ANCIENT BALTS AND EMERGENCE OF THE LITHUANIAN STATE
I
n science, the Balts are usually considered a group of Indo-European tribes and nations who live or lived on the Baltic Sea’s eastern coast and speak or spoke related languages that form a separate branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch is today represented only by the still-spoken Lithuanian and Latvian lan-guages. The Balts and their Lithuanian and Latvian predecessors have led a settled life by the Baltic Sea for at least four thousand years. As a re-sult, they are sometimes considered among the most settled and oldest European nations. Baltic tribes started forming at the end of the 3rd mil-lennium BC, when Indo-European newcomers subdued and assimilated local people. The territory inhabited by the Baltic tribes stretched from the Vistula River to the Dnieper and Oka Rivers in the east in the 1st millen-nium AD. The Slavs’ expansion started later, in the second half of the 1st millennium, and determined the assimilation of the eastern Baltic tribes.The Prussian, Yotvingian, Lithuanian and Latvian nations started form-ing in the early 2nd millennium, but only Lithuanian and Latvian nations emerged. The Prussians and Yotvingians were conquered and assimilated by the Teutonic Order, which later founded the state of Prussia.
The Baltic tribes’ settled way of life probably determined that Baltic my-thology has a number of features typical of ancient Indo-European ogy and elements of it are still found in folklore. Interest in Baltic mythol-ogy has grown. The Lithuanian language most strongly retained the ancient sound system among all still-spoken Indo-European languages, with many morphological peculiarities characteristic of extinct or currently unspoken languages such as Hittite, ancient Greek and Sanskrit. Famous French lin-guist Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) once said, “If one wants to know how our ancestors spoke, they have to come and hear the Lithuanian country people speaking.” As Lithuania adopted Christianity relatively late, our folk culture and traditions are abundant in archaic elements pertaining to pagan times. They are also present in the customs of Christian religious holidays
such as Christmas and Easter and other. It could be asserted that pagan celebrations are just “covered” by a layer of Christian holidays. Existing an-cient elements determine the peculiarity of Lithuanian folklore and folk art.
Paganism and References to Lithuania in 1009 Lithuanian paganism has generated an enormous amount of controversial statements and speculations. This has been caused by a contradiction between a myth created in the first half of the 19th century that the pagan epoch was the golden age of Lithuanians and a lack of infor-mation in historical sources. Romanticists searched for images of anthro-pomorphic gods, idols, script, sages and temples, thus trying to detect fea-tures characteristic of pre-Christian Rome or Greek and Roman religious systems. Their opponents considered that Lithuanians did not have a reli-gious system, but merely deified nature. Ancient Lithuanians saw sacred expressions everywhere: in the canopy of heaven with its Sun, Moon and stars, and in earth, fire and water. Such deification of natural phenomena, particularly earth, prevented the development of cultivation of the land.
Sacredness therefore gradually became concentrated in places of worship.
These could be represented by a specific tree or a rock, but oak woods, grass snakes and altar mounds were presumably considered special.
To counter their critics, romanticists would look at Prussian sources dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries in which chroniclers spoke of Prussian gods. According to Simon Grunau’s chronicle, the centre of the Prussian gods’ cult was Rickoyoto, where an evergreen oak grew and be-neath it was a temple of Prussian gods adorned with three idols portraying three Prussian gods. The most important of these was Peckols, the god of the underworld. The second was Thunder, the god of lightning and thunder, and the third was Potrimpo, the god of grain. The cult of these gods and the hierarchy of servants in the cult, Vestal Virgins were described. The story of the trinity of Prussian gods was supplemented over time with new de-tails and illustrated with pictures. Four gods are referred to in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle /Hypatian Codex for 1252. Lithuanian mythologi-cal geography confirms the idea and the high pantheon of Lithuanian Paganism as the “primary nucleus” with four gods. For instance, there are a number of places, hills, forests, trees and rocks named after Thunder.
There are objects with the word “god” in their names, such as a stone “God’s Table” and a hill called “God’s Throne”. There are abundant names referring
to a woodland fairy (Laumė) or a fortune (Laimė). These “primary” altar mounds had to be protected by sages (žynys, originating from the word žinoti (“to know”) in Lithuanian), the Balts’ priests (vaidilos in Lithuanian) or witches (raganos, from the word regėti (“to see”) in Lithuanian).
It is thought that paganism in Lithuania did not manage to establish centres intended for faith, such as temples sustained by other social class-es with script and educational institutions and the social class of clergy.
However, one circumstance is not taken into account: Lithuanians finally established a state in the mid-13th century.
As a rule, the conditions for the emergence of clergy and an institution that manages religious affairs are created in a state because a mechanism is in place to sustain them. The state thus needed an ideology to unite society.
The rulers of other states used Christianity for this purpose. The position of our pagan rulers shows that paganism was equivalent to Christianity for them. Thus, the state had to attempt to speed up the process of transform-ing paganism into an institutional religion from the top. A temple referred to in sources, the sanctuary of Romuva in Nadruvia, and its Kriwe (the chief pagan priest) can be deemed an early manifestation of this process.
It probably was an independent institution sustained through donations.
A sage settled in the territory of the weakest tribe (Nadruvia) to maintain political balance. This is reminiscent of the amphictyony of ancient Greece, which refers to a union of two poleis in an inter-tribal territory to defend an existing sanctuary. The major cult object in Romuva was fire, with its worship reflected in the altar mounds and stones common in Lithuania.
The mythology of burning dead bodies developed in the 13th century.
Rulers were burnt right up to Christianisation, with descriptions surviving in historical sources of the burning of the deceased bodies of Grand Dukes Algirdas and Kęstutis.
A lot of nations created epics, with stories about gods, semi-gods and heroes. Stories were written down later when script appeared. It might be considered that the development of the Lithuanian epic also started.
Heroic songs appeared first, but very few are now known. It is recognised today that several stories written in the Lithuanian Chronicles correspond to epic narratives: these include Gediminas’s dream about the foundation of Vilnius, the military campaigns of Gdl Algirdas to Moscow, and the love story of Birutė and Gdl Kęstutis (Birutė’s story is also interesting because the duchess was not given a Christian name and was buried like a pagan,
but her legend remained even when Christianity became more prevalent, and Birutė Hill in Palanga was respected as the hill of a saint). These nar-ratives were written in the 15th–16th centuries, yet had a historical ba-sis proved by contemporary written sources. A legend about Šventaragis should also be considered part of the forming Lithuanian epic. This story should however be distinguished from the legends invented in the 15th–
16th centuries about the Lithuanians’ Roman origin, relating to Palemon and his sons Kunas, Speras and Barkas.
The Balts started to separate into different groups in the 1st millennium BC. Ptolemy already recognised the Prussian tribes of the Galindians and Yotvingians (or Sudovians) in the 2nd century AD. Western chroniclers started referring to Prussians, Curonians and Semigallians in the early Middle Ages. Lithuanians who lived eastward from these tribes were natu-rally not included in these annals. In any case, the process of differentiation among eastern Balts took place later. Lithuanian tribes seem to have been the fastest-developing of all Baltic tribes at the end of the 1st millennium, so western missionary Bruno Boniface, who was later canonised as a saint,
Lithuanian woods from the “Litwa” series of paintings by Artur Grottger, 1864–1866
came to Lithuania from Prussia in 1009. He Christianised the Lithuanian leader Nethimer here. However, the missionary was slightly later murdered by this brother. Adherence to the principle of inheritance of Nethimer’s power indicates that Lithuania at least progressed to the chiefdom stage.
This fact suggests that there was no major gap between Lithuania and oth-er Westoth-ern and Eastoth-ern European countries (to which Christian missions were also organised) at the time. Unfortunately, St. Bruno Boniface’s mis-sion in 1009 and the discovery of Lithuania remained a historical fragment because Lithuania is not mentioned in historical sources for nearly 200 years after these events. It is highly probable that this was because of the military campaigns launched by Yaroslav I, the Grand Prince of Kievan Rus’, in the mid-11th century (Lithuanians are mentioned among the tribes paying tribute to Kievan Rus’ at the start of the 12th century).
For Lithuania, the year 1009 was much more than just the year of the crime. St. Bruno Boniface discovered Lithuania and its “King” Nethimer, who converted to Christianity. This first Christianisation in Lithuania is directly related to the idea of the millennium of Christian Europe. This
Merkinė Hillfort, one of Lithuania’s most beautiful hillforts.
Wooden castles, some of the most significant defensive structures of the 13th–14th centuries, used to stand here.
Photograph by Mangirdas Bumblauskas
idea originates from the Bible’s revelation to John or Apocalypses, and mis-sionaries used it for their motivation. A millennium is a threshold at which the day of the Last Judgment is awaited. Millenarianism emerged at the end of the 1st millennium of Christ’s epoch, with Christian missions and Christianisation of new countries and their regions spreading to the future Central, Eastern and Northern Europe areas. The following chain of events bears mentioning: the Christianisation of Mieszko, the ruler of Poland (966);
the Christianisation of Vladimir the Great, the ruler of Kievan Rus’ (988);
St. Adalbert’s mission in Prussia which ended in martyrdom (997); the Christianisation of the country initiated by Olaf, the King of Norway (997);
the decision taken by the Althing of Iceland to be Christianised (1000); the coronation of St. Stephen, the first real Christian on the Hungarian throne (1000); the Christianisation of Olaf, Duke of Southern Sweden (1008); and finally the Christianisation of Nethimer, the “King” of Lithuania (1009).
Lithuania thus had to wait nearly a thousand years after Tacitus’s men-tion of the Aesti for its name to be menmen-tioned in historical sources. Yet science was unable to find the pagan Baltic Atlantis after searching for it for a century. The Lithuanians had to form into an independent ethnic group and take a step forward under Nethimer’s rule from a tribal system to a state worth visiting for missionaries.
Lithuania retained its language, mystical-sounding part-songs, sagas, fairy tales and pagan gods. The country bore a pagan face for another 400 years after Nethimer’s rule, with the above-mentioned gods found in the times of Mindaugas’s rule (the Christianisation of Mindaugas and the king-dom also remained merely a fragment). This appearance even survived until the times of the rule of Gdl Gediminas, who spoke more about the chief god than pagan monotheism: “we also have one god.” When explain-ing Gediminas’s dream about a howlexplain-ing iron wolf, pagan sage Lizdeika predicted the establishment of Vilnius and its glory. Although every single duke negotiated Christianisation, Europe of the crusades epoch did not al-low independent Christianisation and effectively alienated Lithuania from Christianity. Lithuania remained an independent civilizational monad, so both Gediminas and Algirdas impolitely (from the West’s perspective) called themselves kings without waiting for recognition and a crown from overseas. Only Vytautas was more polite, striving for a crown and recogni-tion in the West.
Mindaugas Establishes the State of Lithuania.
Mindaugas’s Coronation in 1253
The Curonians appear to have been the most active and militant Baltic tribe in the 11th–12th centuries, with the Lithuanians’ mili-tary campaigns starting at the end of the 12th century. The Lithuanians are known to have launched their first military campaign to the lands of Rus’
in 1183, during which they devastated Pskov and probably Polotsk on the way. Their military campaigns later became more frequent, with one or two campaigns per year, and directed not only towards Russians but also Poland and Livonia.
Marauding campaigns demonstrated the Lithuanians’ growing force, with their number of campaigns surpassing those of the wealthy Prussians and militant Curonians. This trend was seemingly driven by the tribe’s large numbers of men, a particularly important factor in military campaigns.
The rise of the Lithuanian tribe formed the foundations for changes in the system of governance and the soon-to-be-established state of Lithuania.
Mindaugas, the future founder of the state of Lithuania, was referred to as the fourth senior duke of five in the treaty concluded between Volhynia and the Lithuanian dukes in 1219 (and also concluded because of maraud-ing campaigns to Poland). It is clear that Lithuania was therefore still not a state in 1219, but merely a confederation of lands without a single ruler.
Land was the unit of political organisation at the time, with a confederation system under which dukes of separate lands coordinated their actions and senior dukes emerged from among them.
Lithuania still did not have a chief duke in 1219, but a German chronicler referred to Mindaugas as “his Highness the King” in 1245–1246. Lithuania had therefore already been united, but when did this happen? Russian annals dating back to 1235 refer to “Mindaugas’s Lithuania”. This may indicate that Mindaugas had already subdued other dukes under his power. On the other hand, if Mindaugas’s Lithuania existed, “Živinbudas’s” and “Dausprungas’s”
Lithuania may also have existed. An approximate date is therefore deemed more appropriate, with the state of Lithuania established in about 1240.
Mindaugas could not overlook the following sequence of facts in unit-ing Lithuania: the order of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, which was established at the mouth of the Daugava River in 1202, started gradu-ally conquering the Livonians, Latvians, Estonians and Curonians. While
fighting against pagan Prussian tribes related to the Lithuanians, Konrad I of Masovia invited the crusading Teutonic Knights to settle down in Chelmno Land by the Vistula River in 1230. The Poles and Lithuanians paid dearly for this fatal mistake. The Order subdued the Prussians and the pope declared a crusade against the Lithuanians in 1236. Although the Samogitians withstood this military campaign at the Battle of Saulė in 1236, the pliers squeezed Lithuania, and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword became the vassal of the Teutonic Order in 1237.
The emergence of the state of Lithuania was accelerated by the German knights’ aggression and by the establishment of their colonial states by the Baltic Sea. The state of Lithuania appeared primarily as a defensive measure, yet had to be based on a certain social class. This class consisted of Mindaug-as’s armed forces, while the establishment of a single ruler is the most distinc-tive external features of a state’s emergence. It can be asserted from today’s perspective that a nation can protect itself only by establishing a state.
A Teutonic Knight kidnaps a child.
Painter Juliusz Kossak, 19th century
However, Mindaugas still had to establish his power and his situation became very threatening in 1248. His opposition consisted mainly of close relatives, namely nephews who were also assisted by the strangers in the shape of the Livonian Order and Volhynia. Mindaugas managed to over-come this obstacle not only through military campaigns but also diplo-macy, using the Livonian Order’s internal conflicts to attract Andreas von Stirland, Master of the Order, to his side. Thanks to him, Mindaugas and his wife Morta were Christianised and the crown was secured for Mindaugas in the spring or the early summer of 1251.
Mindaugas was Christianised in 1251 in exchange for handing over a large part of Samogitia to the Livonian Order. The main aim of his Christianisation was to acquire the crown and this aim was achieved on 6 July 1253. Mindaugas’s coronation day deserves an honourable place in our calendar, as he was the first and only crowned king of Lithuania. His coronation effectively concluded the establishment of the state of Lithuania as recognised by the world at the time.
It would not suffice to consider Mindaugas merely as one of the most important meritorious personalities. He created the main piece of Lithuania’s early history, comprising the state which allowed the nation to survive and later adopt the civilisation of the West. Lithuania stepped into the historical arena when Europe had already outlived the epoch of the crusades (the seventh crusade took place under Mindaugas’s rule, and
Mindaugas’s coronation.
Painter Adomas Varnas, 1952–1953
the eighth and last one shortly after his death). However, Mindaugas had more tasks than the rulers of other western European countries several centuries ago. Bohemia became the Kingdom of Bohemia in the 12th century, with an independent archdiocese established only in the 14th century. Poland became a kingdom and established an independent arch-diocese at the turn of the 10th–11th centuries, but in the same way as Bohemia it became a vassal of the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire instead of becoming the pope’s vassal. And Mindaugas, having been coronated via a German vassal in the guise of the Livonian Order, became the emper-or’s rather than the pope’s vassal and was immediately granted the right to an independent diocese directly subordinate to the pope. Mindaugas moreover received the king’s crown for the entire dynasty, with the pope giving consent for the coronation of his son in several years’ time. This was a result of Mindaugas’s policy. Mindaugas shrewdly selected an as-sistant, Kristijonas, a brother priest of the Livonian Order. The assistant provided him with information about the Catholic Church’s organisation and the pope’s relations with European leaders, particularly the emperor.
After bribing Andreas von Stirland, the Master of the Livonian Order, Mindaugas stated his conditions to the pope via his envoy, and these were more favourable to Lithuania than Livonia. The pope met Mindaugas’s request, to the Livonian delegates’ surprise. Mindaugas achieved the first international victory of Lithuanian diplomacy, protecting himself from political ties with the Holy Roman Empire. These weighty diplomatic achievements show that Mindaugas managed to expertly divert the course of events in a direction which was favourable for him. He was renowned
After bribing Andreas von Stirland, the Master of the Livonian Order, Mindaugas stated his conditions to the pope via his envoy, and these were more favourable to Lithuania than Livonia. The pope met Mindaugas’s request, to the Livonian delegates’ surprise. Mindaugas achieved the first international victory of Lithuanian diplomacy, protecting himself from political ties with the Holy Roman Empire. These weighty diplomatic achievements show that Mindaugas managed to expertly divert the course of events in a direction which was favourable for him. He was renowned