Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia ed. by Marek Tamm, Linda Kaljundi, and Carsten Selch Jensen (review)

The importance of Henry of Livonia’s Chronicle has been increasingly recognized since the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania regained their independence twenty years ago. However, the only English translation dates from 1951, far before scholars had paid much attention to it. Moreover, the translator, James Brundage, later a distinguished and prolific scholar of medieval legal history, had presented it for his master’s thesis; he added a new foreword to his second edition in 2004.

That makes this collection of essays extremely valuable. Brundage himself provides a lengthy introduction, focusing on what is known about Henry’s life and asking why it was that a cleric who was forbidden to bear arms so often joined in the fighting. Regional practices and necessity seem to be the explanation, together with the fact that the church’s disciplinary rules were not yet firm and fast.

The editors divide the essays into three categories (“Representations,” “Practices,” and “Appropriations,” with a bibliography) investigating the text itself, the background to the text, and the ways that historians and political movements have interpreted it. Happily, they have managed to attract contributions from a number of prominent scholars; and they have ensured a uniform style that makes the essays easy reading.

Christopher Tyerman sees the chronicle as providing a creation myth for Christian Livonia, one that rearranges actions and motives to justify a brutal invasion and conquest. Other contributors investigate what Henry tells them about Baltic societies, their environment, and their beliefs.

The sections on military technology will probably attract the greatest attention outside of specialists on the Baltic regions. The weaponry itself makes for interesting reading, but especially so because Henry’s account is enhanced by archaeological evidence from locations where prolonged sieges took place. No one will ever write a description of the conquest again without having this collection of essays in hand.

This is well illustrated in the conquest of Oesel, the first Estonian region to be reached by crusaders, but the last to succumb. Henry failed to understand that this island’s many capable and motivated warriors, sensing that domination by German crusaders would lead to a loss of status, were seeking to make some accommodation with the king of Denmark.

The contributions by archaeologists are especially valuable. On the whole, they confirm the accuracy of most of Henry’s account, but they demonstrate that he was not present everywhere at critical moments of the region’s tumultuous period of contact and contest.

Other essays investigate why a relatively small number of crusaders were able to impose their rule over so many tribes so quickly—the reasons being that the peoples traditionally victimized by the stronger ones joined with the foreigners to overthrow their oppressors, the superior weaponry of the crusaders (an advantage that was short-lived, but sufficient), and the genius of the crusade’s leaders (a subject covered less here than in German scholarship).

The last section, on the ways that Henry’s Chronicle has been used by modern nationalists and apologists, is a fitting reminder that history is more than “just the facts, ma’am.” That phrase, made famous in Dragnet, tells us that although interpretation explains what actually happened and what it meant, interpretations are always based on narratives and physical evidence.