ABSTRACT
The altarpieces point to the desire of Brotherhood members to promote themselves as wealthy merchants with links abroad but to demonstrate their piety and devotion as servants of God seeking salvation. The town was part of the London–Bruges–Lubeck–Reval–Novgorod trade axis and served as a crucial Hanseatic thoroughfare and mediator of exchange with Novgorod and the Orthodox East. St. Mauritius is intimately intertwined with the corporate identity of the Brotherhood as an organization that fashioned itself as a guild of pious and chivalrous men. The religious fervor of Mauritius’ militia has resonances with the origins of the Brotherhood as an organization allegedly born from a group of defenders of the Church against a pagan enemy in Livonia. The corporation’s commercial stakes are visualized as inherently interlaced with the Brotherhood’s devotion to a select group of saints who would protect the organization, its livelihood, and its hometown.
