Baltic Crusades

24 Nov, 2016 940 History of Europe

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Baltic Crusades, the name given to a series of overlapping attempts to convert the pagans of North East Europe to Christianity at the point of the sword. From the 12th Century, Papal Bulls endorsed those who fought on the side of the Church, the best known now being the Teutonic Order which, thwarted in Jerusalem, founded a state on the edge of the Baltic, in Prussia. Some of the peoples in the region disappeared, either killed or assimilated, and the consequences for European history were profound.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Aleks Pluskowski No other episodes
    Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading
  • Nora Berend No other episodes
    Fellow of St Catharine's College and Reader in European History at the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge
  • Martin Palmer 22 episodes
    Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture

Reading list

  • The Crusades: A Reader
    S. J. Allen, Emilie Amt (ed.) (University of Toronto Press, 2003) Google Books →
  • The Making of Europe, 950 - 1350
    Robert Bartlett (Allen Lane, 1993)
  • The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia
    James A. Brundage (trans.) (Columbia University Press, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Northern Crusades
    Eric Christiansen (Penguin, 1997) Google Books →
  • The Pursuit of the Millennium
    Norman Cohn (Pimlico, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Popes and the Baltic Crusades 1147-1254
    I Fonnesberg-Schmidt (Brill, 2007) Google Books →
  • The Medieval World - Europe from 1100 to 1350
    Friedrich Heer (Phoenix Giant, 1998) Google Books →
  • A History of Christianity
    Diarmaid MacCulloch (Penguin, 2010) Google Books →
  • The War on Heresy
    R.I. Moore (Profile, 2014) Google Books →
  • Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150-1500
    Alan V. Murray (ed.) (Ashgate, 2001) Google Books →
  • The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier
    Alan V. Murray (ed.) (Ashgate, 2009) Google Books →
  • The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War & Colonisation
    A. G. Pluskowski (Routledge, 2012) Google Books →
  • Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-central Europe
    S. C. Rowell (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Google Books →
  • Crusading and Chronicle: Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier
    M. Tamm, L. Kaljundi and C. S. Jensen (Ashgate, 2011) Google Books →
  • Crusader Castles of the Teutonic Knights 1: The Red Brick Castles of Prussia 1230-1466
    S. R. Turnbull (Osprey, 2003) Google Books →
  • Crusader Castles of the Teutonic Knights 2: The Stone Castles of Latvia and Estonia 1185-1560
    S. R. Turnbull (Osprey, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Livonian Crusade
    William Urban (Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Teutonic Knights: A Military History
    William Urban (Greenhill Books, 2003) Google Books →
  • The Prussian Crusade
    William Urban (Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 2000) Google Books →
  • The Baltic Crusade
    William Urban (Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 1994) Google Books →
  • The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle
    William Urban and Jerry Smith (trans.) (Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 2001) Google Books →
  • Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy 1100-1230
    Darius von Guttner-Sporzynski (Brepols, 2014) Google Books →
  • Poland
    Adam Zamoyski (William Collins, 2015) Google Books →

Related episodes

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

Programme ID: b0832rmz

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0832rmz

Auto-category: 940.1 (Medieval history of Europe)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, from the 12th century the popes approved a series of crusades on the Baltic lands, principally Prussia and regions now covered by Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia.