ABSTRACT
The ancestors of today’s Lithuanians were the last Europeans to convert to Christianity, and the subject of the sketch that lies ahead was the first or second prince from among these erst-while pagans to convert to Orthodoxy. The early Lithuanians may have been pressured by the long-standing demographic, political, and military expansion of the neighboring Rus’ and Poles; the aggressive, semi-crusading German colonization of the Eastern Baltic that started in the early 1200s; and an overall situation complicated by Mongol suzerainty over most Rus’ principalities as of the 1240s and papal claims to supremacy over all Christians. Yet not only could these pagan warriors and forest-peasants hold their own against Christian neighbors, but also an expansive Lithuanian polity was taking shape by the 1260s, the time of our story.
