History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 259, the Baltic, the Baltic Crusades, the Levonian Crusade Part 42, Archbishop Friedrich of Riga.

Hello again.

Now, before we start this week's episode, you may notice when you get to the end of this

episode that our outro is different. The three large bongs or

tolling bells at the end of the talkover have been replaced with three chants of Sanktus in the Gregorian chance style with which

the Crusaders would have been very familiar.

This all came about due to a request from a listener called Marcus who uses the

podcast to fall asleep to and who kept being woken up by the bongs. I conducted a short poll on the podcast Facebook page about

the situation and discovered that quite a few people use the podcast to fall asleep to. But there were also quite a few people attached

to the three tolling bells as well. The poll supported removing the bongs by a narrow margin, so I have removed them, but I have put in their place three chance of Sanktus, which is probably a more appropriate way to end the podcast than with three giant bongs which a few

of you pointed out sound like gongs instead of bongs anyway.

Okay, on with the episode.

Last week we saw Pope Boniface the eighth appoint his personal chaplain, I signest

to Koney, to the position of Archbishop of Riga in an attempt

to resolve the civil conflict in Lavonia.

Archbishop Iisanis turned out to be a popular and amiable man who attempted to play the role of

peacemaker in the region. However, despite his best attempts to arbitrate the conflict, a number of outstanding issues remained unresolved, and Pope Boniface ended up transferring Archbishop Eissanas to the position of the Archbishop of Lund in the Kingdom of Denmark.

Then Pope Boniface was kidnapped and died not long after, meaning that not only was there

now no longer anyone in the position of the Archbishop of Riga, there was no longer anyone in the position of Pope.

Master Gottfried of Lavonia took full advantage of this situation. Knowing there would be no one to stop him, he forced the Bishop of Daupatt and senior figures in Estonia to sign an agreement,acing them on the side of the order should conflict break out once again

between the citizens of Riga and the Teutonic Order.

...