Pagans, Saints, and War Criminals: Direct Speech as a Sign of Liminal Interchanges in Latin Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades

Abstract

In the later Middle Ages, the crusades where most European knights fought were initiated first by the Sword Brothers and then the Teutonic Knights in the lands east and south of the Baltic Sea - Livonia, Prussia, and Lithuania (modern day Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, western Russia, Kaliningrad Oblast, and Poland). This article deals with a hitherto unexplored way in which three Latin chronicles produced for the Sword Brethern and the Teutonic Order use direct speech mostly for communication by or to three groups: pagans or recent converts, supernatural beings, and those who commit crimes. As in other frontier areas, here infidel and Christian, the pious and the transgressor, heavenly voices and demons battled but also communicated. The unusual nature of their exchanges is perhaps indicated through the frequent use of direct speech as a signifier of liminal interactions in the chronicles of Peter of Dusburg, Wigand of Marburg, and Henry of Livonia.

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