Baltic Crusades

I

Introduction

Baltic Crusades, a series of military campaigns that took place between the mid-12th century and the beginning of the 15th century, with the aim of Christianizing the pagan peoples living on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. The crusades were carried out by volunteer crusaders from Germany, Scandinavia, and other Western countries, by the Swedish and Danish monarchies, and by ecclesiastical institutions such as missionary bishoprics and military religious orders, notably the Teutonic Order (also known as the Teutonic Knights). By 1400 Christianity had been largely forcibly imposed on the populations of Finland, Livonia, and Prussia, and these lands were under the rule of Western powers. Only Lithuania successfully resisted the crusader onslaught. In 1386 its ruler voluntarily converted and promoted Christianity among his pagan subjects.

II

Origins

The Baltic Crusades developed as an offshoot of a movement whose original aims were the liberation and defence of the Holy Land in the face of Muslim advances (see Crusades). At the Council of Clermont in 1095 Pope Urban II proclaimed an armed pilgrimage with the aim of liberating the Holy Land and its Christian inhabitants from Turkish rule. Although the term “crusade” was not used for this type of expedition for over another hundred years, it is clear that Urban had called a new phenomenon into existence, drawing on existing elements of holy war and pilgrimage and offering spiritual rewards to participants. Originally these benefits were regarded as conferring forgiveness of sins to crusaders, but were later more precisely defined as the remission of temporal penalties associated with sin, rather than forgiveness of sins themselves.

Crusading in the 12th century was largely concerned with the defence of the new Christian states in Palestine and Syria that were established by the First Crusade in 1096-1099. However, within a few years of that expedition both the papacy and crusaders were keen to broaden the concept of crusading to other contexts, such as wars against the Muslims who had occupied much of Iberia after 711 (see Moors). The idea of the crusade was also extended to campaigns aimed at Christianizing heathens living on the frontiers of Christendom. In 1100 many of the peoples living on the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea, who spoke a variety of Finnic, Baltic, and Slavic languages, still retained their ancestral pagan beliefs, venerating a variety of greater and lesser deities, spirits, and holy sites and objects.

In 1147 Pope Eugenius III proclaimed a crusade to aid the Christian principalities of Syria and Palestine against the Turks. He allowed a number of German and Danish nobles and knights to fulfil their crusading vows by campaigning against the Slavic peoples (known to them as Wends) living between the River Elbe and the western shore of the Baltic Sea. That expedition was a failure, but over the next 40 years the Wends were gradually converted to Christianity. This process was only partially brought about by military expeditions, which conquered territory, destroyed heathen cult sites, and established churches and monasteries. Equally, if not more important factors were the acceptance of Christianity by Wendish rulers themselves, who imposed the new faith on their subjects, and the colonization of Wendish lands by German princes and the accompanying immigration of Christian (mostly German-speaking) settlers. However, the Wendish Crusade of 1147 and subsequent expeditions launched against the coast of Pomerania by the Danish monarchy and church established the principle that wars intended to convert the heathen were a legitimate form of crusading.

III

Course and Nature of the Baltic Crusades

By the later 12th century the last peoples of Europe who still held to pagan beliefs were those inhabiting the eastern coastal regions of the Baltic Sea, bounded by the Orthodox principalities of Russia to the east, and the Catholic kingdom of Poland to the south. From north to south, the lands occupied by heathen peoples were: Finland and Karelia; Livonia (roughly modern Estonia and Latvia); Lithuania; and Prussia (north-eastern Poland and the modern Russian enclave around Kaliningrad).

Missionaries and other clerics were moved to bring the word of God to these lands, but this was not the only motivation for crusading. Finnish and Estonian tribes had long mounted naval raids on the coasts of Denmark and Sweden, whose monarchies were keen to take the offensive against them. The Baltic lands were a source of valuable products such as grain, timber, wax, honey, and amber, and also served as a transit area for furs and other valuable goods emanating from further east.

From the mid-12th to the early 15th century these countries became the targets of crusades from the West. War was also waged against other Christian powers, such as Catholic Poland and Orthodox Russia, which were perceived as challenging Western Christian control of the conquered territories or otherwise impeding the crusading effort. The crusades were a long series of sometimes confused military campaigns of varying duration, fought by crusaders from Western countries as well as the Christian institutions established in the Baltic countries themselves. A key role was played by military religious orders, consisting of warrior monks who fought for the faith. Military orders had been established to defend the Christian possessions in the Holy Land, but one of them, the Teutonic Order, transferred its main sphere of activity to the Baltic region, while others were founded specifically to support the crusades there.

There were many major battles, but the more typical forms of conflict were expeditions to construct castles, to besiege enemy strongholds, to destroy the shrines and trappings of pagan religions, and to wear down the resistance of the pagans by eliminating their military capabilities and seizing or destroying economic assets. Up to around 1290 the crusades against Finland, Livonia, and Prussia profited from significant technological advantages, notably crossbows, heavy armour, warhorses, and, above all, castles built in brick or stone, which were stronger than the native hillforts. However, thereafter these technologies were also available to the Lithuanians, as well, of course, as to Russians and Poles, and the crusades against Lithuania from 1290 were long wars of attrition in which neither side was able to gain significant advantage until a Polish-Lithuanian alliance gained the upper hand in the early 15th century.

A

The Conquest of Finland

Finland was the first of the eastern Baltic countries to become the target of crusading, although the precise chronology remains unclear. Around 1155 King Erik Jedvardsson (or Erik IX) of Sweden led a crusade to south-western Finland and established a missionary bishopric there. Although the Danes later attempted to gain a foothold on the coastal areas opposite Estonia, most of southern Finland was evidently under Swedish control by the early 13th century, since the Swedes subsequently launched further crusades from there into Karelia and the areas around Lake Ladoga, which were then under the rule of the Russian city of Novgorod. These incursions were all beaten back by the Russians, but by the end of the century the Swedish Crown had established its control over southern and central Finland, with Swedish settlers in the coastal areas, and a bishopric at Åbo (see Turku). The native Finns had been largely Christianized and many were even prepared to join the Swedes in attacks on Novgorodian territory. The boundaries between areas of Swedish and Novgorodian control were fixed by the Treaty of Nöteborg (Orekhovets) in 1323.