History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 263, the Baltic Crusades, the Levonian Crusade Part 43, Papal Investigations. Hello again. three, people investigations.

Hello again.

Last week we took the Samagitzian Crusade to the year 1316,

with the Teutonic Order making use of visiting Crusaders to attack Samagetian

holdings along the lower reaches of the Namunas River. This week we are heading back to Livonia. If you stretch your

minds all the way back to episode 259 you might remember that Archbishop Friedrich had

immediately taken the side of the citizens of Riga as soon as he took up his

role of Archbishop.

He wrote a letter to Pope Clement the 5th, which was pointedly one-sided,

supporting the Regans in their conflict against the Livonian chapter of the Teutonic Order.

Archbishop Friedrich sent his letter to Avignon, but having received no response after a year or so, he set off to Avignon himself

to follow up on the concerns he raised. We left Archbishop Friedrich in Avignon in the year 1307, having been

told that he would need to wait for two years until Pope Clement had time to consider the matter.

In the end, Archbishop Friedrich spent three years in Avignon waiting for his issue to move up the

people to do list. He found himself some accommodation, made new friends and contacts amongst the churchmen and theologians in the town,

and according to William Urban in his book The Lavonian Crusade, he also made a bunch of bohemian friends, began a collection of beautiful objects, and wrote a piece about the legend of St Francis.

Finally, in June of 1310, Pope Clement handed down his decision,

and it was a cracker. If Archbishop Friedrich's letter had lit a small

fire inside the Livonian chapter of the order, well it was as if Pope Clement had poured petrol all over the entire

Teutonic Order, let a match, then watched the whole military order explode into a bonfire of cataclysmic proportions.

It seemed that having seen the Templar Knights wiped out by allegations of heresy, there was no

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