The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier

The book explores diverse ways in which the Christianisation of the Baltic lands were characterised by cultural conflict between Western settlers and institutions on the one hand, and the native peoples on the other. The main aim of the Baltic Crusades was to bring about acceptance of Christianity on the part of Wends, Prussians, Livs, Letts, Estonians and Finns. However, conflict manifested itself in other ways: superior military technology enabled the triumph of numerically small Western forces; the Baltic landscape was transformed through the construction of churches, towns and fortifications, the destruction of pagan sites, and the imposition of German or Scandinavian names; the conquered lands were reorganised into new political and ecclesiastical structures.Section I (Culture and Identity) explores the incorporation of the Baltic lands into a Western order, in subjects as diverse as the 'conversion' of pagan cultic trees and the introduction of alien musical forms. Section II (The Struggle of Faiths) examines in detail the process by which Catholicism was brought to, and largely imposed on the local population, often in competition with the Orthodox faith of the Russian principalities to the east. Section III (Chroniclers of the Baltic Crusades) provides four detailed case studies devoted to the interpretation of two of the most widely used primary sources of the conversion period, the chronicles of Henry of Livonia and Peter of Dusburg.

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