The Livonian Crusade and the Sword Brothers

I. The Eastern Baltic

At the end of the twelfth century the lands along the eastern shore of the Baltic, in what are now Latvia and Estonia, were inhabited by several peoples. The Livs, a Finnic people, lived along the lower Daugava and the Gauja and on the coast of the Gulf of Riga. The Estonians, also Finnic, lived to the north. The Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians and Curonians, Baltic peoples related to the Lithuanians and Prussians, lived inland and to the south and west. They lived in farming communities, with hill forts as centres of defence, and they were mostly pagans, worshipping gods of nature and honouring their ancestors.

These peoples were not isolated. They traded with Scandinavians, Germans and Russians, and the Russian principalities of Polotsk and Novgorod collected tribute from some of them. Some had been in contact with Orthodox Christianity from Russia, and a few had been baptised. German merchants from Gotland and Lübeck traded on the Daugava, which led to Polotsk and the Russian lands. The site's page on the Northern Crusades gives a wider overview of the region and its conquest.

II. Meinhard

The first Latin mission to the Livs was led by Meinhard, an Augustinian canon from Segeberg in Holstein, who came with German merchants to the Daugava about 1180. He was allowed by the prince of Polotsk, to whom the Livs paid tribute, to preach among them. He built a church at Üxküll, known in Livonian as Ikšķile, and when the Lithuanians raided the region, he offered to build stone forts for the Livs if they would accept baptism. Stonemasons were brought from Gotland, and forts were built at Üxküll and Holme.

Many Livs accepted baptism, but some soon reverted, washing off their baptism in the Daugava, according to the chronicler Henry of Livonia, and sending it back to Germany. Meinhard was consecrated bishop of Üxküll by the archbishop of Bremen in 1186. He died in 1196, having made few lasting converts.

III. Berthold and the First Crusade to Livonia

Meinhard's successor, Berthold, a Cistercian abbot of Loccum, came to Livonia in 1196 but was threatened by the Livs and returned to Germany. He obtained from Pope Celestine III a call for a crusade, and in 1198 he returned with an army of Saxon crusaders. In a battle near the site of the later Riga, in July 1198, Berthold rode ahead of his army, his horse bolted into the ranks of the Livs, and he was killed. The crusaders won the battle and forced the Livs to accept baptism, but when the army left, the Livs reverted.

Berthold's death made him a martyr in the eyes of the church, and it gave a justification for further crusades. Pope Innocent III issued a bull in 1199 calling for the defence of the church in Livonia, granting indulgences to those who took the cross for the region.

IV. Albert of Buxhoeveden

The man who established the Latin church in Livonia was Albert of Buxhoeveden, a canon of Bremen, who was appointed bishop of Livonia in 1199. Albert was a member of a ministerial family with good connections, and he was an energetic organiser. He recruited crusaders in Germany and in Denmark, obtained papal privileges, and persuaded the merchants of Gotland and Lübeck to support his mission. In 1200 he arrived in Livonia with a fleet of twenty-three ships.

In 1201 Albert founded the town of Riga on the Daugava, near its mouth, moving the bishop's seat there. Riga became a fortified trading town, with merchants and craftsmen, and it would become the largest city of the eastern Baltic. Albert forbade the merchants to trade at the old Liv harbour, so that all trade went through Riga. He persuaded the pope to allow crusaders to fulfil their vow by going to Livonia instead of Jerusalem.

Each year Albert recruited a new group of crusaders, who served for a year and then returned home. The bishop himself travelled back and forth to Germany to recruit them, and he made fourteen journeys across the Baltic in his thirty years as bishop. The system of annual crusaders gave Albert an army but not a permanent one.

V. The Brothers of the Sword

To provide a permanent garrison, Albert founded, or supported the foundation of, a military order, the Fratres militiae Christi, the Brothers of the Militia of Christ, known as the Sword Brothers from their emblem, a red sword and cross on a white mantle. The order was founded in 1202 by Theoderic, a Cistercian monk who was Albert's assistant, and it adopted the rule of the Templars. Pope Innocent III approved it in 1204.

The Sword Brothers were knights and sergeants, mostly from lesser German families, who took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and lived in their castles. The first master was Wenno, who was murdered by one of his own brothers in 1209. The order built castles at Wenden, now Cēsis, Segewold, now Sigulda, and Fellin, now Viljandi, and it quickly became a powerful force in Livonia.

The relationship between the order and the bishop was difficult. In 1207 Albert agreed that the order would receive one third of the conquered lands, while the bishop retained two thirds. The order wanted more independence and more land, and it appealed to the pope against the bishop. In 1210 Innocent III confirmed the division of land and required the order to swear obedience to the bishop for its spiritual affairs only.

VI. The Conquest of the Livs and Latvians

Between 1200 and 1210, Albert and the Sword Brothers, with the annual crusaders, subjugated the Livs. The Liv leader Caupo of Turaida accepted baptism, travelled to Rome where he met Pope Innocent III, and became an ally of the Germans. Other Livs resisted, but they were defeated, and by 1206 the Livs had submitted.

The Latgalians, who suffered from Lithuanian and Estonian raids, often allied with the Germans, accepting baptism in exchange for protection. The Selonians and some of the Semigallians also made alliances with Riga. Yet the alliances were unequal. The conquered peoples paid tithes and tribute, provided troops for campaigns, and were subject to German lords. When they rebelled, as the Livs did in 1212, they were crushed.

VII. Henry of Livonia

The main source for the Livonian Crusade is the Chronicle of Livonia written about 1225–1227 by Henry, a priest who came to Livonia as a youth with Bishop Albert and served as a missionary among the Latgalians. Henry was probably German, though some have suggested he was Latvian, and he knew the local languages. His chronicle covers the years from Meinhard's arrival to 1227 and is one of the most detailed accounts of any crusade.

Henry presents the conquest as a holy war, protected by the Virgin Mary, to whom Livonia was dedicated as the Land of Mary, Terra Mariana. He describes the battles, the baptisms and the rebellions in vivid detail, including the brutality of both sides. He records the torture and killing of prisoners by the Estonians and by the crusaders. He also describes a play performed in Riga in 1205 to teach the pagans about the Bible, in which the scenes of the battles of Gideon, David and Herod so frightened the audience that they fled, thinking they were about to be killed.

Henry records with approval the baptisms of whole peoples after their defeat, but he also notes the problems: the harsh treatment of the converts by German officials, the rapacity of the Sword Brothers, and the rivalry between the bishop and the order. His chronicle combines missionary zeal with candid observation.

VIII. The Conquest of Estonia

From 1208 the Germans and their Latvian and Liv allies began a long war against the Estonians. The Estonians were organised in a number of districts, each with its own elders and hill forts, and they resisted fiercely. The war was marked by raids and counter-raids, in which villages were burned, men killed and women and children taken captive. In 1217 the Estonians, led by Lembitu of Lehola, were defeated at the battle of St Matthew's Day near Fellin, where Lembitu and Caupo of Turaida, who fought on opposite sides, were both killed.

In 1219 the Danish king Valdemar II landed in northern Estonia with a large army at the site of Lyndanisse, where he built a castle that became Tallinn, a name meaning Danish fort. The Estonians attacked the Danish camp, and the Danes were saved, according to legend, by the fall of the Dannebrog flag from heaven. The Danes conquered northern Estonia, while the Germans conquered the south. There was conflict between the Germans and Danes over the division of Estonia, and in 1227 the Sword Brothers seized the Danish lands, though they had to return them in 1238.

IX. The Russian Principalities

The conquest of Livonia brought the crusaders into conflict with the Russian principalities. The prince of Polotsk had collected tribute from the Livs and Latgalians, and the princes of Novgorod and Pskov had interests in Estonia. In 1224 the Germans captured the fort of Tartu, known as Yuryev to the Russians, which was defended by Russian prince Vyachko and Estonian warriors. All the defenders were killed except one Russian, who was sent to Novgorod to report the event.

The conflict with the Russians was complicated by the religious difference. The Russians were Orthodox Christians, and the papacy hoped to bring them into union with Rome. The crusade against the pagans could be turned against Orthodox Russia, and in 1240 the Teutonic Knights, who had absorbed the Sword Brothers, attacked Pskov and Novgorod. They were defeated by Alexander Nevsky at the battle on the ice of Lake Peipus on 5 April 1242. The battle was later celebrated in Russian nationalist history and in Sergei Eisenstein's film of 1938, though its scale was much smaller than the legend suggests.

X. William of Modena

The papacy sent legates to Livonia to resolve disputes between the bishops, the order, the Danes and the merchants. The most important was William of Modena, who visited in 1225–1226 and again later. He mediated between the parties, tried to protect the converts from excessive exploitation, and divided the lands. William later became a cardinal and continued to oversee the Baltic missions.

Henry of Livonia accompanied William as an interpreter on his visit, and it is possible that the chronicle was written for him. William's efforts show that the papacy was concerned about the abuse of the converts and the excesses of the conquerors, though it had little power to control them.

XI. Saule

The Sword Brothers were defeated in 1236 at the battle of Saule, probably near Šiauliai in modern Lithuania. The master, Volkwin, had been reluctant to undertake the campaign against the Lithuanians, but a group of crusaders from Holstein insisted. The army penetrated into Samogitia, the western part of Lithuania, and on its return was caught on 22 September in marshy ground by the Lithuanians and Samogitians. The heavily armoured knights were unable to fight effectively in the marsh, and the Semigallian and Latgalian auxiliaries fled. The master and about fifty brothers, nearly half the order, were killed, along with many crusaders.

The defeat at Saule destroyed the order as an independent force. It also provoked rebellions among the Curonians and Semigallians, who threw off German rule. The survivors appealed to the Teutonic Order for help.

XII. Absorption into the Teutonic Order

In 1237 Pope Gregory IX approved the incorporation of the remaining Sword Brothers into the Teutonic Order. The order, which had begun its conquest of Prussia in 1230, as described in the site's page on the Prussian Crusade, now gained a branch in Livonia, which became known as the Livonian Order. It had its own master, who was subordinate to the grand master of the Teutonic Order, and it continued to fight the Lithuanians, the Curonians, the Semigallians and the Russians.

The Teutonic Order had been reluctant to accept the Sword Brothers, whose reputation was poor. The pope had received complaints about the order's violence against the converts, its seizure of Danish lands and its conflicts with the bishops. The incorporation required the Sword Brothers to return the Danish lands in northern Estonia, which was done in the Treaty of Stensby in 1238.

XIII. The Subjugation of Curonia and Semigallia

The conquest of Curonia, in western Latvia, and Semigallia, in the south, took most of the thirteenth century. The Curonians, who were seafarers and raiders, and the Semigallians, who were allied with the Lithuanians, resisted fiercely. In 1260 the Livonian Order, with the Teutonic Knights and crusaders, was defeated by the Samogitians at the battle of Durbe, where the Livonian master Burchard von Hornhausen and about 150 brothers were killed. The defeat set off a great uprising in Prussia and in Curonia that lasted for years.

The Semigallians were finally subjugated in 1290, when many of them left their lands and migrated to Lithuania. With their submission, the conquest of Livonia was complete, nearly a century after Berthold's death. The land was divided between the archbishop of Riga, the bishops of Dorpat, Ösel-Wiek and Courland, the Livonian Order and the Danish crown, and later the city of Riga as well.

XIV. The Livonian Confederation

The divided lordship of Livonia produced constant conflict. The archbishops of Riga and the city of Riga quarrelled with the Livonian Order, and from 1297 to 1330 there was open war between the city and the order. The order took Riga in 1330 and forced the city to accept its overlordship. The archbishops repeatedly appealed to the pope against the order. The Livonian territories were bound together in a loose confederation, with a common diet, from the fifteenth century.

The native peoples became peasants, increasingly bound to the land under German lords, and the German minority formed a ruling class that would dominate the region until the twentieth century. The Baltic German nobility survived the end of the order, the Swedish and Russian conquests, and maintained its privileges until 1918.

XV. The End of the Livonian Order

The Livonian Order survived the defeat of the Teutonic Order at Grunwald in 1410 and the secularisation of Prussia in 1525. But the Reformation spread rapidly in Livonia, and the towns and many of the nobles became Lutheran. In 1558 Tsar Ivan IV of Russia invaded Livonia, starting the Livonian War. The order was unable to resist, and in 1561 its last master, Gotthard Kettler, secularised the order, became a Lutheran and took the duchy of Courland as a fief of the Polish crown. Livonia was divided between Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and Denmark.

XVI. Terra Mariana

Livonia was dedicated to the Virgin Mary as Terra Mariana, the Land of Mary, a dedication that Henry of Livonia emphasised. Albert of Riga obtained from the pope a declaration that Livonia belonged to the Virgin, just as the Holy Land belonged to her son. This dedication was used to justify the crusade: those who defended Livonia were defending Mary's land, and those who attacked it were attacking Mary. The dedication gave the Livonian crusade a spiritual status comparable to the crusade to Jerusalem.

The Greek Scriptures give no ground for such a dedication of a land to Mary. Jesus himself said that his kingdom was no part of this world (John 18:36), and Mary herself is described as a humble servant of God (Luke 1:38). The early Christian congregation did not claim any territory for itself, since its citizenship was in the heavens (Philippians 3:20).

XVII. Baptism and Tithes

The converts of Livonia were required to pay tithes to the church, which were often heavier than the tribute they had paid to the Russians. Henry of Livonia records that the converts complained bitterly about the tithes and the officials who collected them, and that the burden of tithes was one of the main causes of the rebellions. The church taught that baptism brought the converts into the community of the faithful, but it also brought them into a system of exploitation.

The contrast with the Greek Scriptures is striking. Paul refused to burden the congregations, working with his own hands to support himself (Acts 20:33-35), and he taught that giving should be done willingly, not under compulsion (2 Corinthians 9:7).

XVIII. Translation and Teaching

The missionaries in Livonia faced the problem of language. The Livs, Estonians and Latvians spoke languages that the German clergy did not know, and the clergy relied on interpreters. Henry of Livonia was one of the few who learned a native language. Instruction in the faith was often minimal, limited to the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Ave Maria, sometimes taught in Latin.

The Bible was not translated into Latvian or Estonian until much later. The first Latvian Bible, translated by the Lutheran pastor Ernst Glück, was published in 1694. The full Estonian Bible appeared in 1739. For centuries the native peoples of Livonia were Christians in name, with only limited knowledge of the Scriptures. The site's page on Bible Scholarship in Königsberg describes the work of Lutheran translators in the region.

XIX. Assessment

The Livonian Crusade was the most sustained application of the crusade to the conquest and conversion of pagans. It created a new political order in the eastern Baltic, dominated by German churchmen, knights and merchants, which lasted for over three centuries. It brought the native peoples into Latin Christendom, but by force, and it left them subject to foreign lords for centuries.

The crusade showed the power of the crusading idea, adapted by bishops, popes and military orders to new purposes. It also showed the tension between mission and conquest, between the conversion of souls and the acquisition of land and tribute. Henry of Livonia, the most sympathetic of the chroniclers, believed that the conquest was the work of God and the Virgin Mary, but his chronicle also records the violence and exploitation that accompanied it.

XX. The Annual Crusaders

The crusaders who came to Livonia each year were drawn mainly from Saxony, Westphalia and the lands around Bremen and Magdeburg, though some came from further afield, including Frisia and Scandinavia. They took the cross in Germany, where Albert and his agents preached, and sailed from Lübeck to Riga in the spring. They served for a year, taking part in the summer campaigns and the winter raids, when the frozen rivers and marshes made it possible to reach places inaccessible in summer, and then returned home with the indulgence.

The annual crusaders were a mixed group. Some were nobles with their retinues, others were merchants, clergy or ordinary men seeking the spiritual reward. Their quality varied, and their numbers fluctuated. When the crusaders left, Riga was often vulnerable, and the bishop had to rely on the Sword Brothers and the native allies. The dependence on annual crusaders also gave the papacy a means of influence, since it could promote or restrict preaching for Livonia.

In 1217 Albert had to seek help from the Danish king because the supply of crusaders had become uncertain. The danger was that Lübeck, the port through which the crusaders sailed, could be closed by the Danes, who controlled it at that time. The Danish intervention in Estonia was the price of this help.

XXI. Caupo of Turaida

Caupo, an elder of the Livs of Turaida on the Gauja, was one of the first native leaders to accept Christianity and ally himself with the Germans. In 1203–1204 he travelled with Bishop Albert's agents to Germany and to Rome, where Innocent III received him, gave him a hundred gold pieces and a Bible, and blessed him. On his return, Caupo fought with the Germans against his own people when they rebelled, and his fort was burned by the rebels.

Henry of Livonia presents Caupo as a model convert, loyal to the church and to the bishop. He was killed in 1217 at the battle of St Matthew's Day, fighting against the Estonians. Before his death he received the sacraments and divided his property among the churches. His career shows how the conquest relied on native allies who had their own reasons, political as well as religious, for joining the newcomers.

XXII. Lembitu of Lehola

The most famous Estonian leader was Lembitu, elder of Lehola in the district of Sakala. He led the Estonian resistance from about 1211, conducting raids and forming alliances with the Russians of Novgorod and Pskov. In 1215 he was captured by the Germans and released, and in 1217 he gathered a large army to fight the crusaders at Fellin, where he was killed on 21 September. His head was cut off and taken to Riga.

In modern Estonia, Lembitu became a national hero, celebrated in literature and memory as the defender of Estonian freedom. The national awakening of the nineteenth century looked back to the time before the conquest as a time of independence, and the long period of German domination that followed as the age of servitude. The Estonian national epic, the Kalevipoeg, published in the 1850s and 1860s, drew on this sense of loss.

XXIII. The Islands

The Estonian islands of Saaremaa, known in German as Ösel, and Muhu were among the last parts of Estonia to be conquered. The islanders were skilled seafarers and raiders, and they attacked the coasts of Sweden and Denmark. In 1227 an army of crusaders crossed the frozen sea to Saaremaa and besieged the fortress of Valjala, forcing the islanders to submit and accept baptism.

The islanders rebelled several times afterward. In 1343 the St George's Night Uprising broke out in northern Estonia and spread to the islands. The Estonian peasants killed German landlords and clergy and besieged Tallinn, but they were crushed by the Livonian Order, and many thousands were killed. After the uprising, Denmark sold its Estonian lands to the Teutonic Order in 1346.

XXIV. Riga and the Hanseatic League

Riga grew rapidly as a trading town, linking the Baltic with the Russian lands through the Daugava. Its merchants traded furs, wax, flax and timber from Russia and the interior for cloth, salt and metals from the west. Riga joined the Hanseatic League in 1282, and other Livonian towns, including Tallinn, then called Reval, and Tartu, then called Dorpat, also became members. The towns were governed by German merchants and had German law.

The wealth of the trade allowed Riga to build great churches, including the cathedral, begun by Albert in 1211, and St Peter's church. The town fought the Livonian Order for its independence and sometimes allied with the pagan Lithuanians against the order, a scandal that the order exploited in its complaints to the pope.

XXV. The Mission to the Russians

The Livonian Crusade raised the question of relations with the Orthodox Christians of Russia. The papacy regarded the Russians as schismatics and hoped to bring them into union with Rome, by persuasion or by force. In the 1230s and 1240s, the papacy granted indulgences for wars against the Russians, and the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights attacked Novgorod.

These attacks failed, and they had the effect of strengthening the Russian identification of Orthodoxy with national resistance to the West. Alexander Nevsky, who defeated the Swedes on the Neva in 1240 and the Teutonic Knights on Lake Peipus in 1242, was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church and became a symbol of Russian resistance to Western aggression. The site's page on the Swedish Crusades in Finland describes the Swedish side of this conflict.

XXVI. The Castles

The conquest was secured by a network of castles, built by the order, the bishops and the vassals. The early forts were of timber and earth, often built on the sites of native hill forts, but by the middle of the thirteenth century they were being rebuilt in stone and brick. The castles of the order were convents as well as fortresses, with a chapel, a refectory and a dormitory arranged around a courtyard, on the model of a monastery.

The castle of Wenden, now Cēsis in Latvia, became the seat of the master of the Livonian Order. Its ruins are among the most impressive in the Baltic. The castle of Fellin, now Viljandi in Estonia, was one of the largest. These castles allowed a small number of knights to dominate a large population, and they became the centres of administration and justice.

XXVII. The Cistercian Abbey of Dünamünde

In 1205 Bishop Albert founded the Cistercian abbey of Dünamünde at the mouth of the Daugava, near Riga, and Theoderic, the founder of the Sword Brothers, became its first abbot. The abbey was intended to be a centre of mission, but it also became a landholder and a political actor. Theoderic was later consecrated bishop of Estonia, and he was killed by the Estonians in 1219 during the Danish landing at Lyndanisse, mistaken, according to Henry of Livonia, for the Danish king.

The Cistercians were closely associated with the Baltic crusades. Bernard of Clairvaux had called for the Wendish Crusade, as described in the site's page on the Wendish Crusade, and Cistercian monks served as missionaries, bishops and preachers of the crusade in the Baltic.

XXVIII. Native Religion

Henry of Livonia gives some information about the religion of the Livs, Latvians and Estonians. He describes sacred groves, which were not to be cut, and the worship of gods such as Tharapita, an Estonian god said to have been born on a mountain in Virumaa and to have flown to Saaremaa. He records the practice of casting lots to determine the will of the gods, and of sacrificing animals and, occasionally, captives.

The missionaries cut down the sacred groves and destroyed the images of the gods, and they built churches on sacred sites. Yet the old beliefs survived for centuries among the peasantry, mingled with Christian practices. Lutheran pastors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries complained that the Latvians and Estonians still visited sacred groves and made offerings to the old gods.

XXIX. The Bishop and the Emperor

Albert of Riga sought protection not only from the pope but also from the emperor. In 1207 he received Livonia as a fief from King Philip of Swabia, making the bishop a prince of the empire. Later, in 1225, Henry VII, the son of Frederick II, confirmed the bishops of Riga, Dorpat and Ösel as princes of the empire. The imperial connection gave the bishops a status independent of the Danes and of the order, but the emperors did little to defend Livonia in practice.

The dual allegiance to pope and emperor reflected the ambiguous status of Livonia, a land conquered in the name of the church but ruled by German lords. It also reflected the broader conflict between the papacy and the empire, which shaped crusading policy throughout the thirteenth century, as described in the site's page on Frederick II's Crusade.

XXX. The Fate of the Livs

The Livs, the people who gave their name to Livonia, were gradually assimilated by the Latvians and Germans. Their language survived among fishing communities on the coast of Courland into modern times, but the last native speaker of Livonian died in 2013. The fate of the Livs illustrates the long-term effect of the conquest: a people that had been at the centre of the region's history became a small minority within the lands that bore its name.

XXXI. A Note on Sources

Almost all the written evidence for the Livonian Crusade comes from the conquerors. Henry of Livonia and the later Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, written in German verse in the late thirteenth century, present the conquest from the point of view of the church and the order. The Russian chronicles of Novgorod and Pskov give another perspective. The voices of the Livs, Latvians and Estonians are heard only through these sources and through archaeology, and modern accounts must keep this imbalance in mind.

XXXII. Albert's Death

Bishop Albert died in Riga on 17 January 1229, after thirty years as bishop. He was buried in the cathedral he had begun. In his lifetime he had transformed a small, struggling mission into a church with a city, an order of knights and a network of castles and parishes. His successors would be raised to the rank of archbishop in 1255.

XXXIII. Chronology

About 1180 Meinhard began the mission. In 1186 Meinhard was consecrated bishop. In 1198 Berthold was killed in battle. In 1199 Albert was appointed bishop. In 1201 Riga was founded. In 1202 the Sword Brothers were founded. In 1205 the Bible play was performed at Riga. In 1207 the land was divided between the bishop and the order. In 1208 the war against the Estonians began. In 1217 Lembitu and Caupo were killed. In 1219 the Danes took Tallinn. In 1224 Tartu was captured. In 1225–1226 William of Modena visited.

In 1229 Albert died. In 1236 the Sword Brothers were defeated at Saule. In 1237 the Sword Brothers were absorbed into the Teutonic Order. In 1238 the Treaty of Stensby was concluded. In 1242 the battle on the ice took place. In 1260 the battle of Durbe was fought. In 1290 Semigallia submitted. In 1330 the order took Riga. In 1558 the Livonian War began. In 1561 the order was secularised.

XXXIV. Bibliography

The following studies, editions and reference works underlie this account.