The Northern Crusades (16 page)

Nor was this the Teutonic Knights’ only front against the Muslims. They were also given land near Tarsus in Armenia, a result of the alliance between King Leo II and the Emperor Henry VI, and in 1236 accepted from King Hethum I the huge fief of Haronia, a white elephant that involved them in the defence of his eastern frontier for the time being, and might have drawn them in further, but for his overthrow by the Sultan Baibars in 1266. The bailiwick of Armenia remained their senior territorial grouping outside Palestine until well into the fourteenth century.

Similarly, the patronage of King Ferdinand III of Castile (married to a Hohenstaufen princess in 1219), brought them three castles in Spain and considerable estates north-east of Toledo, and elsewhere in the south, which could only be enjoyed at the cost of assisting in the Spanish
reconquista
.

The price of international recognition and prestige was thus an expensive commitment to the general policies pursued by the other major Orders, and conformity with the ideals which had sustained the whole crusading adventure in Palestine. At the same time, the Teutonic Knights were becoming linked with a different sort of policy, and a variant ideal, which had been fostered by two much smaller and less successful Orders.

These were the Brothers of the Knighthood of Christ in Livonia,
Fratres Militie Cbristi de Livonia
, commonly known as the Sword-Brothers, and the Knights of the Bishop of Prussia, called Knights of Dobrzyn, or in the German form, Dobrin

They were different because they were primarily associated not with crusades, but with missions. The Sword-Brothers began at Riga, about 1202, in the household of a German bishop, Albert of Buxtehude (Bekeshovede), who was trying to persuade the Livs to accept Christianity. The mission had already been going for about twenty years by then, but its progress had been continually hampered by two obstructions: the Livs refused to take baptism very seriously or heed what their bishop told
them, and the area at the mouth of the Dvina was continually raided and disorganized by the surrounding peoples. Preaching was not enough; the bishop needed an army. Crusades were tried, and found wanting: the crusaders went home and their work was undone. Albert therefore persuaded a small group of knights to prolong their crusading vow into a religious profession, and take service under him as a permanent garrison. They were to hold the fort at Riga while he went back to Christendom to recruit more crusaders, and while his priests carried on the work of catechism and church-building in the security which their presence would give. If further crusades secured him wider control of the Dvina valley, they were to garrison what had been won. They wore white mantles, like the Templars, with emblems on their left shoulders: a red sword and a small cross.

Some five years later, another missionary bishop, probably a Pomeranian of noble birth, who was attempting to convert and pacify the Prussians, who lived on the lower Vistula, started a similar group. This prelate was Bishop Christian, a Cistercian who had begun his mission in 1206 and was finding the going even harder than Albert of Riga, even when he had the Danish king and the local Polish dukes to protect him.

He never managed to get very far into Prussian territory, and he and his dukes were continually harassed by raids from the pagan interior. He needed an efficient body of cavalry to enable him to hold his ground; and the Duke of Cujavia agreed. They recruited some fourteen north-German knights, swore them to the same service as the Sword-Brothers, and gave them a fort at Dobrzyn on the Vistula to defend. By 1222 they were calling themselves
Fratres Militie Cbristi de Livonia contra Prutenos
and wearing a similar emblem to that of the Sword-Brothers – only, instead of a cross, their sword was surmounted by a star: perhaps the star of Bethlehem that originally led the Gentiles to the truth.

These new Orders differed from the others, and from the Teutonic, in three main respects. First, they were not autonomous: they were servants of their bishops sworn to obey and protect them. Secondly, they had very little land other than what they could conquer for themselves; they had no influential patrons outside their own impoverished and underpopulated marcher lands. Thirdly, their function was to assist the conversion of the heathen, rather than to recapture the Holy Places.

Popes Innocent III and Honorius III took both of them under their protection, and sent letters of encouragement and approval; for a while,
they were
personae gratae
with papalist ecclesiastical opinion. It was questionable whether this new function was compatible with the ideology of military knighthood as it had developed hitherto, but the popes were prepared to stretch the concept of the crusading vow to cover military action in defence of missions, as well as warfare in Palestine. Hence
Non parum animus noster
; hence the appointment of the first bishops to the Estonians and Finns; hence the crusading forces which set sail from Sweden and Lübeck in the 1190s to aid the new mission on the Dvina. Like the 1147 venture, these expeditions were not very efficient either at conquering or at aiding the conversion of the heathen. If they were run by kings, they were little different from the coastal raids that had been carried on by Viking leaders of all beliefs for centuries past. For example, the 1195 ‘crusade’ of Earl Birger of Sweden was destined for the Dvina, but the wind carried it to Estonia, and, when the Estonians offered tribute after three days’ harrying, the earl forgot that he had promised to baptize them, and sailed off well pleased with what he had got. Expeditions organized by local bishops did no better. Neither the crusade to Livonia in 1198 nor those from Poland to Prussia in 1222 and 1223 achieved anything durable for the missions they were intended to support. But the Sword-Brothers did.

What was needed was not periodic visitation by forces of undisciplined military amateurs, but a permanent garrison of professionals which would sit out the winter year after year. The rewards of campaigning in the eastern Baltic were not tempting enough to attract secular warriors to such a life, but for military monks the prospect was not nearly as daunting, because they had chosen to live in hardship and labour. Thus, for purely military reasons, new forms of monastic knighthood were instituted on the Vistula and the Dvina, and St Bernard’s ideal had to be developed to meet a new situation.

The armed monk of the Baltic had to deal with two classes of people that presented him with problems not solved by the Rule of the Templars: the heathen, or non-Muslim infidel, and the convert, or neophyte. The heathen was not in possession of land or shrines that could be viewed as rightfully Christian, like Palestine and the Holy Places, and he was not necessarily at war with Christendom; could he be left in peace, or must he always be attacked? Ought a Christian warrior to make truces or alliances with him? Was it sinful to accept conditional surrender, or to grant peace on terms? Was the convert to be made use of, and
governed, or given complete freedom? Was he the responsibility of the monks who had conquered him, or of the priests who had baptized him? Could their claims be reconciled? These questions were not merely academic, because both priests and monks were agents of ecclesiastical authority, and for the thirteenth-century clerics authority came from doctrine, and doctrine had to be orthodox. The solutions adopted by the Knights of Dobrzyn and the Sword-Brothers were not altogether orthodox, and, when the Teutonic Order took over what they had conquered and continued their work, it inherited a number of theological problems as well. The part it was called on to play in the North was very different from that required in Palestine.

Between 1225 and 1229 the Teutonic Order was pulled in two directions. The emperor wanted to use it for the crusade to Palestine, and a Polish duke, Conrad of Mazovia, wanted it to defend his duchy against the heathens of Prussia. Duke Conrad had taken part in the unsuccessful crusade against the Prussians of 1222–3, but his main aim was to subjugate other Polish dukes with a view to becoming possessor of Cracow and senior prince of the Polish realm. By intimidating his Northern neighbours, the Order would leave him free to pursue this aim. By entrusting the task to a military Order, he merely followed the example of other East European rulers: the Templars and Hospitallers were already established east of the Oder, and even the Spanish Order of Calatrava held lands near Danzig by this date. However, these Orders were reluctant to fight outside Palestine or Spain; Hermann of Salza’s knights may have appeared more biddable, since they had already done notable service for the king of Hungary.

But the Hungarian episode had made Hermann wary. From 1211 to 1225 his men had defended the eastern frontier of Transylvania against the Cumans on the invitation of King Andrew; they had built five forts, and pacified the region known as the Burzenland. But, as soon as they had served their turn, the king accused them of disobeying both him and his bishops, and turned them out. Honorius III had protested, but to no avail. Therefore Hermann decided not to commit the Order to fighting the Prussians until he was guaranteed autonomy; while Conrad waited, he led his men to Palestine with the emperor, and only sent a
detachment to the Vistula in 1229, after he had received full authorizations from Frederick and Conrad to hold the province of Chelmno and future conquests as lordships of the Order. He made no decision to abandon one type of crusade for another, the Prussian venture was training for further Jerusalem crusades as cubbing is for fox-hunting.

Thus the Teutonic Knights had several advantages which their precursors had lacked. First, they entered Prussia with a free hand. The Bull issued at Rimini by Frederick II, the charter sealed on the bridge at Kruszwica by the duke of Mazovia, and the Bulls of Gregory IX were agreed that the Order’s main field of activity, fighting the heathen, was to lie outside the scope of any other authority, although the mission was to remain under Bishop Christian. But in 1233 the bishop was captured by Prussian raiders, and he was not released until 1239; he was not there to interfere with the first conquests, and it was not until 1243 that the Order had to share what it had won with other mission-bishops.

Secondly, they were allotted a bigger share of crusading recruitment. This was vital, because without secular crusaders they could attempt no big offensives. Gregory IX put official crusade-preaching for Prussia in the hands of the Dominicans, an Order expanding rapidly throughout Germany in the 1230s, and in 1245 Innocent IV granted full indulgences to all who went to Prussia, whether in response to a papal appeal or the Order’s; this was extended to all who stayed at home and merely contributed money in the 1260s. In addition, the whole clergy of Northern and Central Europe was repeatedly instructed to preach for the Prussian war, and the Order was allowed to remit sins on its own account. Whereas Bishop Albert of Riga had been obliged to search out reinforcements for Livonia, the Teutonic Order was overwhelmed with assistance. The first contingent, in 1232, included seven Polish dukes, and in 1233 Margrave Henry of Meissen arrived with 500 knights. The margraves of Brandenburg, the dukes of Austria, and King Ottokar of Bohemia came later. They came because they were already connected with the Order as donors and allies, and because they were Easterners
⁴⁵
– Prussia was much nearer than Palestine, and full redemption of the crusading vow could be earned in a few weeks. On at least five occasions the opportune arrival of such princes saved the Order from disaster, but the master and marshal of Prussia always had a papal warrant to use the reinforcements as he wished. The moment they ceased to be of use, after the submission of the central Prussians in 1273, they were no longer sent for. There were
to be no Bohemunds coming out as crusaders and setting up states of their own.

Moreover, the Order’s liaison with the papacy was much better than that of the Sword-Brothers. While the master was fighting in Prussia, the grand-master kept a close watch on the Curia. When the Prussian Brothers deviated from papal policy, there was usually someone at Rome to deny awkward rumours, correct misunderstandings, and put in a word at the right moment. In the course of the thirteenth century, only Alexander IV and the eccentric Celestine V publicly reproved the Order for its misdeeds; exposure such as the Knights in Livonia had faced in 1235–6 was deferred until the early fourteenth century. Papal legates were not so easy to appease (see
chapter 5
), but even they could not be in two places at once, and the Order was.

And, finally, the Teutonic Knights were to acquire a vast network of estates outside the Baltic region. Loss of territory and manpower at the front had no serious economic consequences. By 1250 there were already twelve bailiwicks or complexes of lands, revenues and rights within Germany, and the total of commanders who assembled at the general-chapter was over a hundred. There were also bailiwicks all over the Mediterranean, but it was from Germany that the knight- and priest-brothers were recruited, particularly from Westphalia, the Middle Rhineland, Franconia and Thuringia, and, although the Holy Land acted as a counter-attraction to Prussia, it was a diminishing one. Where the knight-brothers held land, they reaped recruits; between 1210 and 1230 the total of recorded donations trebled, and the total of 1230 had doubled by 1290. There were no overall totals of manpower for the medieval period, but it seems likely that in the fourteenth century there were some 2000 knight-brothers and 3000 priests, nuns and sergeants at any given time.
⁴⁶

Such were the Order’s assets. It remains to ask who joined it, and why.

In 1216 Honorius III had insisted that entrants should be ‘military persons’ – that is, anyone capable of exercising the profession of arms; but that was a vague category. At the time, it embraced both the rich and the poor, both the territorial prince and the landless mercenary. Of the first fifteen grand-masters, four appear to have been the sons of
minsteriales
, men whose status came from their administrative office in the service of a ruler; five were the sons of knightly landowners, whose
rank came from inherited fiefs; one was the son of a burgher; one was a territorial prince; and four have origins that cannot be traced. Roughly the same proportions seem to have prevailed during the thirteenth century, but, since German society was far from homogeneous at this period, it is difficult to draw general conclusions about the class, status and rank of recruits as a whole. Most were from ‘ministerial’ (service) families; but, as time went on, and the line between noble and non-noble was drawn more firmly, recruits came from above, if not far above, that line. However, it was not until the 1340s that the grand-master insisted that all postulants must be
wolgeboren
, unless specially exempted. At all times, geography and family tradition were the chief determinants of who became a knight-brother. Thus, between 1250 and 1450, fifteen of the senior officers serving in Prussia came from five noble families owning land in the proximity of Wurzburg, and throughout the period 1200 to 1525 enlistment in the Wurzburg-Nuremberg region was heavy. Hessians and Rhinelanders only rose to prominence in Prussia from 1300 onwards, and Bavarians after 1400; Westphalians and Lower-Rhinelanders always tended to make for Livonia. When factions developed within the Order, they went by ‘tongue’ or dialect rather than by social origin. When it came to class, the thirteenth-century Brothers were a mixed bag, although none could have been peasants by birth; but they were nearly all Germans.