21 - Baltic Europe

Summary

if in April Chaucerian man longed to go on pilgrimage, his fellows, as described by the poet’s French contemporary Eustache Deschamps, also understood that by August ‘fault d’aler en Pruce …/ou en Yfflelent, à la rese d’esté’. The crusade (reysa) to Lithuania (via Prussia and Livonia), in which the fictional Knight of the Canterbury Tales took part, was established in the chivalric calendar throughout the Catholic world by 1350. In the late Middle Ages west European relations with the Baltic region thrived. The Bridgetine Order leavened religious life throughout northern Europe; the mission to the Baltic provoked questions of moral theology and recruited crusaders across the continent. These pilgrim-soldiers left monuments in Königsberg and at home to mark their achievement. Lithuanian motifs became fashionable in belles lettres and to ‘raise a pagan prince from the font’ was a sign of highest chic. Emperor Charles IV maintained a convert affine, Butautas-Henry, at court in Prague and endowed him with the imperial title of Herzog von Litauen as evidence of the breadth of Caroline jurisdiction.