Routes:

• Along the Daugava River: Crusaders in Latvia

• By way of the crusaders in Saaremaa Estonia

• Memory places of the Crusader era in Northern Estonia

• Estonian Hillforts

By the Route of the Northern Crusaders

 About 1189/1190 in Aсre, Palestine, the merchants from Lübeck and Bremen created a field hospital thathelped the crusaders, who came mainly from German lands. In 1198 the assembly of church hierarchs and noble German crusaders suggested transforming the brotherhood that formed around the hospital into the religio-military order on the model of the Order of Knights Templars.That is how the German Order was created, the knights of which were called Fratreshospitalis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum (Brothers of the German Saint Mary Hospital in Jerusalem). In 1221, when Hermann von Salza was the Grand Master, Pope Honorius III equalled the German Order to the first religio-military orders — theTemplars and Hospitallers.All German knights were automatically granted remission of their sins for participating in crusades and donating generously to the order and its holy mission.Their goal was to protect the Catholic Church and bring the light of the true faith to pagan peoples with the cross and the sword.

However, the crusades in Palestine failed.The knights had to put themselves to good use in Europe, i.e. to find unbaptized pagans.At first the German Order was to be located in Transylvania, at the border of the Hungarian kingdom and the barbarian nomads’ lands.But the Order did not like the new enemies, while the Hungarian nobles did not like the German knights, who laid claims to their landholdings.In winter 1225–1226 the Polish duke Konrad of Masovia requested the German Order to protect his borders from the pagan Prussian tribes.The Grand Master Hermann von Salza agreed and received the «Golden bull» of Rimini from Emperor Frederick II in 1226. The emperor granted the Order with the lands that did not belong to him but would be conquered fighting the pagans.The Grand Master received the landsas the Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (the Empire supersedes any earthly monarchy), so that the Order would preach the Gospel among the pagans, conquer them and convert to Christianity.

In this way the German Order began crusades in the Baltics, first in the lands of the Prussian tribes, then in the lands of the Aesti, Latgalians and Livs. It acted together with another German knightly order — the Brothers of the Sword. In 1184, an Augustinian canon regular Meinhard came to Livonia from Lübeck.The bishop of Bremen consecrated Meinhard the bishop of Livonia, i. e. the same principle of the crusading missions was valid: the land had not yet been conquered but already distributed between Catholic hierarchs. In 1193, Pope Celestine III allowed Meinhard to use weapons in order to bring the true faith to the Livonian pagans. In 1199, the new bishop of Livonia, Albert of Riga, arrived at the estuary of the Western Dvina with 23 ships and a strong army. That was how the Brothers of the Sword — fratresmilitiae Christi de Livonia — cameinto being.The crusaders founded Riga as their stronghold and began to move into the inland of Livonia, conquering one fortress after another.

Today we can see the traces of those crusadesin Latvia and Estonia. We see double sites — aburnt down, destroyed pagan settlement and a Catholic church nearby, as a rule a ‘castle-church’, a ‘fortified church’, which was not only a prayer place but also a power place — the crusaders’ stronghold. Those are the symbols of the old world of local tribes and the new world of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which completely changed the Baltic by the sword and the cross.

Many today’s castles of the German knights stand on the places where earthen fortifications of the Aesti, Livs and Latgalians used to be. Some of them keep the memory of the past in their names, for example, the Master’s residence, Castle Wenden, reminds of the Wends. Even the names of the German Order’s domains — Prussiaand Livonia — comefrom the names of the conquered Prussians and Livs, who were almost totally exterminated in the course of the northern crusades (only several hundreds of Livs live today;the Prussians disappeared in the Middle Ages).

Only the stronger neighbours who had already formed their states — the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish kingdom, the Novgorodian land of Old Rus’ — would stop the advance of the German crusaders. In 1236, in the Battle of Saule, the Lithuanians defeated the troops of the Order. As a result, the Sword Brothers and the German Order in Prussia united into the German (Teutonic) Order with two branches: the elder, Prussian branch led by the Grand Master and the younger, Livonian branch (Livonian Order) with the Master at the head.The united Order continued to fight against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1242 in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Chud the Novgorodian prince Alexander Nevsky crushed the Livonian knights.In 1268, the Novgorodian and Pskovian armies defeated the Livonian and Danish knights near Wesenberg castle (Rakovor in Russian chronicles, today’s Estonian town of Rakvere).

Those events stopped the Order from their eastward march. The Russian-Livonian border at the Narva River has been the stablest in the Russian history. It did not change for almost five hundred years, from the 13thtill the early 18thcentury.The fiercest warfare was conducted in the 14th–15th centuries between the German Order, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish Kingdom. In 1410, the Order would suffer a devastating defeat at Grunwald (Tannenberg), in 1466 it would lose the Thirteen Years’ War with Poland, and in 1525, the Prussian branch of the Order would be dissolved and incorporated into the Polish Kingdom as a vassal duchy.The Livonian Order would be beaten by Russia in 1558–1560, and its lands would be divided between Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden and Russia.

But this would happen later. For the time being let us follow the trail of the crusaders in the Baltic lands.

A. I. Filyushkin

Tags: routes, 13 century, Teutonic Order (Livonia), Baltic region