Teutonic Knights (22 page)

This chivalric spirit was celebrated in poetry and prose. In Prussia it had already stimulated an outpouring of literary creativity, especially between 1320 and 1345, when knights and priests composed religious and historical works of moderately high quality and significant local importance. Encouraged by two grand masters, Luther von Braunschweig and Dietrich von Altenberg, who were both authors themselves, Prussian writers produced lives of saints, translations of selected books of the Bible, and histories of the northern crusades. Composing in their native Middle High German dialects, the authors were more noted for the ambition of their poetry than for their success, but that was a shortcoming to be expected among men untrained in formal rhetoric, whose strength came more from passion and effort than from refined reflection. Although one can belittle the poetic achievement, it is more fitting to be astonished that there was any literature at all. Warfare is not usually compatible with refined literary tastes. How much easier it would have been to adopt the chivalric and spiritual creations of the homeland. Yet the fact remains that the Teutonic Order did not do so. It created a literature for its own needs.

The flowering of literary composition was brief. It had sprouted in the late thirteenth century, come to full flower before the middle of the next century, faded quickly, and died after the fateful events of 1410. Lists of the books kept in various convents and personal libraries suggest that the decline can be attributed to the authors having met the limited needs of the military order and not to an end of interest in literature. Few libraries in 1394 were large. The Marienburg collection of forty-one books in Latin and twelve in German was a respectable library for Northern Europe.

The general goal of these writers was to compose poems which encouraged readers and listeners to emulate the deeds of their predecessors. It was the customary practice in well-managed convents for everyone to eat together in silence, while one of the priests read aloud the lives of the saints, stories from the Bible, or the history of the order. Priority was given to the translation of books of the Old Testament (Judith, Esther, Esra, Nehemiah, David, Job, Macabees, and the histories) which were more suitable to a military tradition than was the New Testament. In fact, one could say without too much exaggeration that the medieval world often found the Old Testament more appealing than the New Testament. With no medieval group was this more true than with the Teutonic Order. Moses, Solomon, and David were men whom knights could understand. The rules of the judges were like those they followed every day. They easily grasped the essential elements of combat between the Lord’s chosen people and their multitude of enemies.

The knights were less concerned with the New Testament. Although they were interested in Christ’s message as it related to miracles, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgement, knights could more easily imagine themselves at Armageddon. Appropriately, a prose version of the Apocalypse was among the first translations produced. Legends of the saints, especially tales of those martyred for the faith, were popular. They also celebrated a local saint, St Dorothea (d.1394 in Marienwerder) and recorded her miracles for the edification of posterity.

There was little effort to use the local literature outside the order itself. Education was the province of the bishops and canons. Priests obtained a master’s degree in theology so as to qualify for advancement in the ranks of the canons and perhaps to become a bishop, and knights listened to popular epics and ballads. Humanistic education lay in the future; literature was studied as a guide to grammar, then abandoned as quickly as possible. Even so, over the years hundreds of ambitious young men from Prussia and Livonia went to study abroad, most going to Italy, where the universities were the best and most famous. Bologna attracted the largest number, although many later went to German universities established in the second half of the fourteenth century. The Teutonic Knights considered founding a university of their own in Culm, and in 1386 obtained papal permission to do so; however, they failed to follow through.

The most that can be said is that Prussia had its own backwater Scholastic Renaissance, impressive in its aspirations and accomplishments, but also very limited.

Noticeable by its absence was the love poetry that dominated the courts where the knights had spent their youth. That this could be suppressed so completely tells us much about the austerity of the Teutonic Knights’ religious practices.

Historically the order had considered the Virgin Mary the ideal woman and had dedicated itself to her veneration. The full title of the order, it will be remembered, was the Hospital of St Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem. Thus the knights considered themselves warriors of Lady Mary. A modern literary historian found this such a strong trait that she remarked: ‘It seemed, indeed, as though no Marienritter could envision a religious literary product without bringing Lady Mary into it’.

The significance of this devotion to the Virgin and a small host of other female saints (Barbara, Dorothea) is difficult to assess fully, but doubtless it was partly a sublimation of sexual drives into religious experience. The struggle to remain chaste was an unceasing one, a process that was aided by constant physical activity in the hunt and training for battle, simple food, a closely regulated daily life, attendance at church service day and night, fasts, watches, and the encouragement of personal piety connected with a devotion to the Virgin and the saints, figures that came to represent home, love, and the future life across the grave. Also, the worship of Lady Mary was the logical culmination of conventional romantic poetry, a poetry that exalted the virtues of women to the point that no mortal could live up to the model. This idealisation was easily transferred to the ultimate mother image, the mother of God. Lastly, there was the purely religious significance of the mother of God intervening to protect and save suffering mankind. The warriors of the Teutonic Order felt themselves to be suffering voluntarily on her behalf both in the austerity of their daily life and in their possible death on the battlefield.

In 1389 one Western author of crusader propaganda, Philippe de Mezières, wrote a description of the holy wars in the Baltic, using the device of a dream in which Divine Providence guided him throughout the world in the company of Queen Truth and the court ladies, Justice, Peace, and Mercy. As chivalrous literature it has some merit of its own, but its source of inspiration was France, not Prussia. It only indirectly reflected the knightly values of the Teutonic Order.

The Teutonic Knights liked secular literary works, but they favoured especially histories filled with battle, acts of valour, humorous incidents, and short reflections on God’ s justice and man’s limited capacity to understand why He sometimes awarded victory and at other times defeat. Stories of warfare across the Samogitian frontier were detailed and explicit, offering lessons applicable to future combat.

The order’s patronage of poets was generous. The Treasurer’s Book at Marienburg (1399 – 1409) recorded numerous payments to joungleurs and fools, singers and orators, musicians and entertainers. Not only was the grand master of those years, Conrad von Jungingen, a patron of the arts, but he needed performers to entertain visitors and crusaders. However, the Treasurer’s Book may reflect a later era’s more secular court life better than a period fifty years earlier. Assuming its expenditures represented those of 1350 would be a questionable anachronism.

Numerous poems mention music, song, and dances. Women were not present at the entertainment provided by the order, despite a popular account by a much later historian who described Winrich von Kniprode as leading a lady into the ballroom for formal dancing. Dancing was an entertainment provided by the secular nobles and burghers in the cities where the crusaders stayed overnight on their journey to Königsberg. Troubadours were often provided by the guests themselves. Crusaders from famous courts brought their best musicians and singers to provide them with the means of increasing their own prestige while passing the long evenings of a northern winter in banquets and feasts. The internationally famed French poet, Guillaume de Machaut, was there. The Teutonic Knights had their own drummers, buglers, and pipers who played on every campaign. No intrusion into the wilderness was made without brass music and rolling drums; but that was military music, not professional entertainment. Lastly, there was music for the frequent prayers and masses. Choirs sang mass in the major convents, where order priests provided free schooling for burgher sons on the condition that they sing in religious services.

It would be well to remember that by modem standards the Teutonic Order was a pious organisation. That it combined this piety with a love of political intrigue, a delight in war, an enthusiasm for the hunt, and an enjoyment of good food and entertainment is an expression of the complexity of the mind, not its simplicity. If at various times one aspect of this complexity stands out among the documentary evidence above the others, that must be accepted with caution, because whim and luck have determined what evidence was written down and what has survived. However, the surviving literature indicates a deep religious feeling among the members of the order.

At the same time, there is evidence that a love of worldly display was becoming an increasingly dominant characteristic of the order. This evidenced itself less in the literature than in the architecture. The Teutonic Knights impressed their contemporaries more by their achievements in building than in any other way.

The danger of serious pagan attacks in the heart of Prussia had passed by 1320, and the castles constructed over the next three decades are testimony to changing military needs. The simple square log and earth castles of the early period were replaced and enlarged, particularly in the living quarters, so that the convents became comfortable and convenient, suitable for guests as well as for the garrison. Impressive brick structures around a central court contained a dormitory, a chapel, a chapter room, a dining room, and often a small recreation area on the second floor; the private rooms of the commanding officer were generally located there as well. On the ground floor were work areas: a brewery, bakery, offices, equipment storage and repair, and the powder magazine. In the basements were storage areas, the kitchen, and the central heating plant.

The castles constructed before 1320 were designed for war and characterised by thick walls and high, stout towers. After 1350 the men who designed the castles (apparently clerics who had studied architecture) emphasised comfort and elegance. They had towers rising to a height of fifty-five metres, decorated capitals, carved archways, Gothic windows, and toilet and bathing facilities.

The showplace of Prussia was Marienburg. Karl von Trier had begun an expansion of the small rectangular castle about 1320 because the simple chapel, refectory, and dormitory were insufficient for the number of visitors who expected lodging there. His architects followed recent French designs, and later grand masters copied ideas from Avignon, where the popes were building a palace that was the wonder of the age. Karl’s plan for Marienburg emphasised a central court surrounded by multi-storeyed red brick buildings. This high castle, as it was called, was fifty-two metres square, with machicolated walls and Gothic windows and doorways. The north gate was a monumental fourteen metres high, very suitable for ceremonial entrances but still practically unassailable. Around the courtyard was a two-storeyed walkway, covered for protection from the weather and decorated with columns and Gothic openings for a harmonious aesthetic effect. The buildings were four storeys high, topped with tile roofs, and so spaced that it seemed that building was piled atop building, each climbing further into the sky. In fact everywhere in the castle, inside and out, there was a successful effort to create the impression of monumentality: wall after wall, building after building, each topping the structures in front, all done in a dark red brick which gave a unity to the composition.

The low basement with broad arches created a number of large rooms for supplies, workshops, cells for a few prisoners, an iron-lined treasury vault, and the kitchen and furnace. Public offices were on the ground floor so as to be easily accessible for visitors and knights.

The convent was on the second floor, the north wing of which contained the large Mary Chapel and the chapter room. The chapel was entered through the highly decorated Golden Door (which was finished only in the fifteenth century). To provide more light for the large Gothic windows, the chapel jutted beyond the square outline of the castle. Thirty-eight metres long, ten wide, and more than fourteen high, the chapel was covered with a new form of arch: eight ribs stretched down from the boss to the corbels mounted half-way up the walls, creating a complicated and pleasing star pattern on the ceiling. Below the chapel of St Mary was the Chapel of St Anne, where the grand masters were buried.

In the chapter room, where important business was discussed, there was another striking innovation in arching, based on three narrow central pillars. The ribs formed a series of triangles, giving an air of spaciousness and ease to the room. Its pleasing proportions (2 x 2.5) further aided in setting a mood suitable for harmonious business and memorable receptions.

The architects enlarged the dormitories in the east and south wings, built day rooms, and constructed walkways to the toilets beyond the walls. The Priests’ Tower soared high above the battlements, giving a magnificent view of the surrounding flat countryside and the rivers.

Winrich von Kniprode began the middle castle, a much larger but lower structure with a huge courtyard. As a visitor entered through the main gate, he saw the great refectory on the left, with a large kitchen, hospital, and rooms for guests. On the right, along the riverfront, he saw the palace of the grand master. Straight ahead was the wall and main gate of the high castle. The five-storeyed residence of the grand master was one of the most remarkable palatial homes of the Middle Ages. The Gothic decoration on the towers, built outward in successive rows of brick, with strong vertical lines in the windows and a peaked roof, caught every visitor’s attention immediately. The interior, with its fantastic vaulting, lived up to the promise of the exterior. The large rooms had the feel of grace and comfort. The air of simplicity created by the plain brick and the austerity of the furnishings stood in stark contrast to the lavishness of the Gothic detail around the windows and doors; and the intricacy of the ribbing stood out all the more effectively for the puritan restraint found elsewhere.

The middle castle was no sooner completed than a lower castle was built. This addition was necessary to bring all the outbuildings inside the defensive system. Although the high and middle castles were intended to be defended separately, the whole formed a unit that was stronger than the sum of its parts. The town, which lay to the rear, had its own walls and towers, and the entire castle was protected by the river and extensive moats. The three castles covered more than eighteen hectares. The visitor approaching by water faced powerful walls extending to the narrow beach and set back just far enough that ships could not approach close enough for men to spring from the masts onto the walls. There was no true harbour, but there was a strongly fortified water gate at the landing place. The visitor coming by land passed through successive lines of defences, each more heavily defended than the last.

The very size and complexity of this bastion was useful for its effect on visiting crusaders and diplomats. The effectiveness of the whole fortification proved itself in 1410, when the castle was attacked for the first time and a few thousand men repulsed far larger numbers of Polish and Lithuanian besiegers.

Marienburg was designed for comfort. There were at least five separate bathhouses for the eighty knights, the grand master, the hospital, the servants, and the visitors. In each were hot rooms, steam rooms, and bathing tubs; and there were skilled attendants who knew how to bleed painlessly and to apply the hot towels considered essential to curing the colds so common in the wet northern climate. There were also nineteen wells lined with stone, and numerous toilet facilities. The central heating produced a room temperature of sixty-eight degrees in a modern test; probably the servants were able to do even better in the fourteenth century. There were covered walkways between all buildings so that no one needed to go into the rain or stand guard in discomfort.

As builder of this fortress, Winrich von Kniprode was able to associate his personality with it in ways that gave him fame far beyond the frontiers of the Holy Roman Empire. His successors improved upon the decoration and comfort, adding innovations as quickly as they heard of them.