The Baltic Mission of the Order
The Baltic mission of the Teutonic Order was the principal theatre of the Order’s crusading activity from the late 1220s to the early fifteenth century. It originated in an offer of assistance from Duke Konrad I of Masovia, who was under intense pressure from the pagan Prussian clans and who sought, in 1226, the assistance of the Order in the defence of his territories. The Order accepted the offer, in part because the Order had by then lost most of its Levantine possessions to the Muslim reconquest. The mission was, a substantial success: the pagan Prussians were, by the end of the thirteenth century, almost entirely Christianised, and the Order’s territorial states in Prussia and Livonia became, in the course of the fourteenth century, two of the most powerful principalities in central and eastern Europe.
The Origins of the Baltic Mission
The origins of the Baltic mission are to be found in the long history of the German and Polish settlement of the south-western Baltic. The Slavic peoples of the region had been, in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Christianised by a combination of missionary activity and political pressure, and the pagan populations that remained in the early thirteenth century were, generally the Baltic Prussians, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Livs, and the Estonians. The pagan Prussians were, an object of substantial concern for the Christian princes of the region, because the Prussian raids into the Christian territories of Masovia, Pomerania, and Culmerland were, in this period, a continual source of disruption.
The offer of Duke Konrad I of Masovia to the Order in 1226 was, in this context, a substantial political opportunity. Konrad offered the Order the Culmer Land, a small territory on the right bank of the Vistula, in exchange for a crusade against the Prussians. The Order’s grand master, Hermann von Salza, travelled to Italy to obtain the confirmation of Emperor Frederick II. The Golden Bull of Rimini, granted by Frederick II in 1226, confirmed the Order’s possession of the Culmer Land and the Prussian territories that the Order was to conquer in the course of the Prussian crusade. The bull of Rimini was, in the Order’s constitutional history, a foundational document, and it , was the principal legal basis of the Order’s claim to the Prussian territories.
The papal confirmation of the Order’s Prussian mission was, however, even more important than the imperial confirmation. Pope Gregory IX, in 1230, confirmed the Order’s possession of the Prussian territories and granted the Order the right to acquire new territories in the Baltic.
The Conquest of Prussia
The conquest of Prussia was, in practice, a long and difficult military undertaking. The Prussian clans — divided into some ten or eleven tribal groups, including the Pomesanians, the Pogesanians, the Warmians, the Natangians, and the Sambians — were not a unified political entity, and the Order was, in consequence, able to exploit the divisions among the clans to its own advantage. The Order’s strategy was generally a strategy of conquest in depth: the Order built a chain of castles across the Prussian landscape, garrisoned by brother-knights and supplemented by lay brothers, mercenaries, and indigenous auxiliaries, and the Order used the castles as the bases from which the surrounding countryside was brought under Order control.
The conquest of Prussia was generally completed by the end of the thirteenth century. The last Prussian resistance was extinguished by the suppression of the Prussian uprising of 1260-1274, and the Prussian territories were, by the end of the thirteenth century, almost entirely under Order control. The conquest was, however, accompanied by extensive violence, by the destruction of the old Prussian sacred sites, by the imposition of the Latin rite, and by a substantial transformation of the social and economic structures of the native populations. The Prussian peasantry was, in time, reduced to a serf-like status, and the old Prussian aristocracy was, for the most part, exterminated, displaced, or absorbed into the new German-speaking ruling class. The conquest of Prussia was, a substantial transformation of the Prussian population, and the conquest was, one of the most consequential episodes in the Christianisation of the European continent.
The Livonian Branch
The Order’s expansion to the Baltic was, in addition to the Prussian mission, accompanied by the parallel development of the Order’s mission in Livonia. The Order’s Livonian branch was constituted, in 1237, by the merger of the surviving Sword Brothers with the Teutonic Order, and the Order assumed responsibility for the Christianisation of the Livonian, Latgalian, Estonian, and (eventually) Lithuanian populations. The Livonian branch was, in the Order’s constitutional structure, a semi-autonomous component of the wider Order, with its own Landmeister.
The Livonian mission was, a substantial success. The Livs, the Latgalians, the Estonians, and the Kurshi were, by the end of the thirteenth century, almost entirely Christianised, and the Order’s branch state in Livonia became, in the course of the fourteenth century, a substantial principality on the eastern Baltic. The Livonian branch was, in the end, the first major component of the Order’s possessions to be lost in the course of the dissolution of the Order’s Baltic state.
The Lithuanian Crusade
The Order’s Baltic mission was, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, extended to Lithuania. The Lithuanians were, in this period, the last major pagan population in Europe, and the Order’s crusade against Lithuania , in the view of the papacy, the principal theatre of the Baltic crusading movement. The Order’s Lithuanian crusade was, however, less successful than the Prussian and Livonian missions, and the crusade was, complicated by the conversion of the Lithuanian grand dukes in 1386.
The conversion of Lithuania, under Jogaila (Władysław II Jagiełło), removed the principal theological justification for the Order’s continuing crusading activity, and the Order’s continuing military operations against the Christian rulers of Poland-Lithuania became, many contemporaries, a war of aggression rather than a crusade. The Order’s defeat at Grunwald in 1410 was, a substantial political setback, and the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 was, in effect, the resolution of the Lithuanian crusade in favour of the Polish-Lithuanian position.
Sources
- Biskup, Marian, and Gerard Labuda. Dzieje zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1986.
- Boockmann, Hartmut. Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte. Munich: Beck, 1981.
- Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1997.
Related Reading
For the founding of the Order at Acre, see the article on the founding. For the Prussian mission, see the article on the conversion of the pagans. For the Baltic theatre of the crusading movement, see the cluster on the Northern Crusades. For the Livonian branch of the Order, see the pillar on Livonia. For the Order’s defeat at Grunwald, see the article on the Battle of Grunwald. For the religious mission of the Order, see the cluster on the religious mission.