The Sword Brothers Founded 1202
The Brotherhood of the Sword was founded in 1202, two years after the arrival of Bishop Albert of Riga in Livonia. The brotherhood was, in effect, a corporate military body under the patronage of the Virgin Mary, charged with the defence of the Latin church in Livonia. The brotherhood was modelled on the established military orders of the Holy Land — the Templars and the Hospitallers — and it was given, by papal grant, the privileges that the established orders had acquired.
The brotherhood was, in its first years, a small and improvised body. Its first Master, Wenno von Rohne, was a German nobleman of modest background who had accompanied Albert to Livonia. Its initial complement was, by all accounts, no more than a few dozen knight-brothers, augmented by a small number of locally recruited lay brothers. The brotherhood’s principal base was the city of Riga, where it was assigned a house and a chapel by the bishop.
The brotherhood was, in the wider history of the Teutonic Order, an important chapter. The brotherhood was the first military-religious order established in the eastern Baltic, and it was the principal military instrument of the Latin church in Livonia for the first third of the thirteenth century. The brotherhood’s experience of the conquest and defence of the eastern Baltic was the first substantial body of practical knowledge on which the Teutonic Order could draw in the much larger conquest of Prussia.
The Circumstances of the Foundation
The circumstances of the foundation are described in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, the principal contemporary source for the early history of the Latin church in Livonia. Henry records that Albert, recognising that the Latin church in Livonia required a permanent military force for its defence, established a fraternitas militiae — a military brotherhood — under the patronage of the Virgin Mary.
The brotherhood was founded at a moment of considerable urgency. The Latin church’s presence in Livonia depended, in 1202, on a small and exposed strip of fortified posts along the lower Daugava, and the Latin church’s hold on the territory was, precarious. The native populations — Livs, Latgalians, Estonians, Curonians, Semigallians — were not politically unified, and the Latin church’s authority was, dependent on the goodwill of the local chieftains. Albert’s intention, in founding the brotherhood, was to provide the Latin church in Livonia with a permanent military force that would not depend on the goodwill of the local chieftains.
The Papal Recognition
The brotherhood was given, by papal grant, the privileges of a militaris religio — a knighthood bound by religious vows and authorised to bear arms in defence of Christendom. The papal grant, which was made by Pope Innocent III, was confirmed in a series of bulls in the years 1204 and 1205. The bulls gave the brotherhood the right to receive donations, the right to hold property, the right to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction over its own members, and the right to bear arms in defence of the Latin church.
The papal recognition was an important step in the consolidation of the brotherhood’s institutional position. The recognition gave the brotherhood a measure of independence from the bishop, and it gave the brotherhood a legal status that would persist, in various forms, for the next three and a half centuries.
The First Master and the Early Years
The brotherhood’s first Master, Wenno von Rohne, was appointed by Albert himself. Wenno was a German nobleman of modest background who had accompanied Albert to Livonia, and he was, a loyal servant of the bishop’s policy. Wenno’s mastership was a period of consolidation rather than expansion: he secured the brotherhood’s first possessions within Riga, established the basic liturgical customs, and obtained from the German merchants of Lübeck and Riga the material support that the brotherhood required.
The brotherhood’s first substantial military operation was the campaign of 1206 against the Livs and the Latgalians, in which the brotherhood played a supporting role to the German crusaders that Albert had brought with him. The campaign was eventually successful, and the basic framework of the Latin church in Livonia was established.
The Significance of the Foundation
The foundation of the brotherhood, in 1202, is, in the wider history of the Teutonic Order, an important chapter. The brotherhood was, in effect, the first substantial territorial possession of a military-religious order in the Baltic. The working partnership between the bishop, the brotherhood, and the German mercantile community of Riga was a model that the Teutonic Order would encounter, in different forms, in the much larger conquest of Prussia.
The foundation of the brotherhood is also important for the longer history of the eastern Baltic. The brotherhood was, in effect, the principal agent of the German settlement of Livonia, and the German-speaking ruling class of the brotherhood would persist, in a recognisable form, until the upheavals of the twentieth century. The legal traditions, the ecclesiastical institutions, and the cultural assumptions of the brotherhood would persist, in modified form, in the Livonian Confederation, in the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, and in the modern Baltic states.
The brotherhood’s catastrophe at the battle of Saule in 1236 was, in the longer term, a fortunate event for the Teutonic Order. The catastrophe brought into the Teutonic Order the substantial territorial possessions of the brotherhood and the considerable body of practical experience that the brotherhood had accumulated in thirty-five years of frontier warfare. The Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, which the brotherhood became in 1237, was, in effect, the brotherhood under a different corporate name.
Sources
- Benninghoven, Friedrich. Der Orden der Schwertbrüder: Fratres Milicie Christi de Livonia. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005.
- Favreau-Lilie, Marie-Luise. Die Ritterbrüder im livländischen Zweig des Deutschen Ordens. Cologne: Böhlau, 2003.
- Hjorth, Poul, ed. Henrici Cronicon Lyvoniae. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, 1962.
Related Reading
For the bishop who founded the brotherhood, see the article on Bishop Albert of Riga. For the broader context of the Latin church in the eastern Baltic, see the article on the founding of Livonia and the Sword Brothers. For the brotherhood’s history, see the parent cluster on the Sword Brothers. The catastrophe that ended the brotherhood’s effective history is treated in the article on the battle of Saule 1236. The Livonian branch that the brotherhood became in 1237 is treated in the parent overview of the Livonian branch. The Order’s Prussian counterpart, with which the Livonian branch maintained close relations, is treated in the history of the Teutonic state in Prussia. The grand master who negotiated the 1237 merger is treated in the article on Hermann von Salza.