The conversion of the lands on the southern and eastern shores of
the Baltic Sea by Germans, Danes and Swedes in the period from 1150
to 1400 represented the last great struggle between Christianity
and paganism on the European continent, but for the indigenous
peoples of Finland, Livonia, Prussia, Lithuania and Pomerania, it
was also a period of wider cultural conflict and transformation.
Along with the Christian faith came a new and foreign culture: the
German and Scandinavian languages of the crusaders and the Latin of
their priests, new names for places, superior military technology,
and churches and fortifications built of stone. For newly baptized
populations, the acceptance of Christianity encompassed major
changes in the organization and practice of political, religious
and social life, entailing the acceptance of government by alien
elites, of new cultic practices, and of new obligations such as
taxes, tithes and military service in the armies of the Christian
rulers. At the same time, as the Western conquerors carried their
campaigns beyond pagan territory into the principalities of
north-western Russia, the Baltic Crusades also developed into a
struggle between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. This collection
of sixteen essays by both established and younger scholars explores
the theme of clash of cultures from a variety of perspectives,
discussing the nature and ideology of crusading in the medieval
Baltic region, the struggle between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and
the cultural confrontation that accompanied the process of
conversion, in subjects as diverse as religious observation,
political structures, the practice of warfare, art and music, and
perceptions of the landscape.
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