The Germans and the East

An Amicable Enmity

49 An Amicable Enmity Some Peculiarities in Teutonic-Balt Relations in the Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades ◆ Rasa Mazeika ◆ German expansion into the northeastern frontiers of Europe—the lands on the south and east shore of the Baltic Sea—occurred through the Baltic Crusades conducted by the Teutonic Order.1 This order of fighting monks, having conquered presentday Estonia, Latvia and Prussia after fierce resistance, met its match in a century of unsuccessful warfare against the pagan Lithuanians. United into a state that became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Lithuanians drew on the financial and military resources of allied and subject Ruthenian lands in modern-day Belarus and Ukraine,2 and were able to use European technology and cultural norms to fight against the flower of European knighthood. Yet interchanges between German and non-German on the Baltic frontier did not take place only on the battlefield. Even with pagans there was a steady interaction , often overlooked by earlier historians, in the areas of trade,3 diplomacy,4 military weaponry and tactics,5 architecture,6 customs,7 and for that matter, the seeming adoption of some pagan religious beliefs by the crusaders.8 This chapter will glance only at one surprising aspect—the mutual respect and even friendly interchanges that sometimes developed between pagan and crusader nobles. The brutality of warfare in the Baltic Crusade cannot be denied.9 Yet brutal wars in Europe were by the later Middle Ages modified by some chivalrous customs or by a shared warrior code. At least occasionally, such common European practices as well as a personal relationship between Christian and pagan and a shared sense of noble privilege nuanced the war against Europe’s last pagans, the Balt tribes of present-day Prussia and Lithuania. This places the Baltic Crusade wars and especially the princes of pagan Lithuania more squarely in the European tradition.10 As Robert Bartlett 50 ◆ rasa mazeika wrote, the people and wealth of “remote pagan parts” were being drawn “into the central programmes of Latin Christendom.”11 More broadly, it reminds historians of any field that shared cultural elements, respect and peaceful interchange can coexist with eagerly and brutally pursued warfare. Respect, even friendship, need not mean the end of warfare—in fact, one can greatly appreciate an enemy who puts up a good fight, presenting one with a chance to display skill and win more glory in this world and the next. Lithuanian historians have already noted the growth of what they termed an “orientation to the model of the European knight” as shown by occasional acts of the Lithuanian higher nobility.12 But those raise the problem of differentiating age-old Indo-European warrior customs from specifically medieval chivalry, a problem that is probably insoluble in the fragmentary Baltic sources. There can be little doubt that Balt nobles and the Teutonic Order’s crusading monks who fought them tried their best to possess some qualities which form the traditional attributes of the textbook chivalrous knight: skill at arms, physical strength, bravery, loyalty to one’s lord, probably a generosity with booty, and above all a thirst for glory or honor.13 Many warrior societies value these attributes, however, and for very practical reasons. Certainly the one new factor which European chivalry introduced, “courtesie” and romantic love of women, is only very occasionally attributed to Teutonic Order brothers in their service to the Virgin Mary, and is completely absent in any description of pagan Balts. The two new customs that the pagan Lithuanians clearly learned from their enemies, ransoming of prisoners and the occasional formal duel, have been discussed by other historians.14 Therefore, this chapter focuses not on customs but on attitudes—i.e., some hints of personal relationships based on personal respect between the enemies. What did the chroniclers think of their enemies? Peter von Dusburg, a priest of the Teutonic Order whose chronicle was written in 1326,15 names the various Prussian tribes and notes that they were all militarily strong in the thirteenth century, when the Teutonic Order first moved into the Baltic area. Praise of pagan prowess in the Teutonic Order’s chronicles is suspect because of the need to glorify the Order’s knights by showing that they fought a formidable enemy. Indeed, Dusburg draws exactly that moral in this passage. Yet he does mention one tribe, the Sudovians or Jotvingians, as outstanding: “The Sudovian nobles,” he writes, “just as they surpass the other [tribes] in nobility of their manner [i...