The Teutonic Knights

Among the many religious military orders of the High Medieval period was the Teutonic Order, a group of Germanic crusaders who formed in Acre in 1190. Fulfilling a similar mission to that of the Knights Hospitaller, the Teutonic Knights played a limited role in the Holy Land as they devoted more of their strength to hospitals and escorts than to widespread fighting. In the Baltic region, however, the Teutonic Order carved out an independent state on the frontier of Christendom, fighting against pagan Slavs and Germans in the Polish, Estonian, and Lithuanian regions of Eastern Europe. The Teutonic Knights were not the first to make any sort of Crusading maneuvers in the Baltic, such activities having begun before the first crusade in places such as Sweden, and again over eighty years prior to the Order’s inception by Christian forces in the various Baltic lands circa 1107/1108.

The Baltic region was a frontier for Christianity in a way which differed significantly from the Islamic frontiers. Eastern and Western germans were not all that different, and many groups in the area shared ancestry when they did not share religion. Nevertheless, in 1147, the Papacy “elevated the Christian expansion in the Baltic to the level of a crusade”. Crusaders who fought in the Baltic were granted the same indulgences as those who fought in the Holy Land after this point, and though the Papacy ended its sponsorship of the Baltic Crusades by ending its indulgences in 1265, those who set out after that point still swore crusader vows. The influence of these Crusaders on the future of the Baltic region of Europe was immense in several ways. For example, the Danish flag, the Dannebrog is “supposed to have fallen from heaven as a sign of divine support” during the battle of Tallinn in 1219. The Danish flag and the Teutonic flag differ only in their color schemes, which is to say that the Danish is a white cross on a red field and the Teutonic is a black cross on a white field. Aside from their lasting cultural impression, the Teutonic Order achieved a very specific goal: they solidified the presence of Christianity throughout Europe.

For centuries the Eastern frontier of Europe had been held by pagan kingdoms who could not participate in Western European culture directly. The Church was against trading with such heathens and the Germans were fairly distrustful of their forest worshipping neighbors. The Crusades in the Baltic therefore not only allowed Christianity to spread throughout the entirety of the continent, but also opened up a new set of possible trading partners and military allies to be brought into the fold. Their acceptance of Catholic Christianity also gave the Papacy a new source of income and power, and made the region unavailable to the Greek or Russian Orthodoxies who lacked the military might to conquer the region themselves. Furthermore, the Teutonic Order managed to carve out a state under direct clerical rule along the Livonian and Prussian frontiers. After their successes, however, the Teutonic Order found itself in something of a bind as they had fulfilled their reason for existence, which was to wage Holy War and convert the pagans who infested the eastern edge of Europe. As a result, they had to consolidate into an administrative state and form alliances with the proper groups just to survive and maintain their independence. All in all, the Teutonic Order did manage to be one of the most successful orders, proven by the fact that it still exists today, albeit mostly as a ceremonial order.