ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses three elements that formed the background for and became intimately woven into Henry's text and which are used by Henry in his work with different genres. The first is how warfare changed in the time preceding Henry's own. The second is how the actual use of physical violence was only one element in warfare, which also comprised the preparations for violence and the continuation, the securing of control also without the use of open violence. The third element is the spiritual and theological framing of warfare of how it was justified, but also how participants believed that they had to take part in it. The war was God's war, praelia domini, so it was a sacred war in exactly the sense that Guibert of Nogent and other chroniclers used to describe the First Crusade. The crusaders in the Baltic fought for God against the infidels who attacked the true church of God.