The End of the Baltic Crusade 1382–1562

Abstract

Abstract In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Iberia and the Baltic present, from the point of view of the crusades, an interesting study in contrasts. As we have seen, Spanish crusading enthusiasm attained new heights in the conquest of Granada, and went on to find novel channels of expression in both the Old and the New Worlds. By contrast, the Baltic region experienced what one historian has aptly termed ‘the withering of the crusade’. By 1500 crusades had all but ceased to be preached, the Ordensstaat was in the last stages of decay, and the Teutonic Order itself faced a grave crisis. Few would have predicted such developments in 1382, when the Christian states of Iberia were enmeshed in internecine disputes, while the Teutonic Order was flourishing, and its war against Lithuania was regarded by almost all of Catholic Europe as a praiseworthy endeavour. Unlike the other fronts examined in this book, the Baltic crusade had no discernible life after about 1520. In this chapter we shall therefore be looking at the effective demise of a crusading tradition (see maps 13 and 14).