CHAPTER TWO

INNOCENT III (1198–1216) AND THE IN THE BALTIC REGION

Pope Innocent III took a keen interest in the crusades and made significant contributions to both the idea and practice of crusading. He issued his first general letter calling for a crusade in aid of the in August 1198, only seven months after his election.1 This letter, Post miserabile, started the recruiting for the which was to culminate in the in April 1204 without fulfilling the hopes of restoring . In May 1208 Innocent made an attempt at recruiting crusaders in France for the Holy Land, and in December that year he issued the bull Utinam dominus trying to raise support in Lombardy and the March of for a crusade to the East.2 Neither of these brought any results. With the bull Quia major of April 1213 Innocent began the large-scale preparations for a crusade in aid of the East, intended to strike once the truce made between the kingdom of Jerusalem and the Muslims ended in 1217.3 He may have been emboldened by a resurgence of crusading enthusiasm and by the Christians’ success in Spain, at Las Navas de Tolosa against the Almohad caliph in 1212, which was taken as an indication of divine approval of the Christian cause.4 The extensive preparations for the new crusade were developed fur- ther at the Fourth Council in 1215. During his pontificate

1 Letter of 15 August [1198]: Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. O. Hageneder et al. (Graz, Cologne and Vienna, 1964ff.), vol. 1, no. 336. 2 Letter of 10 December 1208: PL, vol. 215, cols. 1500–3; H. Roscher, Papst Innocenz III. und die Kreuzzüge [Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 21] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1969), p. 133; H. Tillmann, Innocent III [ in the . Selected Studies 12], trans. W. Sax (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1980), pp. 340–1. 3 Letter of [19–29] April 1213: ‘Urkundenbeilage’, ed. G. Tangl, in G. Tangl, Studien zum Register Innocenz’ III. (Weimar, 1929), pp. 88–97; J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades. A Short History (London: Athlone Press, 1987), p. 141. 4 N. Housley, “The thirteenth-century crusades in the Mediterranean”, in The New Cambridge Medieval History. Volume V: c. 1198–c. 1300, ed. D. Abulafia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 572–3. 80 chapter two

Innocent also proclaimed crusades against the heretics in France and against Markward of Anweiler. Innocent’s pontificate also saw the curia being drawn more closely into events in the Baltic region where the missionary activities expanded.

The events in the Baltic region during the pontificate of Innocent III The election of a new for proved to be a turning point for the hitherto unsuccessful mission. In 1199 Hartwig II of Hamburg-Bremen appointed Albert of Buxhövden, a canon of Bremen and the archbishop’s nephew, as the third mis- sionary bishop.5 His determined persistence and energy finally got the mission off the ground, but his ambitions soon led to problems with his missionary collaborators. Shortly after his arrival in Livonia Albert founded the town of and moved the episcopal seat there from Üxküll.6 The mis- sionary work in Livonia now took the form of conquest and con- version by force, and Albert began returning almost annually to Germany to recruit men for the fight against the pagans. He also secured himself a permanent military support by establishing German knights on fiefs in the immediate countryside, and in 1202 a new military order, the Fratres milicie Christi de Livonia or the Sword-Brothers, was founded.7 As more and more land in Livonia and southern was subjugated by the bishop and his helpers, the citizens of Riga and the Sword-Brothers, quarrels arose among the con- querors about the distribution of the conquered lands. In the absence of a secular overlord, the pope became embroiled in these territor- ial disputes in 1210 when the bishop and the master of the Order both visited the curia to argue their case. Innocent mediated a solu- tion in which the Order was to receive a third of the conquered

5 The most detailed study of Bishop Albert is G. Gnegel-Waitschies, Bischof Albert von Riga. Ein Bremer Domherr als Kirchenfürst im Osten (1199–1229) (Hamburg: August Friedrich Velmede Verlag, 1958), but see also F. F. Benninghoven, Der Orden der Schwertbrüder. Fratres Milicie Christi de Livonia (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1965). 6 Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae, ed. L. Arbusow and A. Bauer, [Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters XXIV] (Darmstadt, 1959) VI:3, pp. 22–4. 7 Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae VI:4, p. 24; Benninghoven, Der Orden der Schwertbrüder, p. 39.