[Below, the critics provide an overview of the Christianopolis and compare Andreae's ideas with the utopian philosophies of More, Bacon, and Campanella.]

Of his hundred-odd writings the Christianopolis was the one work through which Andreae entered general histories of utopian thought. In this portrait of an ideal Christian society science and orthodox Lutheran religion are completely integrated; while knowledge of Christ is the highest good, physical science becomes a major human preoccupation that has been sanctified. As early as Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Christianopolis was classified with More's Utopia, Bacon's New Atlantis, and Campanella's City of the Sun as a utopia. In his funeral oration for Wilhelm Wense, Andreae had called the Christianopolis the literary pendant to the Societas Christiana. It became one of the recognized progenitors of the Comenian Pansophia and a foundation of Leibniz' universal projects. Since it was composed in Latin and was not translated into German until the eighteenth century, its direct influence was generally restricted to the learned world; but there it was often imitated, extending its imagery over a broader field as the ideas appeared secondhand in the vernacular.

Andreae's utopian masterpiece is written in his satiric, imagistic, Erasmian, often cryptic style, more apt for the description of spiritual experience than for arguing the fine points of theology. The Christianopolis departs in significant ways from its utopian contemporaries. It is fervently Christocentric, and the observer who is the protagonist is not a wooden robot; he is psychically transformed by the experience of the holy city. Christianopolis is the history of an adept in an ideal Lutheran community, and the alterations of his inner being, his exaltation through the sight of the meticulously ordered Christian city, is the heart of the work. By contrast, nothing much happens to Bacon's sailors shipwrecked on New Atlantis; though they feel amazement and gratitude for the kind treatment they receive, they do not undergo a spiritual conversion. As for the Genoese captain who has seen the glories of Campanella's City of the Sun, he is nothing but a figurehead, in haste to sail away once his tale has been recounted.

The hero of Christianopolis is Cosmoxenus Christianus, a stranger, a pilgrim who suffers from the corrupt uses of the world; the allegory is not disguised. Raphael Hythlodaeus, the hero of More's Utopia, is presented as a member of Vespucci's expedition functioning on a realistic level, and More's artifice throughout is to preserve verisimilitude. Andreae's pilgrim embarks on the ship named Fantasy; after it is wrecked, he is washed ashore on Caphar Salama (named for the place where Judas Maccabaeus conquered Nicanor's forces), an island whose inhabitants live in community under a spiritual rule. Caphar Salama is described in fifty chapters covering all aspects of the society under as many headings. The guardians of Christianopolis first submit the outsider to a moral examination, which he passes. Immersion in the sea, represented as a baptism, has prepared him for a new life. In stages he is shown the city. First there is a review of the material order, the things that concern the historians of mechanical utopias—agriculture, artisans' work, public projects. Then Cosmoxenus ascends to the innermost shrine of the city, where the institutions of justice, religion, and education are located. On entering the holier region he is confronted by twelve articles inscribed in gold. They are Christological, orthodox in their formulas on the ministry of the word, free forgiveness of sin, general resurrection of the flesh. Part of the credo testifies: "We believe in an eternal life by which we shall obtain perfect light, ability, quiet knowledge, plenty and joy; by which also the malice of Satan, the impurity of the world, the corruption of men shall be checked, by which it shall be well with the good, and evil with the evildoers, and the visible glory of the Holy Trinity shall be ours forever." [Christianopolis, translated by Felix Emil Held. (All quotations in this essay are from the Held translation unless otherwise noted.)] To Andreae, Satan was as palpable as he had been for Luther, and men had to give him combat through word and deed. In few other utopias are explicit creedal utterances so prominently featured. More's Utopians require only a belief in God, the immortality of the soul, and rewards and punishments in the next world; religion is reasonably tolerant of deviations. Bacon's Atlantens have become Christian through a miraculous epiphany, but not much is made of the whole matter beyond observance of certain Christian restraints on behavior. Christianopolis not only has a detailed creed, but some articles are believed toto corde, "with all our heart"—a pietistic intensity has suffused religious belief.

Andreae's man has been restored to the dignity forfeited by Adam's transgression, and through the Holy Spirit he has entered upon a new relationship with nature. Article VIII reads: "erudimur supra naturam, armamur contra naturam, conciliamur cum naturam." In the interrogation to which Cosmoxenus submitted before entering Christianopolis, one of the failings to which he confessed was that "by … inexcusable folly" he had neglected the countenance of nature. In another passage, Andreae reflected: "For what a narrow thing is human knowledge if it walks about as a stranger in the most wholesome creations and does not know what advantage this or that thing bears to man, yet meanwhile wanders about in the unpleasant crackle of abstractions and rules, none the less boasting of this as a science of the highest order!"

The mood of Christianopolitan society conforms to the Morean rule about "honest allowable pleasures," not quite monastic in its austerity, but hardly indulging in superfluities. "Oh," says the narrator, "only those persons are rich who have all of which they have real need, who admit nothing merely because it is possible to have it in abundance!" The evils of disorder, hunger, misery, and war prevalent in the outside world are lamented as impediments to spiritual fulfillment. The ideal secular institutions of Christianopolis, the educational system that fosters excellence and the utopian mechanics proper governing production and consumption, are not ends in themselves, but merely a preparation for the spiritual feast, the theosophical stretching of the soul. They are preliminaries that insure against the loss of spiritually creative members of the community through want and neglect. In a specially appointed place in Christianopolis where the qualified inhabitants convene for lectures on metaphysical science, the chosen ones acquire a mystic vision of God in the Christian Neoplatonic tradition. Rapture makes them oblivious of all earthly concerns—"they find themselves again." Though this is not an enduring or continuing state, they return to earthly matters ennobled by the experience. Differences are recognized in the capacity of various men for such an exalted spiritual achievement. The highest stage of theosophy, a science reserved for a select group capable of receiving God's direct illumination, begins where the knowledge of nature ends. It is secret and is communicated through the vision of the Cross. Andreae has drawn on the rich German mystical tradition, into which images from the new science have been infused, as a way of finding union with God. More's Christian humanist utopia allowed for an elite, but they were far closer to all other men than the awesome scientist-priests of Bacon and Campanella or the spiritual directors of Christianopolis.

In a passage leveled against excessive emphasis upon sterile logic, Andreae defined the intellectual temper of the island in language at once theological and scientific: "They incite their talented men to recognize what reason has been entrusted to them and to test their own judgment of things lest they find it necessary to seek everything outside of themselves and to bring in theories from without. For man has within him a great treasure of judging if he prefers to dig it up instead of burying it with mounds and weight of precepts." The inhabitants of Christianopolis turn to modern mathematics and geometry for sharpening their wits, rather than to Aristotelian logic. Both the Baconian empirical science and mathematics were integrated into the Christian science; but such knowledge was not autonomous or sufficient unto itself.

Surely that supreme Architect did not make this mighty mechanism haphazard, but He completed it most wisely by measures, numbers and proportions and He added to it the element of time, distinguished by a wonderful harmony. His mysteries has He placed especially in His workshops and typical buildings, that with the key of David we may reveal the length, breadth, and depth of divinity, find and note down the Messiah present in all things, who unites all in a wonderful harmony and conducts all wisely and powerfully, and that we may take our delight in adoring the name of Jesus.

The secret brotherhood, the elect alone, learn of the mystic numbers and proportions of things. Despite the generally communal spirit of the society, the esoteric character of the highest knowledge in Christianopolis excludes the "rabble," and even the most illuminated must accept the existence of bounds to their knowledge of God and His ways, an idea of human limitations Andreae shared with Francis Bacon. Millenarian prophecy is rejected.

In this Cabala it is advisable to be rather circumspect, since we have considerable difficulty in present matters, grope in events of the past, and since God has reserved the future for Himself, revealing it to a very limited number of individuals and then only at the greatest intervals. Let us then love the secrets of God which are made plain to us and let us not, with the rabble, throw away that which is above us nor consider divine things on an equal basis with human; since God is good in all things, but in Hisown, even admirable.

In Christianopolis there is a negative attitude toward the traditional Aristotelian classics of philosophy and even a certain ambivalence about the printing press because it has propagated so much irreligion and absurdity, but there is no such denigration of the chemical laboratory. Here true nature, God's world, is revealed without falsification. Only direct exploration of nature yields truth; everything the ancients wrote about nature is prima facie suspect since they were heathens. "Whatever has been dug out and extracted from the bowels of nature by the industry of the ancients, is here subjected to close examination, that we may know whether nature has been truly and faithfully opened to us." While Luther in his table talk may have denigrated astronomy in general (and perhaps Copernicus in particular), he had not been opposed to alchemical inquiries. The new astronomy could run up against the literal, precise Lutheran interpretation of scriptural text, but alchemical chemistry and mathematics were not exposed to such risks since their content was by no stretch of the most punctilious scholar's imagination covered in the Bible. It has even been surmised that the Lutheran dogma of the real presence in the Eucharist could lead to a veneration of the world of nature in all its chemical complexity. The pharmacy in Christianopolis is a veritable microcosm of the whole of nature. "Whatsoever the elements offer, whatever art improves, whatever all creatures furnish, it is all brought to this place, not only for the cause of health, but also with a view toward the advancement of education in general." Pharmacology and chemistry have become the exemplar sciences, whose teachings can by analogy be extended to public affairs. "For how can the division of human matters be accomplished more easily than where one observes the most skillful classification, together with the greatest variety!"

The laboratorium in the center of the city is described with meticulous detail. "Here the powers of metals, minerals, vegetables, and also animals are investigated, refined, increased, and combined for the use of the human race and the improvement of health. Here sky is married to earth, and the divine mysteries impressed upon the earth are discovered; here one learns to master fire, make use of air, measure water, and analyze earth. Here the ape of nature has wherewith it may play, while it emulates her principles, and through the traces of the great machine forms something minute and most elegant."

The evils of the world, the brevity of life, the weariness and plagues of existence are taken for granted; but men need not be broken by them. Andreae propounds no progressionist doctrine of science in the Condorcet manner, nor does he foresee a great prolongation of human life, the Baconian goal. The traditional allotted span would be sufficient, if it were not misspent in debauchery and avoidable suffering. Both Bacon and Andreae lay emphasis on the chemical and biological sciences as the clue to whatever transformations are to occur on earth. Galilean mathematical science, though respected, had not yet been conceived as applicable to human behavior. In Christianopolis the anatomy of animals is studied in order to be able to assist the struggles of nature, and Andreae is distressed that men outside the utopian island do not understand the internal operations of their own bodies.

Most sections of the Christianopolis are devoted to an account of the basic, everyday requirements of a society in which material necessities are readily provided for in a communal order. Houses are not privately owned, and cooked food is obtained from a central storehouse, though consumed at home to avoid the tumult of public mess halls. Work is freed from the biblical curse and is reconceptualized as an expression of man's divinity, an act of creation imitative of God the Creator. Necessity is no longer the whip that forces men to labor: They do not have to be driven to work like pack animals to their tasks. Having been trained in accurate knowledge of the science that underlies their work, they find delight in manipulating the innermost parts of nature. Science, work, and techniques have been interrelated. If a person in Christianopolis does not investigate the minutest elements of the world, filling in gaps in knowledge by devising more precise instruments, he is considered worthless. The worker-scientist-artisans, the predominant class, labor "in order that the human soul may have some means by which it and the highest prerogative of the mind may unfold themselves through different sorts of machinery, or by which, rather, the little spark of divinity remaining in us, may shine brightly in any material offered."

The combination of the artisan and the scientist in one person was the natural consequence of a realization that the artisans were the repositories of scientific knowledge, of the Baconian test of science as knowledge that results in practical works, and of the new spiritual valuation of manual labor. There is mockery of the "carnal-minded" who avoid science because, with aristocratic affectation, they shrink from touching earth, water, coal, and other material objects required in scientific experiments, while they boast of their possession of horses, dogs, and harlots. The whole state of Christianopolis can be considered one great workshop of educated artisans skilled in different sorts of crafts, who work short hours. Since there is no slavery or forced labor their work is not irksome to the human body. There is a great variety of products to be freely exchanged, since pecuniary gain is not a motive of production. Everything is clean and neatly arranged as befits a proper appreciation of the gifts of God. A minister, a judge, and a director of learning, combining in their persons religion, justice, and science, take care of public administration, and a state economist has supervision over the division of work tasks and produce. "For though no one in the whole island ever goes hungry, yet by the grace of God or the generosity of nature, there is always abundance, since gluttony and drunkenness are entirely unknown."

But concentration on the utopian earthly order was not an end in itself. In a subtle, paradoxical sense the perfect order of this world achieved in Christianopolis becomes a means to freedom from earthliness. The director of learning had a way of at once valuing and transcending the knowledge of material things. "For he insisted that a close examination of the earth would bring about a proper appreciation of the heavens, and when the value of the heavens had been found, there would be a contempt of the earth."

Andreae does not rely on the mere mechanics of a social utopia to bring about the general reformation of mankind. They are a part of the propitious setting for a Christian renewal; but only after men have undergone an inner transformation can they realize a terrestrial Christianopolis that will be both a simulacrum and a foretaste of the heavenly city. Universal brotherhood, godliness in men's hearts, must precede the establishment of Christianopolis. There is no authoritarian legislator as in More's Utopia; his function is replaced by the experience of religious and scientific conversion. The pursuit of science is recognized as the occupation most worthy of man and most acceptable to God because of its religious character.

Spiritual regeneration in Christianopolis takes place within the limitations of fallen man. The origin of life, like death, is putrid. Ultimate blessedness is not of this world; it is only of the resurrected body purified and refined in heaven. In this world science raises fallen man and restores him to a state that approximates the prelapsarian condition—an apology for science that-would be reborn with Wilkins and Glanvill in the Royal Society and would survive as a secularized image as late as Saint-Simon. While Plato's spirited guardians exercised their bodies and listened to prescribed music, and More's Utopians at leisure were humanist scholars who learned moral truths from ancient literature, by the seventeenth century scientific activity became the principal preoccupation of the elite in The City of the Sun, the New Atlantis, and Christianopolis. At a time when Italian cardinals still refused to look into Galileo's glass, Andreae's community was equipped with "the very valuable telescope recently invented," with models of the heavens, tools, instruments for astronomical study and observation of the "spots on the stars." Galileo and Kepler were known, as were Bruno's "short cuts in memorizing." There is no battle of the two cultures, and Andreae takes the stand that a man ignorant of science and mathematics is only half-educated. In Christianopolis a marked contempt for contemporary scholars ignorant of science obtrudes and echoes Kepler's Nova Astronomia: "If like strangers in a foreign land they shall bring to humanity no assistance or counsel or judgment or device, then I think they deserve to be contemned and classed with the tenders of sheep, cattle, and hogs." But though science plays an important role in this and other utopias, most of the inhabitants are still primarily engaged in agricultural pursuits affected neither by the new science nor by technological innovation. In Christianopolis "the agriculture of the patriarchs is reproduced, the results being the more satisfactory the closer the work is to God and the more attentive to natural simplicity." What Andreae imagined the agriculture of Abraham and Isaac to have been is not disclosed.

The educational reforms of Comenius are presaged in Andreae's ideal city, even as the pictures of scientific matter writ large on the walls of Campanella's City of the Sun were repeated in Comenius Orbis Sensualium Pictus. The goals of education were first to teach the worship of God, then to instill the virtue of chastity, finally to develop intellectual prowess. As in the City of the Sun, competitiveness and striving were encouraged; the pupils had to exert themselves to learn. Schools were airy, sunny, and decorated with pictures. Teachers were directed to acquire a sense of the individual psychological character of the children in their charge, and praise or disgrace were the instrumentalities that replaced the scourge, now restricted to exceptional cases. As corporal punishment of children was virtually banished among advanced utopian thinkers from Andreae and Comenius through Rousseau and Fourier, shaming was substituted—the replacement of physical by psychic pain as a desperate last resort. Teachers in contemporary schools, who were the dregs of society, were attacked by Andreae for raining blows upon their pupils instead of displaying generosity and kindness. Andreae may have been drawing on personal experience when he wrote that those who had suffered indignities at the hands of schoolmasters bore witness with bodies enfeebled for the rest of their lives. The training of girls did not exclude learning, though much of their effort was devoted to domestic art and science; girls as well as boys studied Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Andreae would not drop ancient languages from the curriculum, but he voiced the Lutheran argument against excessive emphasis upon this branch of knowledge: God understands the vernacular well enough. The summit of happiness was to be able, with one and the same effort, to preserve the safety of the republic and secure the future life, and education was the key to both. "The children which we bear here, we may find to our satisfaction have been born for the heavens as much as for the earth." An idea has been introduced that will have great potency in secularized versions of utopia. "Happy and very wise are those who anticipate here on earth the firstlings of a life which they hope will be everlasting."

Christian renovation was dependent upon the integration into a whole of the benign efforts of men, which were now divided into autonomous parts. Upon his penetration of the innermost shrine of Christianopolis, Cosmoxenus learned that the truly religious man would not sever connections with things human and adopt a theology directed only toward the divine. Nor would he exercise power and rule without the check of Christianity. Nor would he imitate those learned men who, instead of seeking truth for the sake of God and men, were motivated primarily by vanity and self-love. In the real world there was discord because of the separation of divinity, sovereign rule, and knowledge into compartments; in the ideal city there was concordia. "Christianity … conciliates God with men and unites men together, so that they piously believe, do good deeds, know the truth, and finally die happily to live eternally." [Quoted in John Warwick Montgomery's Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreae.]

Dynastic wars made more vicious by religious differences had brought about a world in disintegration. Andreae's brotherhood of the learned and the use to propagate a belief in the new unity. Where Wallenstein's Christian societies he founded were the instrumentalities he hoped to troops struck, men were reduced to an animalian state without rule, godliness, or knowledge. The Continental wars of the seventeenth century awakened men ofvirtually every religion in Europe to the disaster of the major Christian schism, and the English Civil War soon revealed the fragmentation of religion into literally hundreds of rival sects. The Christian utopia of Andreae answered to an anguished longing for a restored unity, without which there could be no renovation as Christian energies spent themselves in bloody internecine strife. A gulf separates More's utopia, composed on the eve of the Reformation, from the seventeenth-century religious utopias, whose main purpose was to put the pieces together again into a new whole.