ABSTRACT
In the standard works on the Baltic Middle Ages, the crusading period is viewed in a very wide time frame, lasting from the conquest of the lands by German and Scandinavian crusaders in the thirteenth century to the fall of the medieval principalities in the mid-sixteenth century.1 Medieval Livonian principalities appear like a northern counterpart to the crusader states in the Latin East, which rise and fall together with the crusade. It is easy to equate medieval Livonia with the crusade, because a substantial part of it was ruled by the Teutonic Order, whose first and most important raison d’être was the crusade. The concept of the long Livonian crusade has certainly also gained vigour from the pluralist definition of the crusades, which identifies papal recognition, indulgences, vows and taking the
1 For example, William Urban, The Livonian Crusade (Chicago, 2004); Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 2nd ed. (London, 1997).
