early life pointed in this direction. Matthew attended the parish school, where he excelled in Latin and won precocious admission to the capital’s Jagiellonian University. After obtaining his MA, he took up the teaching of medicine, while his admiring peers elected him rector of the university at the age of just 22. Eager to crown his medical studies with a doctorate, he absented himself from Kraków for two years, traveling to the Italian city of Bologna, home to the oldest university in Europe and its leading faculty for medicine.

In the 15th century, Bologna had many foreign students, who studied and socialised using Latin in the same way that today’s students in Bologna, from wherever they hail, use English. This was not the elegant Latin of Cicero and Catullus, but rather a rough and ready Church Latin that followed the straightforward syntax of a modern language. After a late night of drinking, they did not say the classical and strictly correct ‘mihi vomitari est’, but rather ‘necessito vomitare’, reflecting what they would have said colloquially in Italian or Polish.

Matthew was a rare Pole at Bologna, and his fellow Italian students had only the vaguest notion about his native land, since their classical studies of Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus never mentioned Polonia. Students hailing from Saxony, Hungary, or Bohemia, had heard of this country, just to their east, with its own line of independent kings who ruled, from time to time, over Prussia, Silesia, and even Hungary and Bohemia. They recalled that the Polish king Sigismund recently received the German emperor with courtly magnificence. They also knew that Polonia had cold winters, much snow, and that people there went about wrapped in resplendent furs. When the Adriatic chill penetrated their classrooms, they envied the warmly bundled-up Pole.

His colleagues’ lack of geographic knowledge did not surprise Matthew. Together, they concentrated their efforts to study the science of medicine, rather than the ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo. Their medical textbooks, however, dated back to the same era of classical antiquity. This included Galen, the fourth-century AD practitioner whose concept of humours still justified leeching and purging. No one yet dared to challenge Galenic medicine with empirical observations. Medicine, up until the 20th century, was a hit-or-miss affair, and doctors felt safer offering time-tested advice and treatments, rather than risk criticism by proposing a novel treatment, unsanctioned by classical authors. Surgeons, who were not classically trained, had excellent skills in setting bones or healing wounds, but real doctors dealt with persistent conditions, such as gout, fever, or rheumatism. Even today, these diseases resist treatment, so it is unsurprising that the professors in Bologna stuck to the cures proposed by the Romans.

Matthew took his fill of Galenic knowledge and returned to Kraków. In addition to resuming responsibilities as rector of the university, he served as vice-chancellor and dean. As if he were insufficiently challenged already, he also began to study astronomy. His crowning career achievement came when the King Sigismund Jagiellon asked him to serve as his private physician. Matthew attended to the king for 23 years, predeceasing the monarch, who survived another 20 years after Matthew’s death, albeit suffering from a variety of chronic conditions that his late personal physician had never managed to cure. Matthew had prospered using his charm and discretion, as much as his ancient science, to handle his august patient. He exchanged pleasantries in Italian with the old king’s young wife, Bona, from Milan’s Sforza dynasty.

Under Sigismund, Poland had prospered, gaining new friends and influence across Europe. During the Middle Ages, much of Poland’s trade had been controlled by the monopolistic merchants of the Hanseatic League. In the 16th century, aggressive, low-cost, and high-tech Dutch cargo carriers broke into the Baltic trade, turning Poland into the breadbasket of northern Europe. Sigismund’s coronation as Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland made the Polish-Lithuanian dual monarchy the largest state on the continent.

Kraków now attracted visitors from throughout Europe. Italians flocked to the court of their countrywoman Bona Sforza. Yet, as Matthew had seen in Bologna, few Europeans knew anything about Poland except the attractions of the court. Matthew realised that if he wanted them to understand Poland, he would have to teach them. Like many 16th-century humanists, Matthew had a strong work ethic. In addition to his coursework, governing the university with its quarrelling faculty and students, practicing medicine, and attending to court, he found time to publish a remarkable series of books on all sorts of subjects, including medicine and astronomy. He is best known, however, as the scholar who ushered in a geographic revolution.

His ‘Chronicum Polonorum’, or ‘Chronicle of the Poles’ (1519) was the first book of Polish history to be printed and to obtain a wide readership, though this would cause Matthew problems. In his Chronicle, unlike in his medical practice, Matthew showed himself to be an innovator. Since Livy and Tacitus had nothing to say about the Poles, he could not simply summarise what he had read in classical texts. Indeed, the classical corpus presented him with a problem. Until his time, many national histories took Roman accounts as their starting point. The British claimed descent from a Trojan hero named Brutus. The French originated from the Franks, the Spanish from the Goths.

The Poles could find no mention of themselves in the classics. Matthew speculated that perhaps the Vandals, infamous for the sack of Rome, left traces in the Wendic peoples of Brandenburg, who, to this day, speak a language similar to Polish. This was only a hypothesis, but it was one that paid lip-service to the authority of the classics and flattered the erudition of his readers by offering them some information in the guise of familiarity.

To explain the origin of the Poles, he recounted the folk legend of two brothers, Lech and Czech, born to the goddess Łada. This had echoes of Pollux, Castor, and Leda (she of the swan). Here is another instance of how Matthew tried to make the murky origins of the Poles palatable to the Renaissance reader by connecting ancient Slavic deities to the more familiar Greek and Roman pantheon, who were dazzlingly portrayed by 16th-century painters such as the Venetians Titian and Veronese. In any case, Matthew’s Czech went off to Bohemia, while Lech settled near Kraków. (To this day the Russians call the Poles ‘Lyakhi’, while the Crimean Tatars and Iranians refer to Poland as ‘Lehistan’).

From then on, Poland had a history independent from and unknown to Latin writers. One of Lech’s descendants, Mieszko, married a princess from Bohemia and accepted her religion, Christianity. Poland was born, nestled comfortably on the eastern frontier of the Holy Roman Empire, in the mountains of Silesia and Zakopane, rich in salt and silver. Only much later, when a second marriage between a Christian Polish princess and a pagan Lithuanian prince, Jagiełło, took place, did the dual kingdom of Poland-Lithuania take on its gigantic proportions.

Although Matthew’s Chronicle ultimately became a classic, the initial reception was unfavourable. While Matthew’s narrative about Poland’s ancient past and origins was appreciated, his treatment of more current events contained too many embarrassing episodes for some grandees at the court. They conspired to have the book banned and ordered all copies of it to be burned. Only when Matthew adroitly lobbied to have the ban lifted, agreeing to remove the offending facts, could the book be reprinted. It then became a success throughout Europe, offering the first account of an increasingly powerful, self-confident Polish nation.

As a testimony to Matthew’s industry, he published another book around the same time, which further explained Eastern Europe to the Europeans. This was his Treatise on the Two Sarmatias (1517). Here, Matthew used the term for the eastern territories familiar to readers of Ptolemy’s ‘Geography’ – that the Sarmatians occupied the so-called Pontic Steppe (Pontus being the Latin name for the Black Sea). They were a nomadic-pastoralist people, related to the modern Ossetians and Afghans, whose prowess in cavalry combat made them formidable enemies of the Romans. They frequently fought them on the lower Danube and tried to control the trading colonies on the Crimean peninsula, or fabled Colchis on the eastern shore of the Black Sea (today’s Georgia).

How far west, east, or north the Sarmatians roamed was unclear to the Greeks and Romans. Their knowledge about the rivers, mountains, and peoples of the steppe relied on a mix of hearsay and legend that dated back to Herodotus, who composed his histories in the fourth century BC. These ancient descriptions were familiar to Matthew and his readers and, indeed, accepted as scientific fact.

In our modern age, it can often be hard to believe that Renaissance readers, as compared with the fable-loving public of the Middle Ages, literally believed these traditions. Was there really a Paradise-like garden near the Arctic Ocean, surrounded and protected by the Riphaean and Hyperborean mountains? Did the Hyperboreans lead a life of bliss, only ending their lives at a moment of their own choosing? Did the sun and the stars shine concurrently on them? Did giant griffins guard their hordes of gold? Did women warriors, the Amazons, werewolves, and other monsters lurk in the Boreal forests? Such were the stories transmitted by Pliny and Ptolemy – wonderful tales, capable of inspiring Italy’s great epic poets such as Ariosto and Tasso, and endorsed by no less a contemporary intellectual giant than Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II himself.

What courage the small-town boy had to challenge such authorities. While Matthew the physician left unchallenged the teachings of Galenic medicine, Matthew the geographer overthrew the legacy of Ptolemy and, in doing so, challenged the authority of the pope.

Matthew provided a scientific and accurate description of the eastern lands for the first time. Much of his information came from interviewing prisoners of war brought to Kraków during the eastern campaigns of the Lithuanian Hetman (Field Marshall) Krzysztof  Radziwiłł. Some of these captives hailed from east of Moscow or had participated in the northern fur trade. Listening to them, Matthew came to discard the assertion of the Ptolemaic tradition that the great rivers flowing into the Black Sea, the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Don, originated from the legendary Riphaean range. His informants related to him that these rivers rose from relatively hilly, but not mountainous, lands to the west, not east, of Moscow, and that the steppe flowed uninterrupted across Poland, Lithuania, and points east. Their accounts peopled these territories not with werewolves or Amazons, but real, historic nations, including the Tatars and the Ugrians. For the first time, readers could find what we would now consider to be a more reliable, empirical description of these northeastern lands.

Matthew’s work included a methodological innovation – one which would prove to be a rich source of historical insight for years to come – reconstructing ancient ethnic names to trace the origins of people. He pointed out that the Hungarians were (and are) called Vengri by the Slavs. A people named the Ugrians, speaking a language said to be similar to Hungarian, then lived north of Moscow. Matthew hypothesised that an ancient nation called the Ungrians had split into two branches: one had migrated to the lower Volga, the Black Sea, and, finally, into the Danuban plain, to become the Hungarians. Meanwhile, the other branch moved further north, begetting the modern Finns. Matthew had stumbled on the Finno-Ugrian language group, foreshadowing the modern discipline of historical linguistics.

Matthew’s innovations did not end there. He provided a thoughtful description of the steppe way of life, how the Tatars practiced animal husbandry, living in tents and migrating in a seasonal circle in pursuit of fresh grass for their livestock. He named the Bashkirs of the far north and the Abkhaz and Circassians on the shores of the Black Sea. Nowhere did he leave legendary or monstrous people.

More importantly, by abolishing the notion of a mountain range separating Europe from Asia, which had been fundamental to the concept of Europe as a continent, Matthew ushered in a geopolitical revolution. The Polish-Lithuanian state could expand further into Sarmatia. The little-known, emerging power of Muscovy could pretend to be part of Europe, and no longer an apanage of Tartary. Matthew’s revolution resembled that of a younger, Polish alumnus from Bologna: Nicolaus Copernicus. The astronomer blew up Ptolemy’s static, heliocentric vision of the universe. The geographer blew up the mountain-ringed borders of Europe and Asia.

Matthew’s discoveries had the effect of an intellectual bombshell. Jan van Kampen, a Dutch humanist and visiting professor at Kraków, wrote to Pope Clement VII: ‘I cannot imagine the ignorance of our geographers, who shamefully and without conscience tell all fantastic stories about the Riphaean and Hyperborean mountains.’ Paulo Giovio, the pope’s private physician, exclaimed: ‘Here appears the errors of Strabo, Ptolemy and others who wrote of the mountains, which do not exist at all.’

Getting the attention of the Holy Father himself was quite a feat for the doctor from Kraków. This ensured his Treatise of the Two Sarmatias‘ publishing success. The year following its launch, a new Latin edition appeared in Augsburg, attracting the interest of the influential Fugger family of bankers, who sponsored a subsequent translation into German. This broadened the audience to merchants or shippers, looking for business opportunities in the east. A third Latin edition came out in 1521, followed by a Polish translation in 1535. By the end of the century, the book had gone through ten Latin editions and one Dutch, two German, three Polish, and five Italian translations. This flood of editions reflected the thirst for knowledge about the eastern frontiers of Europe, as Europeans found themselves beset by Turkish invasion, and as news of the splendours of the Jagiellonian court circulated.

Matthew’s revolutionary opening of Europe’s geography, though, did not meet with universal endorsement, Matthew ruffled feathers in high places. He sent a copy of the first edition to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I. The emperor, something of a late-blooming intellectual (he had been a poor student), charged one of his emissaries to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Venetian Francesco da Collo, to verify the Pole’s daring assertions. Da Collo’s informants in Moscow mentioned the existence of mountains somewhere in the remote east. When da Collo returned to Germany via Kraków, the Queen Bona Sforza organised a public disputation between Matthew and da Collo. The assembled notables adjudicated victory to the Venetian. Matthew recanted. The ambassador made his way back to the imperial court and made his report to Maximillian. He then returned to his native Venice, where he published a notice of his travels, gloating of his restoration of the Riphaean mountains. Da Collo’s triumph and Matthew’s discomfiture proved to be short-lived, however.

Another of the imperial emissaries to Moscow (the emperor had been seeking Moscow’s help against the Ottoman Turks) entered into the dispute. Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein, a knight from what is now Slovenia, had probed the question of the Riphaean mountains with his Muscovite informants much more deeply than had his Venetian colleague. Since he could make himself understood in Russian on the basis of his knowledge of Slovenian, he had been more successful than the Latin-speaking da Collo in forming an accurate picture of the geography of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Among other things, he concluded that these eastern mountains mentioned by da Colla, which we now call the Urals, could hardly be compared to his native Carnatic Alps. At 1,000 metres of altitude, they would have been considered as mere hills back home. They certainly did not represent a barrier – let alone a legendary frontier – to the land of the Hyperboreans.

Herberstein’s detailed account completely derailed da Collo’s defence of the classical geographers. When the Venetian later reprinted his memoirs, he omitted any mention of the Riphaean mountains. Matthew’s revolution, and with it, his reputation, were re-established. Atlas makers in the 16th century took note. Not only did they add to their maps the recently discovered new world, but they also removed the mythical mountains from the depictions of Sarmatia, opening up the east to European scientific curiosity for the first time.

Matthew died in 1523, leaving behind innumerable unpublished manuscripts on a range of secular and religious subjects.

In one respect, Matthew’s Treatise of the Two Sarmatias perpetuated a classical notion. He continued to refer to the lands of Poland, Lithuania, and Muscovy as ‘European Sarmatia’. While he banished the Hyperborean people from the realm of science, he gave new life to the Sarmatian people. This ancient Iranic nation, themselves descendants of the Scythians, had grazed their livestock and migrated up and down the length of the Western Steppe in late antiquity. As the wild fields gradually became pacified, and the raids of the Tatars ebbed, travellers on the steppe discovered Sarmatian graves, filled with gold, and equine and human sacrifices, testifying to an extensive and powerful presence.

Over time, and partly because of the popularity of Matthew’s treatise, Polish and Lithuanian gentry came to embrace the notion of Sarmatia, boasting of their Sarmatian roots and claiming these long-dead steppe warriors as their ancestors. They used this genealogy as an excuse for their oppression of their peasantry, and to reject the heritage of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It cannot be understated how much this ideology coloured the political views of Poland’s ruling class in the 17th and 18th centuries, isolating them from the winds of modernism that were then sweeping through Europe. It is ironic that this Sarmatian legacy, with its rejection of many Western European ideals, should be the fruit of research by the ultimate European humanist, Matthew of Miechow. It would not be the last time that ethnology and politics created such a fateful brew.

By including the Grand Duchy of Muscovy in European Sarmatia, however, Matthew contributed to the Russian state’s inclusion in the congress of European states. The German emperor’s proposed alliance with Moscow would not be the last time that a western power sought support from Moscow. Eventually, the Germans and the Russians would collaborate to carve up Poland itself, not once but twice (in 1797 and in 1939).

Moscow’s pitiless treatment of the Poles often resembled the invasion of the Mongols in the 13th century, and indeed, as the Russian empire expanded to the east, many of its troops (as in Ukraine today) hailed from Asian Sarmatia, being Chuvash, Kalmyks, Tatars and Chechens. Today, Russia deploys troops from a whole host of nations on the battlefront against Ukraine, including North Koreans, once again creating the sense of a clash between Europe and Asia.

What boundaries will Russia wish to set to end the conflict? Will it be the Dnieper, which flows through the centre of Ukraine? Or the Prut, on the border with Moldova? Or the Danube itself? Perhaps Russia will change the borders not only within Europe, but also of Europe itself.