History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 196, the Livonian Crusade Part 2, an unpromising start.

Hello again.

Last week we saw the German missionary Bishop Meinheart establish a Christian missionary outpost

in the Little Livonian village on the River Dalgava, which was then known as

ukskule and which today is called ix chiller. Bishop Meinhart then proceeded to

build two stone defensive forts on the promise that the locals would convert to Christianity once the forts were completed.

However, when it came time to fulfil their end of the bargain, the Livonian pagans reneged,

electing to instead keep both the stone forts and their pagan beliefs.

Just when Bishop Meinhard must have been thinking that things couldn't get any worse,

the Levonians then attempted to sacrifice one of Bishop Meinhard's fellow priests to their

gods. So it would be pretty safe to say that the Christian conversion of Livonia had gotten off to a pretty rocky start.

All in all, the Christian missionaries were fortunate that the Livonians were not as warlike as the neighbouring Lithuanians or in fact as some of the other people in the region.

In fact, of all the pagans living in the vicinity of the Gulf of Riga, the Livonians probably presented the least threat to the Christians,

and it was likely no coincidence that the missionaries decided to establish settlements in

Lovanian territory instead of in the territory of one of the other pagan peoples.

Why did the Lovanians pose less of a threat? Well, primarily because of

their dislike of government and authority. The Livonian people were divided into family groups or clans, and each of these clans had an elder who would represent the clan in a tribal council. However, as William Urban points out in his book

the Baltic Crusade, it was rare that any one of these elders rose to dominate the Tribal Council. To put it another way, the power

structure within Lavonian society was quite flat compared to the pyramid of the feudal system which operated through much of the rest of Europe.

In Livonia everyone had riots, even the common peasants, and no one really liked to be bossed around by anyone else.

The lack of an overall chief in the Tribal council meant that it was difficult if not impossible

...