The Wendish Crusade of 1147

I. The Slavs beyond the Elbe

In the twelfth century the lands between the rivers Elbe and Oder, along the southern shore of the Baltic, were inhabited by Slavic peoples known to the Germans as Wends. They included the Obodrites in what is now western Mecklenburg and eastern Holstein, the Wagrians around Oldenburg, the Liutizi or Veleti confederation further east, the Rani on the island of Rügen, the Pomeranians between the Oder and the Vistula, and the Sorbs and Hevelli further south. They lived in villages and fortified settlements of earth and timber, often on islands in lakes and marshes, and traded through ports such as Wolin, Szczecin, known in German as Stettin, and Arkona.

Most of these peoples were pagans. Their religion centred on gods worshipped in temples at sacred sites. The Liutizi revered the god Radegast or Svarozhich at Rethra, whose location has never been found with certainty. The Rani worshipped Svantevit, whose temple at Arkona on Rügen housed a great four-headed idol and a white horse used for divination. The Pomeranians worshipped Triglav, a three-headed god, at Stettin. Priests had great influence, and decisions of war were made by consulting the gods through omens.

The site's page on the Northern Crusades describes the wider sweep of crusading in the Baltic. This page focuses on the expedition of 1147 and its immediate background.

II. Two Centuries of War

The Wendish Crusade was not the first war between Germans and Slavs. In the tenth century the Saxon kings Henry I and Otto I had conquered much of the land between the Elbe and the Oder, established marches under German margraves and founded bishoprics at Brandenburg, Havelberg, Oldenburg and Meissen, under the archbishopric of Magdeburg founded in 968. The Slavs were forced to pay tribute and to accept Christian missions.

In 983 the Liutizi and Obodrites rose in a great revolt, destroyed the churches of Brandenburg and Havelberg, and drove out the Germans. For over a century and a half the region remained largely pagan and independent. Further revolts in 1018 and 1066 destroyed Christian missions among the Obodrites. In 1066 the Obodrite Christian prince Gottschalk was murdered, and the bishop of Mecklenburg, John, was sacrificed to the god Radegast at Rethra, his head carried on a pole.

The Saxons and Danes raided Slavic lands, and the Slavs raided Saxony and Denmark, taking slaves and plunder. The wars were brutal on both sides. The German chronicler Helmold of Bosau, a priest who lived among the Wagrians, wrote that the Saxon princes were interested in tribute rather than conversion, and that their greed hindered the spread of Christianity.

III. The Mission of Otto of Bamberg

Peaceful missions also had some success. In 1124 and 1128 Bishop Otto of Bamberg, at the invitation of the Polish duke Bolesław III, who had conquered Pomerania, undertook missions to the Pomeranians. He travelled with a large retinue and rich gifts, and he baptised thousands of people at Pyrzyce, Kamień, Wolin and Stettin. At Stettin he destroyed the temple of Triglav and sent the god's three-headed idol to the pope. He founded churches and persuaded the Pomeranian duke Wartislaw I to accept Christianity.

Otto's mission, though supported by Polish military power, relied on preaching and persuasion rather than the sword. His biographers present him as a model missionary who adapted to local customs and showed generosity. By 1147 Pomerania was at least nominally Christian, with a bishopric established at Wolin in 1140. This fact would be important in the crusade.

IV. The Call of 1146

In 1145 Pope Eugenius III called for the Second Crusade in response to the fall of Edessa, and he entrusted its preaching to Bernard of Clairvaux. In 1146 and 1147 Bernard preached in France and Germany, persuading Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany to take the cross. At a diet held at Frankfurt in March 1147, the Saxon nobility told Bernard that they wished to fight not in the east but against their pagan neighbours, the Slavs.

Bernard agreed. In a letter written in March 1147 to the faithful of Germany, he announced that those who fought against the pagan Slavs would receive the same spiritual reward as those who went to Jerusalem. He wrote that the Christian forces should fight until, with God's help, either the pagans' religion or their nation was destroyed, and he forbade any truce with them, for money or tribute, until this was achieved. The army was to assemble at Magdeburg on the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, 29 June.

V. Conversion or Destruction

Bernard's phrase, that the pagans should be either converted or destroyed, has been much discussed. Some historians take it as a call for forced conversion or extermination, in contradiction to the church's teaching that conversion must be voluntary. Others argue that Bernard meant the destruction of the pagans as a political people, not their physical extermination, and that he expected conversion to follow conquest. Either way, the letter represented a departure from earlier crusading ideas, which had focused on the recovery of Christian lands rather than the conversion of pagans.

Bernard's phrase stands in contrast to the teaching of the Greek Scriptures on the spread of the faith. Jesus sent his disciples to preach and to teach, and he told them that if anyone did not receive them, they should shake off the dust of their feet and depart (Matthew 10:14). Paul wrote that a slave of the Lord must be gentle toward all, instructing with mildness those not favourably disposed (2 Timothy 2:24-25). Faith could not be imposed by the sword, since it involves the heart (Romans 10:9-10).

VI. Divina dispensatione

On 11 April 1147 Pope Eugenius III issued the bull Divina dispensatione, which confirmed Bernard's call. It placed the crusade against the Slavs alongside those in the Holy Land and in Spain, where a crusade against the Moors was also under way. The pope appointed Bishop Anselm of Havelberg as legate to the army. He forbade the crusaders to accept tribute from the pagans in return for allowing them to remain pagan.

The bull is significant as the first papal authorisation of a crusade in the Baltic. It established the principle that war against the pagans of northern Europe was equivalent to the crusade to Jerusalem, a principle that would be applied over the following centuries to the wars in Livonia, Prussia, Lithuania and Finland. The site's pages on the Livonian Crusade, the Prussian Crusade and the Swedish Crusades in Finland describe these later campaigns.

VII. The Crusaders

The army that assembled in the summer of 1147 was large, perhaps the largest of the Second Crusade's three theatres according to some chroniclers, though the figure of 100,000 given by some sources is an exaggeration. It included the young Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony, then about eighteen; Albert the Bear, margrave of the Northern March; Duke Conrad of Zähringen; the archbishops of Magdeburg and Bremen; many bishops, including those of Halberstadt, Münster, Merseburg, Brandenburg, Havelberg and Olmütz; and many Saxon nobles. A Danish force under the rival kings Cnut V and Sweyn III joined the expedition, as did Polish troops under Duke Mieszko III, who attacked from the east.

The army divided into two main forces. A northern army, including Henry the Lion, the archbishop of Bremen and the Danes, attacked the Obodrites at Dobin. A southern army, including Albert the Bear and the archbishop of Magdeburg, marched against the Liutizi and Pomerania, besieging Demmin and moving on to Stettin.

VIII. Niklot and the Raid on Lübeck

The Obodrite prince Niklot, who ruled the lands around Schwerin and Mecklenburg, learned of the crusade and struck first. He had been on friendly terms with Count Adolf II of Holstein, who had settled German colonists in Wagria, and he asked Adolf for help, reminding him of their alliance. Adolf refused, though he warned the colonists. In June 1147 Niklot's fleet attacked the port of Lübeck, founded by Adolf in 1143, burning ships and killing many of the inhabitants, and his forces raided the German settlements in Wagria. Helmold of Bosau describes the raid and its devastation.

Niklot then withdrew to the fortress of Dobin, on the northern shore of Lake Schwerin, where he prepared to resist the crusaders. Dobin was a strong position, protected by water and marsh.

IX. The Siege of Dobin

The northern army of Saxons and Danes besieged Dobin in the summer of 1147. The Danes attacked from the lake side, while the Saxons encamped on the land side. The Obodrites made a sortie and attacked the Danish camp, killing many, and they burned the Danish ships. The Danish kings, who were rivals for the throne, were more concerned with each other than with the siege.

According to Helmold, some of the Saxon vassals began to ask why they should devastate the land that they hoped would pay them tribute. If they destroyed it, they would only harm themselves. The siege dragged on. Finally a settlement was reached. The Obodrites agreed to accept baptism and to release Danish prisoners. Helmold writes that many were baptised in pretence, and that they returned to their old ways as soon as the army left. The Danes received only some of the prisoners, the old and useless, according to the chronicler, while the Obodrites kept the strong for labour.

X. The Siege of Demmin

The southern army, led by Albert the Bear and the archbishop of Magdeburg, marched through the lands of the Liutizi, destroying a pagan temple and the settlement of Malchow, and besieged the fortress of Demmin on the river Peene. The siege was not successful, and the army devastated the surrounding country instead. Part of the army then marched to Stettin.

XI. Stettin

Stettin, the chief city of the Pomeranians, had been converted by Otto of Bamberg two decades earlier, and it had a Christian bishop, Adalbert, at Wolin. When the crusader army arrived before the walls, the inhabitants placed crosses on the ramparts to show that they were Christians. Bishop Adalbert and Duke Ratibor of Pomerania came out and asked the crusaders why they had come with arms. If they had come to strengthen the Christian faith, they should do so by preaching, not with weapons.

The crusader leaders had no answer. A truce was arranged, and the army withdrew. The Saxon chronicler of Magdeburg recorded the episode without comment. Like the attack on Christian Zara by the Fourth Crusade, the march on Stettin showed that the crusade could easily be turned against Christians, especially when the political ambitions of the leaders were involved, since Albert the Bear and the archbishop of Magdeburg had territorial claims in Pomerania.

XII. The Result

By the end of the summer of 1147 the crusade was over. It had achieved little. The Obodrites had accepted a nominal baptism, the Liutizi had been raided, and Christian Stettin had been threatened. No major territory had been conquered, and the pagans had not been converted in any meaningful sense. Contemporary writers were critical. The Annals of Magdeburg recorded that the expedition achieved little, and Helmold wrote that the great army returned with little gain, since the Slavs became worse than before, failing to respect baptism and failing to refrain from attacking the Danes.

The failure of the Wendish Crusade coincided with the failure of the main crusade in the east, at Damascus in July 1148. But in Spain the crusade of 1147 had a success: the capture of Lisbon in October 1147 by English, Flemish and German crusaders on their way to the Holy Land, who helped the Portuguese king Afonso Henriques take the city.

XIII. Henry the Lion

Although the crusade of 1147 failed, the conquest of the Slavic lands continued in the following decades under the leadership of Henry the Lion. Henry, duke of Saxony and from 1156 also of Bavaria, was the most powerful prince in Germany. He waged repeated campaigns against the Obodrites, demanding tribute and establishing German control. In 1160 Niklot was killed in battle, and Henry occupied his lands. Henry refounded the bishoprics of Oldenburg, moved to Lübeck, Ratzeburg and Schwerin, and invested their bishops himself.

Niklot's son Pribislav eventually submitted to Henry, accepted Christianity, and in 1167 received back much of his father's land as a fief. His descendants became the dukes of Mecklenburg, who ruled until 1918, one of the longest-ruling dynasties in Europe. Henry also refounded Lübeck in 1159, which became the leading city of the Hanseatic League.

XIV. Albert the Bear and Brandenburg

In the south, Albert the Bear, of the Ascanian family, pursued a similar policy. He had made an agreement with the Christian Slavic prince of the Hevelli, Pribislav-Henry, who ruled from Brandenburg, under which Albert would inherit his lands. On Pribislav's death in 1150 Albert took Brandenburg, but he had to fight to hold it against a Slavic prince, Jaxa of Köpenick, who seized the fortress in 1157. Albert retook it on 11 June 1157, a date regarded as the founding of the Mark of Brandenburg. He took the title of margrave of Brandenburg.

Albert and his successors encouraged colonists from the Low Countries, the Rhineland and Saxony to settle in the land, draining marshes and founding villages and towns. Brandenburg would later become the core of the kingdom of Prussia.

XV. The Fall of Arkona

The last great pagan sanctuary of the western Slavs was the temple of Svantevit at Arkona on the island of Rügen. In 1168 the Danish king Valdemar I and Bishop Absalon of Roskilde besieged and took Arkona. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus describes the temple, with its great wooden idol with four heads, holding a drinking horn, and the white horse of the god, used in divination. The Danes pulled down the idol, chopped it up and burned it, and built a church. The Rani accepted baptism and Danish overlordship. Bishop Absalon, a warrior-bishop, also founded the city of Copenhagen.

The destruction of Arkona was presented as a crusade, and the Danes had papal approval for their wars against the Wends. Pope Alexander III, in the bull Non parum animus noster of 1171, granted indulgences to those who fought the pagans of the Baltic. The conquest of Rügen completed the subjection of the western Slavs.

XVI. The Ostsiedlung

The conquest of the Slavic lands was followed by the great movement of German colonisation in the east, known as the Ostsiedlung. From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands of settlers from Germany and the Low Countries moved into the lands east of the Elbe, founding thousands of villages and hundreds of towns, many under German law. Slavic princes also invited settlers to develop their lands.

The Slavic populations were gradually assimilated, adopting the German language and customs, though in some places, such as Lusatia, Slavic communities, the Sorbs, survive to this day. The process was not always violent, and many Slavic nobles intermarried with Germans. But it transformed the ethnic map of Central Europe, and it was later used by German nationalists to justify claims to the east and by Polish nationalists to denounce German aggression.

XVII. Helmold of Bosau

The most important source for the Wendish Crusade and the subsequent conquest is the Chronicle of the Slavs by Helmold, a priest at Bosau in Holstein, who wrote in the 1160s and 1170s. Helmold was a missionary priest who knew the Slavs personally and lived through the conquest. His chronicle combines a strong commitment to the Christian mission with a frank criticism of the greed of the Saxon princes, whom he accuses of caring more for tribute than for conversion.

Helmold records a conversation in which a Slavic noble complained that the Christian princes were so harsh that the Slavs had no choice but to turn to the sea and live by piracy. He describes Henry the Lion as a man who, in his campaigns against the Slavs, gave no thought to Christianity but only to money. Helmold's chronicle is a valuable witness to the reality of the northern crusades and to the conflict between the ideals of mission and the interests of conquest.

XVIII. Conversion by the Sword

The Wendish Crusade raises in sharp form the question of forced conversion. Medieval canon law taught that conversion should be voluntary and that baptism under compulsion was invalid, or at least improper. Yet the practice of the northern crusades often involved baptism as a condition of submission, imposed by military force. The Obodrites at Dobin accepted baptism to end the siege, and many reverted to paganism as soon as the army left.

The Greek Scriptures show the apostles persuading people by reasoning from the Scriptures and by the example of their lives (Acts 17:2-4). They baptised those who accepted the word (Acts 2:41), not those who were compelled. The baptism described in the Greek Scriptures is the request made to God for a good conscience (1 Peter 3:21), which cannot be obtained by force.

XIX. The Jews of the Region

The Second Crusade was preceded in the Rhineland by preaching against the Jews by a Cistercian monk named Radulf, which led to attacks on Jewish communities in 1146. Bernard of Clairvaux intervened to stop the violence, travelling to the Rhineland and rebuking Radulf, and insisting that the Jews must not be killed, citing the Psalm that says, Slay them not, lest my people forget. Ephraim of Bonn, a Jewish chronicler, praised Bernard for saving the Jews. The site's page on the Rhineland Massacres describes the earlier attacks of the First Crusade.

XX. Assessment

The Wendish Crusade was a military failure, but it marked a turning point. It extended the crusade from the recovery of the Holy Land to the conquest and conversion of the pagans of northern Europe. It established the precedent, later developed by the papacy, that war against the pagans of the Baltic earned the same indulgence as the crusade to Jerusalem. It initiated a process of conquest, colonisation and Christianisation that would transform the southern Baltic over the following centuries.

The expedition also revealed the tensions within the crusading movement: between the ideal of conversion and the desire for tribute and land, between the papal vision of a universal crusade and the local interests of princes, and between the Christian message of peace and the reality of conquest by the sword.

XXI. The Religion of the Wends

What is known of the religion of the Baltic Slavs comes almost entirely from Christian writers who were hostile to it: Thietmar of Merseburg in the early eleventh century, Adam of Bremen in the 1070s, Helmold of Bosau, the biographers of Otto of Bamberg and Saxo Grammaticus. Their accounts must be read with caution, since they wished to present the pagans as idolaters and the destruction of their temples as a triumph of the faith. Archaeology has added some evidence, including the remains of temple buildings at Gross Raden in Mecklenburg and wooden figures found in lakes and bogs.

The Slavic temples were wooden buildings, often richly carved and painted, housing images of the gods. Thietmar describes the temple at Rethra as having walls decorated with carved images of gods and goddesses, each with its name inscribed, wearing helmets and armour. Priests cast lots and consulted the sacred horse before decisions of war, leading it over spears laid on the ground and observing which foot it stepped with first. Captured enemies were sometimes sacrificed. The temples also held treasures, including a share of the plunder from raids, and they served as political as well as religious centres.

The Wendish priesthood was powerful enough to resist conversion for centuries, and the Christian missionaries recognised that the destruction of the temples was essential to the success of their work. The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures condemned the worship of images made by human hands (Isaiah 44:9-10), and Paul told the Athenians that God does not dwell in handmade temples (Acts 17:24). Yet neither the prophets nor the apostles called for the destruction of the temples of the nations by an invading army.

XXII. Adam of Bremen and the Hamburg Mission

The archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen claimed authority over the missions to the north, including Scandinavia and the Slavic lands. Adam of Bremen, a canon of the cathedral, wrote in the 1070s a history of the archbishops, which includes a description of the Baltic lands and their peoples. He described Wolin, which he called Jumne, as the largest city in Europe, inhabited by Slavs and other peoples, including Greeks and Saxons, though Saxons who were Christians could not practise their faith openly there.

Adam was critical of the Saxon dukes, writing that their greed had driven the Slavs back to paganism after the revolt of 983. He reported a saying of the Danish king Sweyn Estridsen that the Slavs could have been converted long before had it not been for the greed of the Saxons, who were more interested in tribute than in conversion. The criticism, repeated by Helmold a century later, shows that churchmen recognised the problem even before the crusade.

XXIII. The Danish Wars

The Danes had their own reasons to fight the Wends. Slavic pirates raided the Danish coasts and islands, taking captives and plunder, and in the early twelfth century Denmark was weakened by civil war. The Danish king Eric II and his successors waged campaigns against the Wends, and the Danish nobles, especially from the islands, joined in.

In the second half of the twelfth century, under Valdemar I and his son Cnut VI, and under the leadership of Bishop Absalon, the Danes took the offensive, building a fleet and conducting more than twenty expeditions against the Wends. They conquered Rügen in 1168 and later forced the Pomeranians to submit. The Danish conquests extended under Valdemar II to Estonia, where the Danes founded Tallinn in 1219. According to legend, the Danish flag, the Dannebrog, fell from heaven during the battle of Lyndanisse in that year.

XXIV. The Polish Dimension

Poland also had interests in the Baltic. Duke Bolesław III Wrymouth had conquered Pomerania between 1116 and 1122, and he sponsored the missions of Otto of Bamberg. After his death in 1138 Poland was divided among his sons, and its control over Pomerania weakened. In 1147 the Polish duke Mieszko III took part in the crusade, attacking the pagan Prussians or the Pomeranians, though the details are obscure.

The relationship between Poland and Pomerania, and between the Polish and German churches over jurisdiction in the region, remained a source of tension. The later history of the region, including the Teutonic Order's conquest of Prussia and its wars with Poland, is described in the site's pages on the Prussian Crusade and the Lithuanian Crusade and Grunwald.

XXV. Anselm of Havelberg

The papal legate to the army of 1147 was Anselm, bishop of Havelberg, a Premonstratensian canon and one of the most learned churchmen of his time. His diocese lay in the Slavic lands and had been largely lost since 983, so he had a direct interest in the success of the crusade. Anselm had served as an envoy to Constantinople in 1136, where he debated with Greek theologians, and he wrote an account of the debates, the Dialogues, which discussed the differences between the Latin and Greek churches with notable moderation.

After the crusade, Anselm worked to restore his diocese. He later became archbishop of Ravenna and died in 1158 while serving with Frederick Barbarossa at the siege of Milan. His career shows the combination of scholarship, diplomacy and warfare that characterised many churchmen of the period.

XXVI. The Cistercians and Premonstratensians in the East

The conquest of the Slavic lands was followed by the foundation of monasteries, especially by the Cistercians and the Premonstratensians. The Cistercians founded houses such as Doberan in Mecklenburg in 1171, Lehnin in Brandenburg in 1180, Kolbatz in Pomerania in 1173 and Oliwa near Gdańsk in 1186. These monasteries brought new agricultural techniques, cleared land, and drained marshes, and they also served as centres of Christian learning. The Premonstratensians, or Norbertines, founded by Norbert of Xanten, who became archbishop of Magdeburg in 1126, were also active in the east and supplied clergy for the cathedral chapters of Havelberg, Brandenburg and Ratzeburg.

Doberan, where the first monks were killed in a Slavic uprising in 1179, became the burial place of the dukes of Mecklenburg, descendants of Niklot. Its brick Gothic church is one of the finest in northern Germany. The site's page on Bible Scholarship in Gdańsk describes the later learned traditions of the region, including the influence of the monastery of Oliwa.

XXVII. The Brick Gothic Churches

The colonisation of the Baltic lands produced a distinctive architecture, the brick Gothic. In a region without good building stone, the builders used brick to construct great churches, town halls and city gates, with elaborate decorative patterns. The cathedral of Lübeck, begun by Henry the Lion in 1173, and the church of St Mary in Lübeck, the model for many Baltic churches, are among the most important. Similar churches were built in Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Gdańsk, Toruń and Riga. The architecture testifies to the wealth of the Hanseatic towns that grew up in the conquered lands.

XXVIII. Lisbon and the Universal Crusade

The Second Crusade was the first to be fought on several fronts at once, in the Holy Land, in Spain and in the Baltic. Contemporaries such as the chronicler Helmold saw it as a single enterprise in which all of Christendom rose against the infidel. The capture of Lisbon in 1147, described in an eyewitness account by an English priest, De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, was its only lasting success. The crusaders who took Lisbon massacred many of the inhabitants, including the Mozarabic bishop of the city, a Christian living under Muslim rule.

The idea of a war of Christendom against all its enemies on every front would recur in later crusading thought. It reflected the belief that the church was engaged in a struggle with the forces of unbelief throughout the world. But the Greek Scriptures describe the Christian's struggle not against flesh and blood but against wicked spirit forces (Ephesians 6:12), and the weapons of that warfare are not fleshly (2 Corinthians 10:4).

XXIX. Memory and Nationalism

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Wendish Crusade and the German colonisation of the east became subjects of nationalist interpretation. German historians presented the Drang nach Osten, the drive to the east, as a civilising mission that brought Christianity and culture to backward peoples. Polish and Czech historians saw it as a story of conquest and Germanisation. The Nazi regime appropriated the medieval colonisation to justify its own conquest and colonisation of eastern Europe.

Modern historians have sought to move beyond these nationalist interpretations, emphasising the complexity of the process, the role of Slavic princes in inviting settlers, and the gradual nature of cultural change. The Wendish Crusade itself is now seen as a relatively minor episode that nonetheless marked the beginning of a long transformation.

XXX. Vicelin of Oldenburg

One figure who embodied the missionary ideal in the region was Vicelin, a priest from the Weser region who worked among the Wagrians and Obodrites from 1126 until his death in 1154. He founded a house of canons at Neumünster in Holstein, which became the centre of the mission, and he preached to the Slavs with patience, often in danger. Helmold of Bosau was his pupil and admirer, and much of his chronicle is devoted to Vicelin's life.

In 1149 Vicelin was consecrated bishop of Oldenburg by the archbishop of Bremen, but Henry the Lion insisted on his right to invest the bishops in his lands, and Vicelin was forced to submit to the duke. He suffered a stroke in 1152 and died two years later. His career illustrates both the dedication of the missionaries and their dependence on, and subordination to, the secular princes whose conquests made the mission possible. Helmold presents him as a man who sought the conversion of the Slavs by preaching rather than by force, in contrast to the princes who sought only tribute.

XXXI. Chronology

In 968 the archbishopric of Magdeburg was founded. In 983 the Slavic revolt occurred. In 1066 Gottschalk was murdered and Bishop John sacrificed. In 1124 and 1128 Otto of Bamberg made his missions to Pomerania. In 1140 the bishopric of Wolin was founded. In 1143 Lübeck was founded. In 1145 the Second Crusade was proclaimed. In March 1147 Bernard spoke at Frankfurt, and on 11 April 1147 Divina dispensatione was issued.

In June 1147 Niklot raided Lübeck. In the summer of 1147 the sieges of Dobin and Demmin took place and the army marched to Stettin. In October 1147 Lisbon fell. In 1150 Albert the Bear took Brandenburg. On 11 June 1157 Albert retook Brandenburg. In 1159 Henry the Lion refounded Lübeck. In 1160 Niklot was killed. In 1167 Pribislav received his lands as a fief. In 1168 Arkona fell. In 1171 Non parum animus noster was issued.

XXXII. Bibliography

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