From: Steve Woodson
Message: 2441
Date: 2000-05-18
Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
In 1211 Andrew II, king of Hungary, aquired the services of the Teutonic Knights not to fight a holy war against the Slavs but to secure his eastern borders. They built castles in the bend of the Carpathians in Transylvania. Andrews fear that the Papacy might grant the land to the Knights caused him to drive them out. Conrad of Masovia, their next employer, wasn't as lucky.----- Original Message -----From: Håkan LindgrenTo: CybalistSent: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 7:19 PMSubject: [TIED] Tin Islands and tin headsFortunately, Encarta also contains very good articles on Poland and other East/Central European countries. The one on military orders is EXCEPTIONALLY ignorant. I could add that the "Crusade" against the Prussians lasted about 30 years rather than "several centuries"; even if one considers the Order's later wars against Lithuania as crusades, the total is one and a half centuries, roughly. Lithuania was converted in the late 1380s "from within" by Grand Duke Jogaila who had just been crowned King of Poland (as Wladyslaw II). One of its chief purposes of that political move was to counter Teutonic claims that they were waging a legal crusade against a pagan country; from then on all their enemies were Christian states. So much for the conversion of the Baltic states by the Teutonic Knights. Piotr
Philip M. Soergel, Ph.D. etc., writes, in MS Encarta:"In 1210 Hermann von Salza assumed the leadership of the Knights, and under his vigorous administration they began to expand more quickly. The Knights also moved their primary field of operations from Palestine to eastern Europe. At first, the King of Hungary invited the order to participate in a crusade against the Slavs, a large non-Christian tribe that inhabited most of the Baltic region of eastern Europe. ---Although the orders 20th-century presence is modest, its historical importance is large. For several centuries the Knights waged a Crusade in eastern Europe and converted the Slavic peoples to Christianity."Ha ha! By 1200 even we here in Sweden were a more or less Christian people. Perhaps we should keep Encarta away from children...Hakan.