ABSTRACT
Peter von Dusburg, a priest of the military monastic Teutonic Order in Prussia, completed in 1326 a Latin chronicle about the wars of the Order against the pagan Old Prussians and Lithuanians.1 This work has been called ‘the most important monument for the older history of Prussia’,2 and has won the hearts of historians with passages where the author apologizes for confusion of chronology or worries about not having all the facts.3 In the last two centuries Dusburg’s work has been widely used both as a source of presumed factual data about battles of the Baltic Crusade and as a demonstration of the ideology of the Teutonic Order. In their eagerness to mine these aspects of Peter Dusburg’s work, however, historians may have overlooked some legal aspects of his chronicle.
