The profits of the Cross: merchant involvement in the Baltic Crusade (c. 1180-1230)

The establishment of the Roman Catholic Church and a German ethnic community on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea in the Middle Ages was a result of the coordinated efforts of the north German ecclesiastical establishment, the Saxon-Westphalian knighthood, and the merchants of the nascent Hansa in the first half of the thirteenth century. The conversion of the indigenous peoples of the Baltic to Christianity was carried out under the ideological umbrella of crusade as part of the effort to construct an episcopal state in the region. Commercial interests actively supported the crusade deemed necessary to accomplish this conversion effort in order to accomplish their mercantile aims. Conversion entailed the acceptance of the prevalent legal norms and mores of Latin Christendom by the Balts and so provided for a safer and more congenial environment for the conduct of trade by north German merchants.