Dying during the Baltic crusades, as described in Henry of Latvia's chronicle (the 1st half of the 13th c.)

Abstract

Henry “of Latvia” was an eyewitness of the events in Livonia (now the area of Latvia and Estonia) in the years 1205-1227 which he described in his chronicle. His relations of earlier events, starting from c. 1180, were based on accounts by witnesses (primarily by the Cistercian Teodoric, who later became the fi rst Estonian bishop). Henry describes the battles of Latin cru-saders with pagan tribes: the Finno-Ugrian Livonians and Estonians, the Baltic Lithuanians, Semigallians, Latgallians and Curonians, and the Rus principalities of Polotsk, Pskov and Novgorod. He notes pagan funeral customs, shocking for Christians: cremation on the battle fi eld, practiced by the Curonians, the Lithuanians’ transporting the cut-off heads of their fallen com-rades to give them a proper burial at home, or even an exchange of a Christian prisoner-of-war for the head of a dead Lithuanian. He mentions neophytes, monks and Christian knights who died a martyr’s death, killed by the pagans. He stresses that the Christians strove to spare the pagans if the latter agreed to convert. He also notes that the crusaders once murdered the garrison of a stronghold, including Estonians and Ruthenians, sparing only one man who was to pass the message to the Rus princes, as a grave memento for potential rebels. Among Henry’s many descriptions particularly interesting is one of the death and burial of Kaupo, one of Livonian magnates, a neophyte. His body was burnt and his bones were taken to his parish church to be buried. Before his death on the battlefi eld he bequeathed all his lands to the Church in Riga.