1.
Livonian language
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It is a dormant language, with its last native speaker having died in 2013. It is closely related to Estonian, the native land of the Livonian people is the Livonian Coast of the Gulf of Livonia, located in Latvia, in the north of the Kurzeme peninsula. Some ethnic Livonians are learning or have learned the language in an attempt to revive it, some other Livonians argued, however, that there are some native speakers left, including Viktors Bertholds cousin, Grizelda Kristiņa. An article published by the Foundation for Endangered Languages in 2007 stated that there were only 182 registered Livonians, in a 2009 conference proceeding, it was mentioned that there could be at best 10 living native speakers of the language. The promotion of the Livonian language as a language has been advanced mostly by the Livonian Cultural Centre. The language is taught in universities in Latvia, Estonia and Finland, in the nineteenth century, about 2,000 people still spoke Livonian, in 1852, the number of Livonians was 2,394. Various historical events have led to the near total language death of Livonian, In the thirteenth century,1522, The introduction of the Reformation. Russians, Swedes, Danes, Lithuanians and Poles fought over the area, Livonia and Courland became provinces of Tsarist Russia. 1918, The founding of Latvia, the Livonian language re-blossomed, World War II and Soviet Union, Marginalization of Livonian. Declared extinct on 6 June 2013, the Livonians ancestors settled in Livonia in the first half of the 1st millennium B. C. probably moving along the Daugava. The Livonian settlement of Curonia was also begun then, in the 12th-13th centuries the Livonian lands were conquered by the Teutonic Order. It is estimated that at the time of the German colonization, there were 30,000 Livonians. In the 19th century the number of speakers of the Couronian dialect is estimated as follows,2,074 people in 1835,2,324 people in 1852,2,390 people in 1858,2,929 people in 1888. According to the Soviet Census of 1989,226 people were Livonian, according to estimates of the Liv Culture Center in 2010, only 40 people spoke Livonian in everyday life. In 2013, there were none who spoke Livonian in everyday life, the first Livonian words were recorded in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry. The first written sources about Livonian appeared in the 16th century, the collection of Livonian poems Mariners sacred songs and prayers was translated to Latvian by Jānis Prints and his son Jānis Jr. was published in 1845. The first book in Livonian was the Gospel of Matthew, and was published in 1863 in London in both the eastern and western Courland dialects and it was translated to eastern Couronian by Nick Pollmann, and to western Couronian by Jānis Prints and Peteris. The plan with the book was to establish a standard orthography by F. Wiedemann, the total circulation was 250 copies
2.
Estonian language
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Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken natively by about 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 outside Estonia. It belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages, along with Finnish, Karelian, and other nearby languages. The Uralic languages do not belong to the Indo-European languages, Estonian is distantly related to Hungarian and to the Sami languages. Estonian has been influenced by Swedish, German, and Russian, furthermore, the apocope of word-final sounds is extensive and has contributed to a shift from a purely agglutinative to a fusional language. The basic word order is subject–verb–object, modern standard Estonian has evolved on the basis of the dialects of Northern Estonia. The domination of Estonia after the Northern Crusades, from the 13th century to 1918 by Denmark, Germany, Sweden, the oldest written records of the Finnic languages of Estonia date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words, the earliest extant samples of connected Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in the Estonian language was printed, the book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached the reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S. Wanradt and J. Koell dating to 1535, an Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into southern Estonian in 1686, the two languages were united based on northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle. Writings in Estonian became more significant in the 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period, the birth of native Estonian literature was in 1810 to 1820 when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. His birthday on March 14 is celebrated in Estonia as the Mother Tongue Day, a fragment from Petersons poem Kuu expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language, Kas siis selle maa keel Laulutuules ei või Taevani tõustes üles Igavikku omale otsida. In English, Can the language of this land In the wind of incantation Rising up to the heavens Not seek for eternity. Kristjan Jaak Peterson From 1525 to 191714,503 titles were published in Estonian, in modern times Jaan Kross and Jaan Kaplinski remain as two of Estonias best known and most translated writers. Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, after the Estonian War of Independence in 1919, the Estonian language became the state language of the newly independent country. In 1945,97. 3% of Estonia considered itself ethnic Estonian, when Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in World War II, the status of the Estonian language changed to the first of two official languages. As with Latvia many immigrants entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement, in the second half of the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism intensified, resulting in widespread knowledge of Russian throughout the country. The Russian language was termed as ‘the language of friendship of nations’ and was taught to Estonian children, although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in schools was compulsory, in practice learning the language was often considered unnecessary
3.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
4.
North Germanic languages
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The language group is sometimes referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Swedish and Norwegian scholars and laypeople. Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries have a Scandinavian language as their native language, languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are spoken commonly on Greenland and, to a lesser extent, by immigrants in North America. Dialects with the assigned to the northern group formed from the Proto-Germanic language in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe. At last around the year 200 AD, speakers of the North Germanic branch became distinguishable from the other Germanic language speakers, the early development of this language branch is attested through runic inscriptions. The original vowel remained when nasalised *ōn and when before /z/, Proto-Germanic *geƀō ‘gift’ > Northwest Germanic *geƀu >, North Germanic *gjavu > with u-umlaut *gjǫvu > ON gjǫf, and West Germanic *gebu > OE giefu, cf. Goth giba. Proto-Germanic *tungōn ‘tongue’ > late Northwest Germanic *tungā > *tunga > ON tunga, OHG zunga, OE tunge, vs. Goth tuggō. *geƀōz ‘of a gift’ > late Northwest Germanic *geƀāz >, North Germanic *gjavaz > ON gjafar, the rhotacism of /z/ to /r/, with presumably a rhotic fricative of some kind as an earlier stage. This change probably affected West Germanic much earlier and then spread from there to North Germanic and this is confirmed by an intermediate stage ʀ, clearly attested in late runic East Norse at a time when West Germanic had long merged the sound with /r/. The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this, Germanic *sa, sō, þat ‘this, that’ + proximal *si ‘here’, Runic Norse, nom. sg. þeim-si, etc. with declension of the 1st part, fixed form with declension on the 2nd part, ON sjá, þessi m. Some innovations are not found in West and East Germanic such as, Sharpening of geminate /jj/ and /ww/ according to Holtzmanns law Occurred also in East Germanic, Proto-Germanic *twajjôN > Old Norse tveggja, Gothic twaddjē, but > Old High German zweiio Word-final devoicing of stop consonants. Proto-Germanic *nahtuN > *nāttu > *nǭttu > Old Norse nótt /ɑi̯/ > /ɑː/ before /r/ Proto-Germanic *sairaz > *sāraz > *sārz > Old Norse sárr, with original /z/ Proto-Germanic *gaizaz > *geizz > Old Norse geirr. General loss of word-final /n/, following the loss of short vowels. Proto-Germanic *bindanaN > *bindan > Old Norse binda, but > Old English bindan and this also affected stressed syllables, Proto-Germanic *in > Old Norse í Vowel breaking of /e/ to /jɑ/ except after w, j or l. The diphthong /eu/ was also affected, shifting to /jɒu/ at an early stage and this diphthong is preserved in Old Gutnish and survives in modern Gutnish. In other Norse dialects, the /j/-onset and length remained, the word *ek, which could occur both stressed and unstressed, appears varyingly as ek and jak throughout Old Norse. Loss of initial /j/, and also of /w/ before a round vowel, Proto-Germanic *wulfaz > North Germanic ulfz > Old Norse ulfr The development of u-umlaut, which rounded stressed vowels when /u/ or /w/ followed in the next syllable. This followed vowel breaking, with ja /jɑ/ being u-umlauted to jǫ /jɒ/, Norwegian settlers brought Old West Norse to Iceland and the Faroe Islands around 800
5.
Latvian language
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Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It was previously known in English as Lettish which remains the standard today in various forms in most other Germanic languages, there are about 1.3 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and 100,000 abroad. Altogether,2 million, or 80% of the population of Latvia, of those,1.16 million or 56% use it as their primary language at home. The use of the Latvian language in areas of social life in Latvia is increasing. Latvian is a Baltic language and is most closely related to Lithuanian, in addition there is some disagreement whether Latgalian and New Curonian, which are mutually intelligible with Latvian, should be considered varieties or separate languages. Latvian first appeared in Western print in the century with the reproduction of the Lords Prayer in Latvian in Sebastian Münsters Cosmographia Universalis. Latvian belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family and it is one of two living Baltic languages with an official status. The Baltic languages are of particular interest to linguists because they retain many archaic features believed to have present in the early stages of the Proto-Indo-European language. There is some evidence to suggest the existence of a Balto-Slavic language group after the break-up of Proto-Indo-European, there exist a number of Baltic words that are similar to Sanskrit or Latin and which lack counterparts in Slavic languages. Latvian, Lithuanian, Armenian, Albanian, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages are grouped as satem languages, while the possession of many archaic features is undeniable, the exact manner by which the Baltic languages have developed from the Proto-Indo-European language is not clear. According to some speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from Western Baltic between 400 and 600. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800, with a period of being one language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century and this process of consolidation started in the 13th century after the Livonian Crusade and forced christianization. These tribes came under Livonian rule thus forming a political, economic. The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a made by Nikolaus Ramm. Until the 19th century, the Latvian language was influenced by the German language. In the middle of the 19th century the First Latvian National Awakening was started, led by “Young Latvians” who popularized the use of Latvian language, participants to this movement laid the foundations for standard Latvian and also popularized the Latvianization of loan words. However, in the 1880s, when Czar Alexander III came into power, during this period, some Latvian scholars even suggested adopting Cyrillic for use in Latvian
6.
Lithuanian language
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Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.9 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania, Lithuanian is a Baltic language, related to Latvian. It is written in a Latin alphabet, Lithuanian is often said to be the most conservative living Indo-European language, retaining many features of Proto-Indo-European now lost in other Indo-European languages. Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant, among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is extraordinarily conservative, retaining many archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. For this reason, it is one of the most important sources in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation, the Proto-Balto-Slavic languages branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Proto-Baltic branched off into Proto-West Baltic and Proto-East Baltic, according to some glottochronological speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between AD400 and AD600. The Greek geographer Ptolemy had already written of two Baltic tribe/nations by name, the Galindai and Sudinoi in the 2nd century AD, the differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after AD800, for a long period, they could be considered dialects of a single language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th or 15th century, also, the 13th- and 14th-century occupation of the western part of the Daugava basin by the German Sword Brethren had a significant influence on the languages independent development. The earliest surviving written Lithuanian text is a translation dating from about 1503–1525 of the Lords Prayer, the Hail Mary, printed books existed after 1547, but the level of literacy among Lithuanians was low through the 18th century, and books were not commonly available. Brought into the country by book smugglers despite the threat of prison sentences. Jonas Jablonskis made significant contributions to the formation of the standard Lithuanian language and his proposal for Standard Lithuanian was based on his native Western Aukštaitijan dialect with some features of the eastern Prussian Lithuanians dialect spoken in Lithuania Minor. These dialects had preserved archaic phonetics mostly intact due to the influence of the neighbouring Old Prussian language, Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet era, it was used in official discourse along with Russian, Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages, along with Latvian. An earlier Baltic language, Old Prussian, was extinct by the 18th century, such an opinion was first represented by the likes of August Schleicher, and to a certain extent, Antoine Meillet. Endzelīns thought that the similarity between Baltic and Slavic was explicable through language contact while Schleicher, Meillet and others argued for a kinship between the two families. An attempt to reconcile the opposing stances was made by Jan Michał Rozwadowski and he proposed that the two language groups were indeed a unity after the division of Indo-European, but also suggested that after the two had divided into separate entities, they had posterior contact. The genetic kinship view is augmented by the fact that Proto-Balto-Slavic is easily reconstructible with important proofs in historic prosody, vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov believed in the unity of Balto-Slavic, but not in the unity of Baltic. In the 1960s, they proposed a new division, that into East-Baltic, West-Baltic, the Ivanov–Toporov theory is gaining ground among students of comparative-historic grammar of Indo-European language, and seems to be replacing the previous two stances in most PIE textbooks
7.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
8.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
9.
Romanization of Russian
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Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet. Scientific transliteration, also known as the International Scholarly System, is a system that has used in linguistics since the 19th century. It is based on the Czech alphabet and formed the basis of the GOST, OST8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as a standard of the COMECON. GOST7. 79-2000 System of Standards on Information, Librarianship and it is the official standard of both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO stadards for travel documents and it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, ISO/R9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization. It covers Russian and seven other Slavic languages, ISO9,1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO. It is based on its predecessor ISO/R9,1968, which it deprecates, for Russian, the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, which was based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products, American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975. The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, British Standard 2979,1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, and a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975. The BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce, the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947. In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, in 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was also abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST52535. 1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports, in 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST52535. 1-2006. The standard was abandoned in 2013, finally in 2013, Order No.320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force. It states that all names in the passports must be transliterated using the ICAO system. This system differs from the GOST52535. 1-2006 system in two things, ц is transliterated into ts, ъ is transliterated into ie, Scholarly ¹ Some archaic letters are transcribed in different ways
10.
Baltic Sea
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The Baltic Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltic countries, and the North European Plain. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Bay of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. The Baltic Sea is connected by waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea Canal. Traffic history Historically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea and they were collected in the Øresund at Kronborg castle near Helsingør, in the Great Belt at Nyborg. In the Little Belt, the site of intake was moved to Fredericia, the narrowest part of Little Belt is the Middelfart Sund near Middelfart. Oceanography Geographers widely agree that the physical border of the Baltic is a line drawn through the southern Danish islands, Drogden-Sill. The Drogden Sill is situated north of Køge Bugt and connects Dragør in the south of Copenhagen to Malmö, it is used by the Øresund Bridge, including the Drogden Tunnel. By this definition, the Danish Straits are part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg, another usual border is the line between Falsterbo, Sweden and Stevns Klint, Denmark, as this is the southern border of Øresund. Its also the border between the shallow southern Øresund and notably deeper water, hydrography and biology Drogden Sill sets a limit to Øresund and Darss Sill, and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm. The Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have a rich biology, the remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen and in species. While Tacitus called it Mare Suebicum after the Germanic people called the Suebi, the origin of the latter name is speculative. Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt and he might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named Baltia with reference to accounts of Pytheas and it is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from belt and mean near belt of sea, meanwhile, others have suggested that the name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This root and its meaning were retained in both Lithuanian and Latvian. On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that the name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian, yet another explanation is that the name originally meant enclosed sea, bay as opposed to open sea. Some Swedish historians believe the name derives from the god Balder of Nordic mythology, in the Middle Ages the sea was known by variety of names
11.
Livonians
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The Livonians or Livs are the indigenous inhabitants of Northern Latvia and Southwestern Estonia. They spoke the Uralic Livonian language, a language which was related to Estonian. The last person to have learned Livonian as a tongue, Grizelda Kristiņa. As of 2010, there were approximately 30 people who had learned it as a second language, in 2011, there were 250 people who claimed Livonian ethnicity in Latvia. The exact date of the Uralic migration to the region has been disputed, linguistic estimations place the arrival of ancestors of modern Livonians on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea around the Gulf of Riga as early as 1800 B. C. Historically, the Livonians lived in two areas of Latvia, one group in Livonia and another on the northern coast of Courland. The latter were referred as Curonians, together with the Balts living there, the Livonians referred to themselves as rāndalist and supported themselves mainly by fishing, but also by agriculture and animal husbandry. However, with the traders came missionaries from Western Europe who wanted to convert the pagan Livonians to Christianity. It has been suggested that the first person to convert some Livonians to Christianity was the Danish archbishop Absalon, in the 12th century, Germans invaded Livonia and established a base in Ykskyle, known today as Ikšķile. Archbishop Hartvig II converted some Livonians in the area, including the local chieftain Caupo of Turaida. After Meinhard died in 1196, his place was taken by Berthold, Berthold tried to convert the Livonians by force, launching two raids on Livonia. The first took place in 1196, but he was forced to retreat to Germany after being ambushed near Salaspils and he tried again in 1198, but this time he was killed by the Livonian soldier Ymaut. Berthold was followed by Albert von Buxhövden, who forced the Livonian leaders at the mouth of the Daugava River to give him land to build a Christian settlement, from this settlement, the city of Riga grew. In a campaign that was part of the known as the Livonian Crusade. In 1208, Pope Innocent III declared that all Livonians had been converted to Christianity, afterwards they were obliged to join the Knights of the Sword as infantry during the wars against the Estonians and the Latvian tribes, which continued until 1217. Before the German Conquests Livonian inhabited territory was divided in lands of Daugava Livonians, Satezele, Turaida, Idumeja, during the Livonian Crusade, once prosperous Livonia was devastated, and whole regions were almost completely depopulated. This vacuum was filled by Latvian tribes – Curonians, Semigallians, Latgallians and Selonians – who started to move into the area around 1220, and continued to do so for at least thirty years. They settled mostly in the Daugava Valley, so that the Livonians of Livonia in the east were cut off from those living on the peninsula of Curonia in the west
12.
Latvia
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Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, one of the three Baltic states. It is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Latvia has 1,957,200 inhabitants and a territory of 64,589 km2. The country has a seasonal climate. Latvia is a parliamentary republic established in 1918. The capital city is Riga, the European Capital of Culture 2014, Latvia is a unitary state, divided into 119 administrative divisions, of which 110 are municipalities and 9 are cities. Latvians and Livs are the people of Latvia. Latvian and Lithuanian are the two surviving Baltic languages. Despite foreign rule from the 13th to 20th centuries, the Latvian nation maintained its identity throughout the generations via the language, Latvia and Estonia share a long common history. Until World War II, Latvia also had significant minorities of ethnic Germans, Latvia is historically predominantly Protestant Lutheran, except for the Latgale region in the southeast, which has historically been predominantly Roman Catholic. The Russian population has brought a significant portion of Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Republic of Latvia was founded on 18 November 1918, however, its de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II. The peaceful Singing Revolution, starting in 1987, called for Baltic emancipation of Soviet rule and it ended with the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia on 4 May 1990, and restoring de facto independence on 21 August 1991. Latvia is a democratic and developed country and member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, CBSS, the IMF, NB8, NIB, OECD, OSCE, and WTO. For 2014, Latvia was listed 46th on the Human Development Index and it used the Latvian lats as its currency until it was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2014. The name Latvija is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes, henry of Latvia coined the Latinisations of the countrys name, Lettigallia and Lethia, both derived from the Latgalians. The terms inspired the variations on the name in Romance languages from Letonia. Around 3000 BC, the ancestors of the Latvian people settled on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Balts established trade routes to Rome and Byzantium, trading local amber for precious metals, by 900 AD, four distinct Baltic tribes inhabited Latvia, Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians, as well as the Livonians speaking a Finnic language
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Estonia
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Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia consists of a mainland and 2,222 islands and islets in the Baltic Sea, covering 45,339 km2 of land and water, and is influenced by a humid continental climate. The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 6500 BC, in 1988, during the Singing Revolution, the Estonian Supreme Soviet issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration in defiance of Soviet rule, and independence was restored on 20 August 1991. Estonia is a parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. Its capital and largest city is Tallinn, with a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, OECD and Schengen Area. Estonia is a country with an advanced, high-income economy that is among the fastest growing in the EU. Its Human Development Index ranks very highly, and it performs favourably in measurements of economic freedom, civil liberties, the 2015 PISA test places Estonian high school students 3rd in the world, behind Singapore and Japan. Citizens of Estonia are provided with health care, free education. Since independence the country has developed its IT sector, becoming one of the worlds most digitally advanced societies. In 2005 Estonia became the first nation to hold elections over the Internet, in the Estonian language, the oldest known endonym of the Estonians was maarahvas, meaning country people or people of the land. The land inhabited by Estonians was called Maavald meaning Country Parish or Land Parish, one hypothesis regarding the modern name of Estonia is that it originated from the Aesti, a people described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania. The historic Aesti were allegedly Baltic people, whereas the modern Estonians are Finno-Ugric, the geographical areas between Aesti and Estonia do not match, with Aesti being further down south. Ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to a land called Eistland, as the country is called in Icelandic. Early Latin and other ancient versions of the name are Estia and Hestia, esthonia was a common alternative English spelling prior to 1921. Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, the oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago, the earliest human inhabitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to Kunda culture, which is named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in communities near bodies of water
14.
Livonian Crusade
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The lands on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea were the last corners of Europe to be Christianized. After the success of the crusade, the German- and Danish-occupied territory was divided into six feudal principalities by William of Modena, Christianity had come to Latvia with the settlement of Grobiņa by Swedes in the 7th century and the Danes in the 11th. By the time German traders began to arrive in the half of the 12th century to trade along the ancient trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Saint Meinhard of Segeberg arrived in Ikšķile in 1184 with the mission of converting the pagan Livonians, in those days the riverside town was the center of the upcoming missionary activities in the Livonian area. The first prominent Livonian to be converted was their leader Caupo of Turaida, Pope Celestine III had called for a crusade against pagans in Northern Europe in 1193. When peaceful means of conversion failed to produce results, the impatient Meinhard plotted to convert Livonians forcibly and he died in 1196, having failed in his mission. His appointed replacement, bishop Berthold of Hanover, a Cistercian abbot of Loccum arrived with a contingent of crusaders in 1198. Shortly afterward, while riding ahead of his troops in battle, Berthold was surrounded and killed, to avenge Bertholds defeat, Pope Innocent III issued a bull declaring a crusade against the Livonians. Albrecht von Buxthoeven, consecrated as bishop in 1199, arrived the year with a large force. In 1202 he formed the Livonian Brothers of the Sword to aid in the conversion of the pagans to Christianity and, more importantly, to protect German trade, as the German grip tightened, the Livonians and their christened chief rebelled against the crusaders. Caupos forces were defeated at Turaida in 1206, and the Livonians were declared to be converted, Caupo subsequently remained an ally of the crusaders until his death in the Battle of St. Matthews Day in 1217. By 1208 the important Daugava trading posts of Salaspils, Koknese, in 1209 Albert, leading the forces of the Order, captured the capital of the Latgalian Principality of Jersika, and took the wife of the ruler Visvaldis captive. Visvaldis was forced to submit his kingdom to Albert as a grant to the Archbishopric of Riga, and received back a portion of it as a fief. Tālava, weakened in wars with Estonians and Russians, became a state of the Archbishopric of Riga in 1214. With the help of the newly converted local tribes of Livs and Latgalians, the Estonian tribes fiercely resisted the attacks from Riga and occasionally sacked territories controlled by the crusaders. Hill forts, which were the key centers of Estonian counties, were besieged, captured, a truce between the war-weary sides was established for three years. It proved generally more favourable to the Germans, who consolidated their political position and they were led by Lembitu of Lehola, the elder of Sackalia, who by 1211 had come to the attention of German chroniclers as the central figure of the Estonian resistance. The Livonian leader Caupo was killed in the Battle of St. Matthews Day near Viljandi on September 21,1217, but Lembitu was also killed, the Christian kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden were also eager for expansion on the eastern shores of the Baltic
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Livonian Brothers of the Sword
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The Livonian Brothers of the Sword was a military order established by the third bishop of Riga, Bishop Albert of Riga, in 1202. Pope Innocent III sanctioned the establishment in 1204 for the second time, the membership of the order comprised German warrior monks who fought Baltic pagans in the area of modern-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Alternative names of the Order include Christ Knights, Sword Brethren, from its foundation, the undisciplined Order tended to ignore its supposed vassalage to the bishops. In 1218, Albert asked King Valdemar II of Denmark for assistance, the Brotherhood had its headquarters at Fellin in present-day Estonia, where the walls of the Masters castle still stand. Other strongholds included Wenden, Segewold and Ascheraden, the commanders of Fellin, Goldingen, Marienburg, Reval, and the bailiff of Weißenstein belonged to the five-member entourage of the Orders Master. Pope Gregory IX asked the Brothers to defend Finland from the Novgorodian attacks in his letter of November 24,1232, however, no known information regarding the knights possible activities in Finland has survived. The Order was decimated in the Battle of Schaulen in 1236 against Lithuanians and Semigallians and this disaster led the surviving Brothers to become incorporated into the Order of Teutonic Knights in the following year, and from that point on they became known as the Livonian Order. They continued, however, to function in all respects as a branch of the Teutonic Order. It also appears prominently in The Mongoliad, where they appear as one of the antagonists of the fictional order to which the main characters belong. The Sword Brothers by Peter Darman is an account of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword set in the 13th century. The order is featured in Medieval II, Total War, available as an unit of the Teutonic Order. Teutonic Order Battle of Saule Livonian Crusade Northern Crusades Order of Dobrin
16.
Terra Mariana
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Terra Mariana was the official name for Medieval Livonia or Old Livonia, which was formed in the aftermath of the Livonian Crusade in the territories comprising present day Estonia and Latvia. It was established on 2 February 1207, as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1346 the Order bought Danish Estonia. Following its defeat in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 the Teutonic Order, in 1561, during the Livonian war, Terra Mariana ceased to exist. The island of Saaremaa became part of Denmark, since the beginning of the 20th century Terra Mariana has been used as a poetic name or sobriquet for Estonia. In 1995 the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, a decoration, was instituted to honor the independence of Estonia. The lands on the shores of the Baltic Sea were the last part of Europe to be Christianized by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1193 Pope Celestine III called for a crusade against the pagans in Northern Europe and this crusade is often compared to the crusade of the Franks and Charlemagne. However, this crusade was not officially announced until 1197 or 1198, at the beginning of the 13th century, German crusaders from Gotland and the northern Holy Roman Empire conquered the Livonian and Latvian lands along the Daugava and Gauja rivers. The stronghold of Riga was established in 1201, and in 1202 the Livonian Brothers of the Sword was formed as a branch of the Knights Templar, in 1218 Pope Honorius III gave Valdemar II of Denmark free rein to annex as much land as he could conquer in Estonia. The last to be subjugated and Christianised were Oeselians, Curonians and Semigallians and this crusade differed from many other crusades because, in this case, the Pope allowed people intending to go on a crusade to the Holy Land to go instead to crusade in Livonia. Members of this crusade were made to wear the insignia of the cross as well, after the success of the crusade, the German- and Danish-occupied territory was divided into feudal principalities by William of Modena. Medieval Livonia was intermittently ruled first by the Brothers of the Sword, since 1237 by the branch of Teutonic knights called Livonian Order. By the mid 14th century, after buying the Duchy of Estonia from Christopher II, the Livonian Order controlled about 67,000 square kilometers of the Old Livonia, the lands of the Order were divided into about 40 districts governed by a Vogt. The largest ecclesiastical state was the Archbishopric of Riga followed by the Bishopric of Courland, Bishopric of Dorpat, the nominal head of Terra Mariana as well as the city of Riga was the Archbishop of Riga as the apex of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In 1240 Valdemar II created the Bishopric of Reval in the Duchy of Estonia by reserving the right to appoint the bishops of Reval to himself and his successor kings of Denmark. The decision to nominate to the See of Reval was unique in the whole Catholic Church at the time and was disputed by bishops. Two major civil wars were fought in 1296–1330, 1313–1330, technically, the Archbishop of Riga was the feudal and ecclesiastical superior, first over the Teutonic Knights, later over the Livonian Order. But the Archbishop did not become the dominant political power, already the Knights had thrown off the episcopal dominion, the bishops of Dorpat, Courland and Ösel-Wiek were lesser powers
17.
Saint George's Night Uprising
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After initial success the revolt was ended by the invasion of the Teutonic Order. In 1346 the Duchy of Estonia was sold for 19,000 Köln marks by the King of Denmark to the Teutonic Order, the shift of sovereignty from Denmark to the State of the Teutonic Order took place on November 1,1346. With the conquest of Ösel by the Livonian Order in 1261, Estonia was completely subjugated by the Northern Crusaders from Germany, the new rulers imposed taxes and duties even as the indigenous population retained individual rights, such as the right to bear arms. Oppression hardened as the new ruling class started to build manor-houses all over the country, the weight of duties to the lay masters was redoubled by religious repression and economic demands imposed by the church. The area was politically unstable. The Estonian provinces of Harria and Vironia had been conquered by Denmark, the province in Estonia became split between a pro-Danish party led by bishop Olaf of Reval and the pro-German party led by captain Marquard Breide. The plan was to all the Germans along with their wives. And so it happened, because they started to slay virgins, women, servants, maidservants, noblemen and commoners, young and old, all, among others, they burned down the Cistercian Padise Abbey and massacred the 28 monks who had failed to escape. The chronicle adds that any German women or children who were spared by the men were killed by the women who then proceeded to burn all the churches. After the initial success, Estonians elected four kings amongst themselves, the kings along with the rebel army proceeded to Danish-held Reval and laid siege on the city with 10,000 men. In the first battle under Tallinn the Estonians were victorious over the knights, therefore, they sent a delegation to the Swedish bailiffs of Åbo and Viborg and let them know that the Germans in Harria had been killed. They also told them that the Estonian army had laid siege on Reval, the bailiffs promised to raise an army and sail to Estonia. A few days later, the Estonians in the province of Rotalia renounced Christianity, after the countryside was firmly in the Estonian hands, the rebel army laid siege on the city of Hapsal, the capital of the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek. According to the Renner version of the Younger Livonian Rhymed Chronicle,1800 Germans were killed in Läänemaa, according to the Wartberge and Russow versions, the number of 1800 or 2000 killed Germans refers to either Harria or Harria and Vironia combined. Soon after the terrified survivors started to trickle to the castle of Weissenstein. The vogt of the castle immediately sent a letter to the master of the Livonian Order advising him on the situation and he also promised to redress the past wrongs and establish good relations with the Estonians. Estonians sent their four kings to Weissenstein accompanied by three squires, Estonians also let the bishop of Reval pass through rebel-held territory to attend the negotiations. Among the many high-ranking members of the Livonian Order who came to Paide were the Livonian Master Burchard von Dreileben, the komturs of Fellin and Riga, the vogt of Jervia, and many others
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Denmark
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The term Danish Realm refers to the relationship between Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands and Greenland—three countries constituting the Kingdom of Denmark. The legal nature of the Kingdom of Denmark is fundamentally one of a sovereign state. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have been part of the Crown of Denmark since 1397 when the Kalmar Union was ratified, legal matters in The Danish Realm are subject to the Danish Constitution. Beginning in 1953, state law issues within The Danish Realm has been governed by The Unity of the Realm, a less formal name for The Unity of the Realm is the Commonwealth of the Realm. In 1978, The Unity of The Realm was for the first time referred to as rigsfællesskabet. The name caught on and since the 1990s, both The Unity of The Realm and The Danish Realm itself has increasingly been referred to as simply rigsfællesskabet in daily parlance. The Danish Constitution stipulates that the foreign and security interests for all parts of the Danish Realm are the responsibility of the Danish government, the Faroes received home rule in 1948 and Greenland did so in 1979. In 2005, the Faroes received a self-government arrangement, and in 2009 Greenland received self rule, the Danish Realms unique state of internal affairs is acted out in the principle of The Unity of the Realm. This principle is derived from Article 1 of the Danish Constitution which specifies that constitutional law applies equally to all areas of the Danish Realm, the Constitutional Act specifies that sovereignty is to continue to be exclusively with the authorities of the Realm. The language of Denmark is Danish, and the Danish state authorities are based in Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmarks parliament, with its 179 members, is located in the capital, Copenhagen. Two of the members are elected in each of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The Government ministries are located in Copenhagen, as is the highest court, in principle, the Danish Realm constitutes a unified sovereign state, with equal status between its constituent parts. Devolution differs from federalism in that the powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government. The Self-Government Arrangements devolves political competence and responsibility from the Danish political authorities to the Faroese, the Faroese and Greenlandic authorities administer the tasks taken over from the state, enact legislation in these specific fields and have the economic responsibility for solving these tasks. The Danish government provides a grant to the Faroese and the Greenlandic authorities to cover the costs of these devolved areas. The 1948 Home Rule Act of the Faroe Islands sets out the terms of Faroese home rule, the Act states. the Faroe Islands shall constitute a self-governing community within the State of Denmark. It establishes the government of the Faroe Islands and the Faroese parliament. The Faroe Islands were previously administered as a Danish county, the Home Rule Act abolished the post of Amtmand and these powers were expanded in a 2005 Act, which named the Faroese home government as an equal partner with the Danish government
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State of the Teutonic Order
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The state was based in Prussia after the Orders conquest of the Pagan Old Prussians which began in 1230. It expanded to include at various times Courland, Gotland, Livonia, Neumark and its territory was in the modern countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Most of the territory was conquered by military orders, after which German colonization occurred to varying effect, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword controlling Terra Mariana were incorporated into the Teutonic Order as its autonomous branch Livonian Order in 1237. In 1346, the Duchy of Estonia was sold by the King of Denmark for 19,000 Köln marks to the Teutonic Order, the shift of sovereignty from Denmark to the Teutonic Order took place on 1 November 1346. Following its defeat in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 the Teutonic Order fell into decline, the Teutonic lands in Prussia were split in two after the Peace of Thorn in 1466. The western part of Teutonic Prussia was converted into Royal Prussia, the monastic state in the east was secularized in 1525 during the Protestant Reformation as the Duchy of Prussia, a Polish fief governed by the House of Hohenzollern. The Livonian branch continued as part of the Livonian Confederation until its dissolution in 1561, the Old Prussians withstood many attempts at conquest preceding that of the Teutonic Knights. Bolesław I of Poland began the series of unsuccessful conquests when he sent Adalbert of Prague in 997, in 1147, Bolesław IV of Poland attacked Prussia with the aid of Kievan Rus, but was unable to conquer it. Numerous other attempts followed, and, under Duke Konrad I of Masovia, were intensified, the West-Baltic Prussians successfully repelled most of the campaigns and managed to strike Konrad in retaliation. However, the Prussians and Yotvingians in the south had their territory conquered, the land of the Yotvingians was situated in the area of what is today the Podlaskie Voivodeship of Poland. The Prussians attempted to oust Polish or Masovian forces from Yotvingia and Culmerland, Konrad of Masovia had already called a crusade against the Old Prussians in 1208, but it was not successful. Konrad, acting on the advice of Christian, first bishop of Prussia, established the Order of Dobrzyń, the Order, however, was soon defeated and, in reaction, Konrad called on the Pope for yet another crusade and for help from the Teutonic Knights. As a result, several called for crusades against the Old Prussians. The crusades, involving many of Europes knights, lasted for sixty years, in 1211, Andrew II of Hungary enfeoffed the Teutonic Knights with the Burzenland. In 1225, Andrew II expelled the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania, early in 1224, Emperor Frederick II announced at Catania that Livonia, Prussia with Sambia, and a number of neighbouring provinces were under Imperial immediacy. This decree subordinated the provinces directly to the Roman Catholic Church, at the end of 1224, Pope Honorius III announced to all Christendom his appointment of Bishop William of Modena as the Papal Legate for Livonia, Prussia, and other countries. As a result of the Golden Bull of Rimini in 1226, the Knights began the Prussian Crusade in 1230. Under their governance, woodlands were cleared and marshlands made arable, upon which many cities and villages were founded, the cities were heavily fortified, accounting for the long lasting conflicts with the resistive native Old Prussians, with armed forces under command of the knights
20.
Gulf of Finland
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The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it, other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn. The eastern parts of the Gulf of Finland belong to Russia, as the seaway to Saint Petersburg, the Gulf of Finland has been and continues to be of considerable strategic importance to Russia. Some of the problems affecting the Baltic Sea are at their most pronounced in the shallow gulf. The area of the gulf is 30,000 km2, the length is 400 km and the width varies from 70 km near the entrance to 130 km on the meridian of Moshchny Island, in the Neva Bay, it decreases to 12 km. The gulf is shallow with the depth decreasing from the entrance to the gulf to the continent. The sharpest change occurs near Narva-Jõesuu, which is why this place is called Narva wall, the average depth is 38 m with the maximum of 100 m. The depth of the Neva Bay is less than 6 metres, therefore, a channel was dug at the bottom for safe navigation. Because of the influx of fresh water from rivers, especially from the Neva River. The average water temperature is close to 0 °C in winter, in summer, it is 15–17 °C at the surface, the gulf is usually frozen from late November to late April, the freezing starts in the east and gradually proceeds to the west. Complete freezing is usually reached by late January, and it not occur in mild winters. There are frequent strong winds causing waves, surges of water. The northern coast of the gulf is high and winding, with abundant small bays and skerries only a few large bays, the coast is mostly sloping, there are abundant sandy dunes, with occasional pine trees. The southern shores are smooth and shallow, but along the entire coast runs the Baltic Klint with the height up to 55 m, in the east, the gulf ends with Neva Bay and on the west merges with the Baltic Sea. The gulf contains numerous banks, skerries and islands, starting from 1700, nineteen artificial islands with fortresses were built in the gulf by Russia. Their purpose was defense from attacks from water and their construction was urged by the Great Northern War of 1700–1721 and those include Fort Alexander, Krasnaya Gorka, Ino, Totleben, Kronshlot and others. The largest rivers flowing into the gulf are Neva, Narva, keila, Pirita, Jägala, Kunda, Luga, Sista and Kovashi flow into the gulf from the south. From the north flow Sestra River, Porvoo, Vantaa and several small rivers
21.
Lake Peipus
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Lake Peipus is the biggest transboundary lake in Europe on the border between Estonia and Russia. The lake is the fifth largest in Europe after Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega in Russia north of St. Petersburg, Lake Vänern in Sweden, Lake Peipus is a remnant of a body of water which existed in this area during an Ice Age. It covers 3,555 km2, and has a depth of 7.1 m. The lake has several islands and consists of 3 parts, Lake Peipsi/Chudskoe is the part of the lake with an area of 2,611 km2. Lake Pskov is the part of the lake. Lake Lämmijärv/Teploe is the sound connecting the two parts of the lake, the lake is used for fishing and recreation, but suffered from some environmental degradation from Soviet era agriculture. Some 30 rivers and streams discharge into Lake Peipus, the largest rivers are the Emajõgi and the Velikaya River. The lake is drained by the Narva River, in 1242, the lake was the site of the Battle on the Ice between the Teutonic Knights and Novgorodians under Alexander Nevsky. The lake is a remnant of a body of water which existed in this area during an Ice Age. In the Paleozoic Era, 300–400 million years ago, the territory of the modern Gulf of Finland was covered by a sea. Its modern relief was formed as a result of activities, the last of which. The banks of Lake Peipus have smooth contours and form one large bay – Raskopelsky Bay. The low shores of the lake mostly consist of peat and are bordered by vast lowland, there are sand dunes and hills, covered with pine forests. Along the sandy shores there is a 200–300 m wide stretch of shallow waters, the relief of the bottom is uniform and flat, gradually rising near the shores and covered with silt, and in some places with sand. The deepest point of 15.3 m is located in the Teploe Lake,300 m from the coast, the lake is well-flowing, with the annual inflow of water equal to about half of the total water volume. The lake water is fresh, with a low transparency of about 2.5 m due to plankton, water currents are weak, they are induced by the wind and stop when it ceases. However, during the flood, there is a constant surface current from north to south. Because of the depth, the lake quickly warms up
22.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
23.
Lithuania
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Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in Northern Europe. One of the three Baltic states, it is situated along the shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.9 million people as of 2015, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. For centuries, the shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, the King of Lithuania, and the first unified Lithuanian state, with the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772–95, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuanias territory. As World War I neared its end, Lithuanias Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, in the midst of the Second World War, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end and the Germans retreated, Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, a full member of the Eurozone, Schengen Agreement and NATO. It is also a member of the Nordic Investment Bank, the United Nations Human Development Index lists Lithuania as a very high human development country. Lithuania has been among the fastest growing economies in the European Union and is ranked 21st in the world in the Ease of Doing Business Index, the first people settled in the territory of Lithuania after the last glacial period in the 10th millennium BC. Over a millennium, the Indo-Europeans, who arrived in the 3rd – 2nd millennium BC, mixed with the local population, the first written mention of Lithuania is found in a medieval German manuscript, the Annals of Quedlinburg, in an entry dated 9 March 1009. Initially inhabited by fragmented Baltic tribes, in the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, after his assassination in 1263, pagan Lithuania was a target of the Christian crusades of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. Despite the devastating century-long struggle with the Orders, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded rapidly, by the end of the 14th century, Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe and included present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia. The geopolitical situation between the west and the east determined the multicultural and multi-confessional character of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the ruling elite practised religious tolerance and Chancery Slavonic language was used as an auxiliary language to the Latin for official documents. In 1385, the Grand Duke Jogaila accepted Polands offer to become its king, Jogaila embarked on gradual Christianization of Lithuania and established a personal union between Poland and Lithuania. It implied that Lithuania, the fiercely independent land, was one of the last pagan areas of Europe to adopt Christianity, after two civil wars, Vytautas the Great became the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1392. During his reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its expansion, centralization of the state began
24.
Livonian War
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During the period 1558–1578, Russia dominated the region with early military successes at Dorpat and Narva. Russian dissolution of the Livonian Confederation brought Poland–Lithuania into the conflict while Sweden, Magnus attempted to expand his Livonian holdings to establish the Russian vassal state Kingdom of Livonia, which nominally existed until Magnus defection in 1576. This was followed by a campaign through Russia culminating in the long. Under the 1582 Truce of Jam Zapolski, which ended the war between Russia and Poland–Lithuania, Russia lost all its holdings in Livonia and Polotsk to Poland–Lithuania. The following year, Sweden and Russia signed the Truce of Plussa with Sweden gaining most of Ingria, by the mid-16th century, economically prosperous Old Livonia had become a region organised into the decentralised and religiously divided Livonian Confederation. Its territories consisted of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, the prince-bishoprics of Dorpat, Ösel–Wiek, as well as Courland, the Archbishopric of Riga and the city of Riga. Together with Riga, the cities of Dorpat and Reval, along with the knightly estates, the only common institutions of the Livonian estates were the regularly held common assemblies known as landtags. As well as a political administration, there were also persistent rivalries between the archbishop of Riga and the landmeister of the Order for hegemony. As war approached, Livonia had a weak administration subject to internal rivalries, lacked any powerful defences or outside support, and was surrounded by monarchies pursuing expansionist policies. Frost notes of the region, Racked with internal bickering and threatened by the political machinations of its neighbours. Only the archbishopric of Riga successfully overcame resistance of the lesser nobles, Wilhelm and Christoph were to pursue Alberts interests in Livonia, among which was the establishment of a hereditary Livonian duchy styled after the Prussian model. At the same time the Order agitated for its re-establishment in Prussia, by the time the Livonian War broke out, the Hanseatic League had already lost its monopoly on the profitable and prosperous Baltic Sea trade. While still involved and with increasing sales, it now shared the market with European mercenary fleets, most notably from the Dutch Seventeen Provinces, a long bar of Danish territories in the south and her lack of sufficient year-round ice-free ports severely limited Swedens access to the Baltic trade. Through its absorption of the principalities of Novgorod and Pskov, the Tsardom of Russia had become Livonias eastern neighbour, the conflict between Russia and the Western powers was exacerbated by Russias isolation from sea trade. The new Ivangorod port built by Tsar Ivan on the shore of the Narva River in 1550 was considered unsatisfactory on account of its shallow waters. The Livonians eventually promised to pay this sum to Ivan by 1557, Ivan continued to point out that the existence of the Order required passive Russian support, and was quick to threaten use of military force if necessary. The Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke Sigismund II Augustus was wary of Russian expansionist aspirations, expansion of Russia into Livonia would have meant not only a stronger political rival but also loss of lucrative trade routes. Therefore, Sigismund supported his cousin Wilhelm von Brandenburg, archbishop of Riga, in his conflicts with Wilhelm von Fürstenberg, Sigismund hoped that Livonia, just like the Duchy of Prussia under Duke Albert, would become a vassal state of Poland–Lithuania
25.
Baltic Finns
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In some cases the Kvens, Ingrians, Tornedalians and speakers of Meänkieli are also included separately rather than being a part of Finns proper. The bulk of the Baltic Finns are ethnic Finns and Estonians, Baltic Finns are also significant minority groups in neighbouring countries of Sweden, Norway and Russia. The Migration Theory has been called into question since 1980, based on genealogy, craniometry, the Settlement Continuity Theory asserts that at least the genetic ancestors of the Finno-Ugric peoples were among the earliest indigenous peoples of Europe. The origin of the people who lived in the Baltic Sea area during the Mesolithic Era continues to be debated by scientists, the members of this new Finno-Ugric-speaking ethnic group are regarded as the ancestors of modern Estonians. The Y-chromosomal data has revealed a common Finno-Ugric ancestry for the males of the neighboring Balts. According to the studies, Baltic males are most closely related to the Finno-Ugric-speaking Volga Finns such as the Mari, the results suggest that the territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been settled by Finno-Ugric-speaking tribes since the early Mesolithic period. On the other hand, some linguists do not consider it likely that a Baltic-Finnic language form could have existed at such an early date, according to these views, the Finno-Ugric languages appeared in Finland and Baltic only during the Early Bronze Age, if not later. The Baltic Finns share a cultural heritage, the art of ancient rune singing in the Kalevala meter, estimated to be 2. The Veps are the only Baltic Finnish people with no significant corpus of Kalevala meter oral poetry, the poetic tradition has included epic poems, lyric poems and magic chants. J. R. R. Tolkien has highlighted the importance of Kalevala as a source for his legendarium, the region has been populated since the end of the last glacial era, about 10,000 BC. The earliest traces of settlement are connected with Suomusjärvi culture. The Early Mesolithic Pulli settlement is located by the Pärnu River and it has been dated to the beginning of the 9th millennium BC. The Kunda Culture received its name from the Lammasmäe settlement site in northern Estonia, bone and stone artefacts similar to those found at Kunda have been discovered elsewhere in Estonia, as well as in Latvia, northern Lithuania and southern Finland. Around 5300 BCE pottery and agriculture entered Finland, the earliest representatives belong to the Comb Ceramic Cultures, known for their distinctive decorating patterns. Some researchers have argued that a form of Uralic languages may have been spoken in Estonia. The beginning of the Bronze Age in Estonia is dated to approximately 1800 BC, the coastal regions of Finland were a part of the Nordic Bronze Culture, whereas in the inland regions the influences came from the bronze-using cultures of Northern Russia. The development of the borders between the Finnic peoples and the Balts was under way, the first fortified settlements, Asva and Ridala on the island of Saaremaa and Iru in the Northern Estonia, began to be built. The development of shipbuilding facilitated the spread of bronze, the Pre-Roman Iron Age began in about 500 BC and lasted until the middle of the 1st century
26.
Balts
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One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained. German medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen in the part of the 11th century CE was the first writer to use the term Baltic in its modern sense to mean the sea of that name. This is the first reference to the Baltic or Barbarian Sea, the Germanics, however, preferred some form of East Sea until after about 1600, when they began to use forms of Baltic Sea. Around 1840 the German nobles of the Governorate of Livonia devised the term Balts to mean themselves and they spoke an exclusive dialect, Baltic German. For all practical purposes that was the Baltic language until 1919, scandinavians begin settling in Western Baltic lands in Lithuania and Latvia during Vendel Age and with interruptions their presence in Baltic lands continued most of Viking Age. In 1845 Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a language group for Latvian and Lithuanian to be called Baltic. It found some credence among linguists but was not generally adopted until the creation of the Baltic states as part of the settlement of World War I in 1919, estonia and Finland, however, also became counted among the Baltic states in the geopolitical sense. Because the thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts geographical isolation and it is possible that around 3, 500–2,500 B. C. there was massive migration of peoples representing the Corded Ware culture. They came from the southeast and spread all across Eastern and Central Europe and it is believed that Corded Ware culture peoples were Indo-European ancestors of many Europeans, including Balts. It is thought that those Indo-European newcomers were quite numerous and in the Eastern Baltic assimilated earlier indigenous cultures, over time the new people formed the Baltic peoples and they spread in the area from the Baltic sea in the west to the Volga in the east. This information is summarized and synthesized by Marija Gimbutas in The Balts to obtain a likely proto-Baltic homeland, a possible early reference to a Baltic people occurs in 98 CE, when Tacitus names a tribe living near the Baltic Sea as the Aesti and describes them as amber gatherers. However, it is not clear if the Aesti mentioned by Tacitus were, a Baltic people, or, the Aesti appear to have inhabited the Sambian peninsula (in or near the present Kaliningrad Oblast. Over time, the area of Baltic habitation shrank, due to assimilation by other groups, finally, according to Slavic chronicles of the time, they warred with Slavs, and perhaps, were defeated and assimilated some time in the 11th to 13th centuries. Balts became differentiated into Western and Eastern Balts in the late centuries BCE, the eastern Baltic region was inhabited by ancestors of the Western Balts, Brus/Prūsa, Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians. The Eastern Balts, including the hypothesised Dniepr Balts, were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the 4th–7th centuries and were gradually slavicized. Gradually Old Prussians became Germanized or some Lithuanized during period from the 15th to the 17th centuries, the cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became the ancestors of the populations of the modern countries of Latvia and Lithuania. Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages and it is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. Compare the Prussian word seme, the Latvian zeme, the Lithuanian žemė, Old Prussian contained a few borrowings specifically from Gothic and even North Germanic
27.
Baltic Germans
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The Baltic Germans are ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their resettling from Estonia and Latvia during the upheavals and aftermath of the Second World War, the largest groups of present-day descendants of the Baltic Germans are found in Germany and Canada. It is estimated that several thousand still reside in Latvia and Estonia, for centuries Baltic Germans and the Baltic nobility were a ruling class over native “Undeutsche” serfs. The emerging Baltic-German middle class was mostly urban and professional, in the 12th and 13th centuries Germans, both traders and crusaders, began settling in the eastern Baltics. After the Livonian Crusade they assumed control of government, politics, economics, education, with the decline of Latin, German became the language of all official documents, commerce, education and government. After 1710 many of these increasingly took high positions in the military, political and civilian life of the Russian Empire, Baltic Germans held citizenship of the Russian Empire until 1918 and Estonian or Latvian citizenship until 1939–40. The Baltic German population never surpassed more than 10% of the total population, in 1881 there were 180,000 Baltic Germans in Russias Baltic provinces, but by 1914 this number had declined to 162,000. In 1881 there were approximately 46,700 Germans in Estonia, according to the Russian Empire Census of 1897, there were 120,191 Germans in Latvia, or 6. 2% of the population. Baltic German history and presence in the Baltics came to an end in late 1939, following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, almost all the Baltic Germans were resettled by Nazi Germany under the Heim ins Reich program into the newly formed Reichsgaue Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia. In 1945, most were expelled from these lands by the Soviet army, ethnic Germans from East Prussia and Lithuania are sometimes incorrectly considered Baltic Germans for reasons of cultural, linguistic, and historical affinities. However, the Germans of East Prussia held Prussian, and after 1871, Baltic Germans were not a purely German ethnic group. The early crusaders, tradesmen and craftsmen often married local females, some noble families, like Lievens, even claimed descent from native chieftains. Many of the German Livonian Order soldiers died during the Livonian war, during this time the Low German of the original settlers was replaced by the High German. In those cases where intermarriage occurred, the ethnic group frequently assimilated into German culture, adopting language, customs. They were then considered Germans, leading to the ethnogenesis of the Baltic Germans, barclay de Tolly and George Armitstead, who arrived from the British Isles, became part of the Baltic-German community. Livland, roughly the half of present-day Estonia and the northern and eastern part of todays Latvia, major towns, Riga, Wenden, Wolmar, Walk, Dorpat, Pernau. Kurland, roughly the half of present-day Latvia, major towns. Ösel belonging to present-day Estonia, major town, Arensburg, after the heavy defeat in the 1236 Battle of Saule the Livonian Brothers of the Sword became a part of the Teutonic Order
28.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
29.
Anno Domini
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The terms anno Domini and before Christ are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term anno Domini is Medieval Latin and means in the year of the Lord, There is no year zero in this scheme, so the year AD1 immediately follows the year 1 BC. This dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor, the Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. Traditionally, English followed Latin usage by placing the AD abbreviation before the year number, however, BC is placed after the year number, which also preserves syntactic order. The abbreviation is widely used after the number of a century or millennium. Because BC is the English abbreviation for Before Christ, it is sometimes concluded that AD means After Death. However, this would mean that the approximate 33 years commonly associated with the life of Jesus would not be included in either of the BC, astronomical year numbering and ISO8601 avoid words or abbreviations related to Christianity, but use the same numbers for AD years. The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus to enumerate the years in his Easter table. His system was to replace the Diocletian era that had used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The last year of the old table, Diocletian 247, was followed by the first year of his table. Thus Dionysius implied that Jesus Incarnation occurred 525 years earlier, without stating the year during which his birth or conception occurred. Blackburn & Holford-Strevens briefly present arguments for 2 BC,1 BC, There were inaccuracies in the list of consuls There were confused summations of emperors regnal years It is not known how Dionysius established the year of Jesuss birth. It is convenient to initiate a calendar not from the day of an event. For example, the Islamic calendar begins not from the date of the Hegira, at the time, it was believed by some that the Resurrection and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus. The old Anno Mundi calendar theoretically commenced with the creation of the based on information in the Old Testament. It was believed that, based on the Anno Mundi calendar, Anno Mundi 6000 was thus equated with the resurrection and the end of the world but this date had already passed in the time of Dionysius. The Anglo-Saxon historian the Venerable Bede, who was familiar with the work of Dionysius Exiguus, used Anno Domini dating in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731. e. On the continent of Europe, Anno Domini was introduced as the era of choice of the Carolingian Renaissance by the English cleric and scholar Alcuin in the late eighth century
30.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
31.
Hanseatic League
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The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s and it stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, was the Middle Low German word for a convoy, the League was created to protect the guilds economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection. The hegemony of Lübeck peaked during the 15th century, Lübeck became a base for merchants from Saxony and Westphalia trading eastward and northward. This area was a source of timber, wax, amber, resins, the towns raised their own armies, with each guild required to provide levies when needed. The Hanseatic cities came to the aid of one another, and commercial ships often had to be used to carry soldiers, Visby functioned as the leading centre in the Baltic before the Hansa. Sailing east, Visby merchants established a trading post at Novgorod called Gutagard in 1080, Merchants from northern Germany also stayed in the early period of the Gotlander settlement. Later they established their own trading station in Novgorod, known as Peterhof, in 1229, German merchants at Novgorod were granted certain privileges that made their position more secure. Hansa societies worked to remove restrictions to trade for their members, before the official foundation of the League in 1356, the word Hanse did not occur in the Baltic language. The earliest remaining documentary mention, although without a name, of a specific German commercial federation is from London 1157. That year, the merchants of the Hansa in Cologne convinced Henry II, King of England, to them from all tolls in London. The allied cities gained control over most of the trade, especially the Scania Market. In 1266, Henry III of England granted the Lübeck and Hamburg Hansa a charter for operations in England, much of the drive for this co-operation came from the fragmented nature of existing territorial government, which failed to provide security for trade. Over the next 50 years the Hansa itself emerged with formal agreements for confederation and co-operation covering the west and east trade routes. The principal city and linchpin remained Lübeck, with the first general Diet of the Hansa held there in 1356, other such alliances formed throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Yet the League never became a closely managed formal organisation, over the period, a network of alliances grew to include a flexible roster of 70 to 170 cities. The league succeeded in establishing additional Kontors in Bruges, Bergen and these trading posts became significant enclaves
32.
Cistercians
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A Cistercian is a member of the Cistercian Order (/sɪˈstɜːrʃən/, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist, a religious order of monks and nuns. They are variously called the Bernardines, after the highly influential St, the original emphasis of Cistercian life was on manual labour and self-sufficiency, and many abbeys have traditionally supported themselves through activities such as agriculture and brewing ales. Over the centuries, however, education and academic pursuits came to dominate the life of their monasteries, after that the followers of the older pattern of life became known as the Cistercians of the Original Observance. The term Cistercian, derives from Cistercium, the Latin name for the village of Cîteaux and it was in this village that a group of Benedictine monks from the monastery of Molesme founded Cîteaux Abbey in 1098, with the goal of following more closely the Rule of Saint Benedict. The best known of them were Robert of Molesme, Alberic of Cîteaux and the English monk Stephen Harding, Bernard of Clairvaux entered the monastery in the early 1110s with 30 companions and helped the rapid proliferation of the order. By the end of the 12th century, the order had spread throughout France and into England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the keynote of Cistercian life was a return to literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, especially field-work, Cistercian architecture is considered one of the most beautiful styles of medieval architecture. Additionally, in relation to such as agriculture, hydraulic engineering and metallurgy. The monastery church of Cluny Abbey, the largest in Europe, had become wealthy from rents, tithes, feudal rights and pilgrims who passed through Cluniac houses on the Way of St. James. On March 21,1098, Roberts small group acquired a plot of marshland just south of Dijon called Cîteaux, during the first year, the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farming the lands of Cîteaux, making use of a nearby chapel for Mass. In Roberts absence from Molesme, however, the abbey had gone into decline, and Pope Urban II, the remaining monks of Cîteaux elected Alberic as their abbot, under whose leadership the abbey would find its grounding. Robert had been the idealist of the order, and Alberic was their builder, upon assuming the role of abbot, Alberic moved the site of the fledgling community near a brook a short distance away from the original site. Alberic discontinued the use of Benedictine black garments in the abbey and he returned the community to the original Benedictine ideal of manual work and prayer, dedicated to the ideal of charity and self sustenance. Alberic also forged an alliance with the Dukes of Burgundy, working out a deal with Duke Odo of Burgundy concerning the donation of a vineyard as well as stones with which they built their church. The church was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary on November 16,1106, on January 26,1108, Alberic died and was soon succeeded by Stephen Harding, the man responsible for carrying the order into its crucial phase. The order was fortunate that Stephen was an abbot of extraordinary gifts, and he framed the original version of the Cistercian Constitution or regulations, the Carta caritatis. Although this was revised on several occasions to meet needs, from the outset it emphasised a simple life of work, love, prayer. Cistercian abbeys also refused to admit children, allowing adults to choose their religious vocation for themselves – a practice later emulated by many of the older Benedictine houses
33.
Riga
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Riga is the capital and the largest city of Latvia. With 696,593 inhabitants, Riga is the largest city in the Baltic states, the city lies on the Gulf of Riga, at the mouth of the Daugava. Rigas territory covers 307.17 square kilometres and lies one and ten metres above sea level, on a flat and sandy plain. Riga was founded in 1201 and is a former Hanseatic League member, Rigas historical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and 19th century wooden architecture. Riga was the European Capital of Culture during 2014, along with Umeå in Sweden, Riga hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, and the 2006 IIHF Mens World Ice Hockey Championships. It is home to the European Unions office of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, Riga is served by Riga International Airport, the largest airport in the Baltic states. Riga is a member of Eurocities, the Union of the Baltic Cities, another theory could be that Riga was named after Riege, the German name for the River Rīdzene, a tributary of the Daugava. The river Daugava has been a trade route since antiquity, part of the Vikings Dvina-Dnieper navigation route to Byzantium. A sheltered natural harbour 15 km upriver from the mouth of the Daugava — the site of todays Riga — has been recorded, as Duna Urbs and it was settled by the Livs, an ancient Finnic tribe. Riga began to develop as a centre of Viking trade during the early Middle Ages, Rigas inhabitants occupied themselves mainly with fishing, animal husbandry, and trading, later developing crafts. German traders began visiting Riga, establishing a nearby outpost in 1158, along with German traders also arrived the monk Meinhard of Segeberg to convert the Livonian pagans to Christianity. Catholic and Orthodox Christianity had already arrived in Latvia more than a century earlier, Meinhard settled among the Livs, building a castle and church at Ikšķile, upstream from Riga, and established his bishopric there. The Livs, however, continued to practice paganism and Meinhard died in Ikšķile in 1196, in 1198, the Bishop Berthold arrived with a contingent of crusaders and commenced a campaign of forced Christianization. Berthold was killed soon afterwards and his forces defeated, pope Innocent III issued a bull declaring a crusade against the Livonians. Bishop Albert was proclaimed Bishop of Livonia by his uncle Hartwig of Uthlede, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen, Albert landed in Riga in 1200 with 23 ships and 500 Westphalian crusaders. In 1201, he transferred the seat of the Livonian bishopric from Ikšķile to Riga, the year 1201 also marked the first arrival of German merchants in Novgorod, via the Dvina. To defend territory and trade, Albert established the Order of Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1202, open to nobles, in 1207, Albert started on fortification of the town. Emperor Philip invested Albert with Livonia as a fief and principality of the Holy Roman Empire, until then, it had been customary for crusaders to serve for a year and then return home
34.
Albert of Riga
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Albert of Riga or Albert of Livonia was the third Bishop of Riga in Livonia. In 1201 he allegedly founded Riga, the capital of Latvia. Albert headed the armed forces that forcibly converted the eastern Baltic region to Catholic faith, Albert was born in Bexhövede, a part of Loxstedt. He and his brother Hermann were members of the powerful Buxhoeveden family from Bexhövede, now a part of Loxstedt, because of this he has also been known as Albert of Buxhoeveden. The patent was granted 28 March 1199, and by the beginning of spring 1200 he embarked with a Baltic fleet of 23 vessels and he had the support of the Hohenstaufen German King, Philip of Swabia, and the more distant blessing of Pope Innocent III. Together with merchants from the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, Albert founded Riga in 1201, the conquest of Livonia in full occupied almost three decades of his life. Albert created an order, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. King Philip made him a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, with Livonia for a fief, in 1225 King Henry of Germany confirmed the title of Prince for Albert and his brother, Hermann. Albert declared his diocese independent of Bremen, and later Riga was raised to an archbishopric, a first-hand account of Albert is in the contemporary Livonian Chronicle of Henry by Henry of Latvia. Albert died in Riga in 1229, but, as a Catholic Bishop and he was venerated as a Catholic saint until the Protestant Reformation. The present-day von Buxhoeveden are descendants of his cousin Johannes von Buxhoeveden, alberts brother Theodoricus is the progenitor of the family de Raupena that founded manors in Livonia and Courland. Albert Street in Riga is named after Bishop Albert and it is known for its Art Nouveau apartment buildings, many of them designed by the architect Mikhail Eisenstein. Albert von Buxhoeveden James A. Brundage, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, edited and translated,2003 Catholic Encyclopedia article
35.
Prince-bishop
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A prince-bishop is a bishop who is also the civil ruler of some secular principality and sovereignty. If the episcopal see is an archbishopric, the term is prince-archbishop. A prince-bishop is usually considered an elected monarch, later relations between a prince-bishop and the burghers were invariably not cordial. As cities demanded charters from emperors, kings, or their prince-bishops and declared independent of the secular territorial magnates. The stem duchies of the German kingdom inside the Empire had strong and powerful dukes, unlike dukes they could not pass hereditary titles and lands to any descendants. This met with increasing opposition by the Popes, culminating in the fierce Investiture Controversy of 1076, nevertheless, the Emperors continued to grant major territories to the most important bishops. The immediate territory attached to the episcopal see then became a prince-diocese or bishopric, the German term Hochstift was often used to denote the form of secular authority held by bishops ruling a prince-bishopric with Erzstift being used for prince-archbishoprics. Emperor Charles IV by the Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed the status of the Prince-Archbishoprics of Mainz, Cologne. At the eve of the Protestant Reformation, the Imperial states comprised 53 ecclesiastical principalities, with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the title finally became defunct. The bishops of Vienna and Wiener Neustadt didnt control any territory, upon the incorporation of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1237, the territory of the Orders State largely corresponded with the Diocese of Riga. Bishop Albert of Riga in 1207 had received the lands of Livonia as an Imperial fief from the hands of German king Philip of Swabia, he however had to come to terms with the Brothers of the Sword. At the behest of Pope Innocent III the Terra Mariana confederation was established, by the 1234 Bull of Rieti, Pope Gregory IX stated that all lands acquired by the Teutonic Knights were no subject of any conveyancing by the Emperor. Within this larger conflict, the dualism of the autonomous Riga prince-bishop. The bishops pursued the conferment of the title by the Holy Roman Emperor to stress their sovereignty. In the original Prussian lands of the Teutonic Order, Willam of Modena established the suffragan bishoprics of Culm, Pomesania, Samland and Warmia. The bishops of Cetinje, Montenegro, who took the place of the earlier secular Voivodes in 1516 had a position of Slavonic. The title survived the union of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 until 1836, apart from territories formerly within the Holy Roman Empire, no French diocese had a principality of political significance linked to its see. However, a number of French bishops did hold a title, with a tiny territory usually about their seat, it was often a princely title
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Military order (monastic society)
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As such, it was in the military orders that the Medieval concept of chivalry reached its apogee in an exceptionate fusion under Just war theory of military discipline and Christian virtues. Prominent examples include the Knights Hospitaller, and the Knights Templar in Outremer, many military orders were suppressed by the Holy See in Rome around the end of the Middle Ages, with few new recognised establishments afterwards. Notably, the Teutonic Order became exclusively monastic except a limited associated confraternity of honorary Knights, moreover, it inspired many subsequent modern era secular Western cultural phenonomens, such as fraternities, or brotherhoods, such as the Freemasonry. Already in 1053, for the Battle of Civitate the Knights of Saint Peter was founded as a militia by Pope Leo IX to counter the Normans, the larger threat that would definitively establish the tradition, however, came from the east. In response to the Islamic conquests of the former Byzantine Empire and Christianity in the Holy Land, the founding of such orders suited the Catholic churchs plan of channelising the devotion of the European nobility, and also complemented the Peace and Truce of God. The first secularised military order was the Order of Saint George, founded in 1326 by the King Charles I of Hungary, on which he made all the Hungarian nobility swear loyalty to him. The next secular order which is known to appear was the Order of the Knights of the Band, both orders existed only for about a century. The original features of the orders were the combination of religious. Some of them, like the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights of Saint Thomas, also had charitable purposes and cared for the sick, however, they were not purely male institutions, as nuns could attach themselves as convents of the orders. One significant feature of the orders is that clerical brothers could be. In 1818, the orientalist Joseph von Hammer compared the Catholic military orders, in particular the Knights Templar, with certain Islamic models such as the Shia Islamic sect of Assassins. In 1820, José Antonio Conde suggested they were modeled on the ribat, however popular such views may have become, others have criticised this view, suggesting there were no such ribats around the Outremer until after the military orders had been founded. Yet, the innovation of the role and function of the military orders has sometimes been obscured by the concentration on their exploits in the Holy Land, Prussia. In fact, they had holdings and staff throughout Western Europe. They provided a conduit for cultural and technical innovation, for example the introduction of fulling into England by the Knights Hospitaller, because of the necessity to have a standing army, the military orders were founded, being adopted as the fourth monastic religious vows. Their militarisation may vary from case to case, the foundation of an order, its ecclesiastical approval, presently active institutions are listed in consideration with their legitimacy according to the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry. Chivalric and/or military orders that could qualify depending on definition, awarded to both Spanish and Moroccan military officers and soldiers, the single-class order was abolished in 1956. In contrast, inspired by the legacy of the military orders, besides legitimate chivalric orders, in addition, vast modern imitations flourish
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Pope Innocent III
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Pope Innocent III reigned from 8 January 1198 to his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni, Pope Innocent was one of the most powerful and influential popes. He exerted an influence over the Christian states of Europe. Pope Innocent was central in supporting the Catholic Churchs reforms of ecclesiastical affairs through his decretals and this resulted in a considerable refinement of Western canon law. Pope Innocent is notable for using interdict and other censures to compel princes to obey his decisions, Innocent called for Christian crusades against Muslim Spain and the Holy Land, as well as the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in southern France. One of Pope Innocents critical decisions was organizing the Fourth Crusade, originally intended to attack Jerusalem through Egypt, a series of unforeseen circumstances led the crusaders to Constantinople, where they ultimately sacked the city in 1204. Lotario de Conti was born in Gavignano, near Anagni and his father was Count Trasimund of Segni and was a member of a famous house, Conti, which produced nine Popes, including Gregory IX, Alexander IV and Innocent XIII. Lotario was the nephew of Pope Clement III, his mother, as Pope, Lotario was to play a major role in the shaping of canon law through conciliar canons and decretal letters. He subscribed the papal bulls between 7 December 1190 and 4 November 1197, as a cardinal, Lotario wrote De miseria humanae conditionis. The work was popular for centuries, surviving in more than 700 manuscripts. Although he never returned to the work he intended to write, On the Dignity of Human Nature. Celestine III died on 8 January 1198 and he was only thirty-seven years old at the time. He took the name Innocent III, maybe as a reference to his predecessor Innocent II, as pope, Innocent III began with a very wide sense of his responsibility and of his authority. The Muslim recapture of Jerusalem in 1187 was to him a divine judgment on the moral lapses of Christian princes and he was also determined to protect what he called the liberty of the Church from inroads by secular princes. The patrimonium was routinely threatened by Hohenstaufen German kings who, as Roman emperors, the early death of Henry VI left his 4-year-old son Frederick II as king. Henry VI’s widow Constance of Sicily ruled over Sicily for her son before he reached the age of majority. She was as eager to remove German power from the kingdom of Sicily as was Innocent III, before her death in 1198, she named Innocent as guardian of the young Frederick until he reached his maturity. In exchange, Innocent was also able to recover papal rights in Sicily that had been surrendered decades earlier to King William I of Sicily by Pope Adrian IV, the Pope invested the young Frederick II as King of Sicily in November 1198
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Monk
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A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of other monks. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions, in the Greek language the term can apply to women, but in modern English it is mainly in use for men. The word nun is typically used for female monastics, although the term monachos is of Christian origin, in the English language monk tends to be used loosely also for both male and female ascetics from other religious or philosophical backgrounds. However, being generic, it is not interchangeable terms that denote particular kinds of monk, such as cenobite, hermit, anchorite, hesychast. In Eastern Orthodoxy monasticism holds a special and important place. Orthodox monastics separate themselves from the world in order to pray unceasingly for the world and they do not, in general, have as their primary purpose the running of social services, but instead are concerned with attaining theosis, or union with God. However, care for the poor and needy has always been an obligation of monasticism, the level of contact though will vary from community to community. Hermits, on the hand, have little or no contact with the outside world. Orthodox monasticism does not have religious orders as are found in the West, basil the Great and the Philokalia, which was compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Hesychasm is of importance in the ascetical theology of the Orthodox Church. Meals are usually taken in common in a dining hall known as a trapeza. Food is usually simple and is eaten in silence while one of the brethren reads aloud from the writings of the Holy Fathers. The monastic lifestyle takes a deal of serious commitment. Within the cenobitic community, all monks conform to a way of living based on the traditions of that particular monastery. In struggling to attain this conformity, the comes to realize his own shortcomings and is guided by his spiritual father in how to deal honestly with them. For this same reason, bishops are almost always chosen from the ranks of monks, Eastern monasticism is found in three distinct forms, anchoritic, cenobitic, and the middle way between the two, known as the skete. One normally enters a community first, and only after testing and spiritual growth would one go on to the skete or, for the most advanced. However, one is not necessarily expected to join a skete or become a solitary, in general, Orthodox monastics have little or no contact with the outside world, including their own families
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Battle of Saule
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The Battle of Saule was fought on September 22,1236, between the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and pagan Samogitians. Between 48 and 60 knights were killed, including the Livonian Master and it was the earliest large-scale defeat suffered by the orders in Baltic lands. The Sword-Brothers, the first Catholic military order established in the Baltic lands, was soundly defeated, the battle inspired rebellions among the Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Oeselians, tribes previously conquered by the Sword-Brothers. Some thirty years worth of conquests on the bank of Daugava were lost. To commemorate the battle, in 2000 the Lithuanian and Latvian parliaments declared September 22 to be the Day of Baltic Unity, the Sword-Brothers were established in 1202 in Riga to conquer and convert pagan Baltic tribes to Christianity. By the 1230s under the leadership of Master Volkwin, the Order was coping with strained financial resources, decreasing manpower, the Order was in conflict with the papacy under Pope Gregory IX and the Holy Roman Emperor, two of its biggest supporters, over Estonia. However, on February 19,1236, Pope Gregory IX issued a bull declaring a crusade against Lithuania. Volkwin targeted Samogitia, planning to conquer the coast of the Baltic Sea, the Sword-Brothers wanted to keep expanding along the Daugava River and was somewhat reluctant to march against Samogitia. In fall of 1236 a party of crusaders arrived from Holstein, Volkwin gathered a large war party, which included troops from Pskov Republic, Livonians, Latgallians, Estonians. The knights marched southward into Samogitia, raiding and plundering local settlements, the locals had only a few days to gather troops for defense. On the knights northward return, however, they encountered a group of Samogitians at a river crossing. Unwilling to risk losing their horses in the swampland, the Holsteiners refused to fight on foot, the next morning, on the day of Saint Maurice, the main pagan forces, possibly led by Duke Vykintas, arrived at the camp. The Lithuanian light cavalry flung javelins at range, which were highly effective against the unwieldy Livonian heavy cavalry. The swampy terrain was advantageous for lightly armed pagans, the slaughter of the Christian troops, including Volkwin, sowed the seeds of confusion in the Livonian ranks. The lightly armed forces under the command of the Brothers soon fled from the battle. Those crusaders and knights who tried to flee to Riga were allegedly killed by the Semigallians, the exact location where the battle took place is unknown. The Chronicum Livoniae by Hermann de Wartberge mentioned that the battle was fought in terram Sauleorum, traditionally, this was identified with Šiauliai in Lithuania or with the small town of Vecsaule near Bauska in what is today southern Latvia. In 1965 the German historian Friedrich Benninghoven proposed Jauniūnai village in Joniškis district, the theory gained some academic support and in 2010 the Lithuanian government sponsored construction of the memorial in Jauniūnai – a 29-metre tall sundial, a pond, and a park of oaks
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Teutonic Order
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The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious order founded as a military order in the 12th century in Acre. Purely religious since 1929, it still confers limited honorary knighthoods, the order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Formed in the year 1190 in Acre, in the Levant, after Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East, the Order moved to Transylvania in 1211 to help defend the South-Eastern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Kipchaks. Starting from there, the Order created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, adding continuously the conquered Prussians territory, the Order theoretically lost its main purpose in Europe with the Christianization of Lithuania. However, it initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic. The Teutonic Knights had an economic base, and so hired mercenaries from throughout Europe to augment their feudal levies. In 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the Order and broke its military power at the Battle of Grunwald, however, the capital of the Teutonic Knights was successfully defended in the following Siege of Marienburg and the Order was saved from collapse. In 1515, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made an alliance with Sigismund I of Poland-Lithuania. Thereafter, the empire did not support the Order against Poland, in 1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg resigned and converted to Lutheranism, becoming Duke of Prussia as a vassal of Poland. Soon after, the Order lost Livonia and its holdings in the Protestant areas of Germany, the Order did keep its considerable holdings in Catholic areas of Germany until 1809, when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its dissolution and the Order lost its last secular holdings. However, the Order continued to exist as a charitable and ceremonial body and it was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in 1938, but re-established in 1945. Today it operates primarily with charitable aims in Central Europe, the Knights wore white surcoats with a black cross. A cross pattée was sometimes used as their coat of arms, the motto of the Order was, Helfen, Wehren, Heilen. The full name of the Order in German is Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus St. Mariens in Jerusalem or in Latin Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Hierosolymitanorum, thus, the term Teutonic refers to the German origins of the order in Latin. It is commonly known in German as the Deutscher Orden, historically also as Deutscher Ritterorden, Deutschherrenorden, Deutschritterorden or Die Herren im weißen Mantel. However, based on the model of the Knights Templar, it was transformed into an order in 1198. It received papal orders for crusades to take and hold Jerusalem for Christianity, during the rule of Grand Master Hermann von Salza the Order changed from being a hospice brotherhood for pilgrims to primarily a military order. The Order was founded in Acre, and the Knights purchased Montfort, northeast of Acre, the Order also had a castle at Amouda in Armenia Minor
41.
Livonian Order
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The Livonian Order was an autonomous branch of the Teutonic Order, formed in 1237. It was later a member of the Livonian Confederation, from 1435 to 1561, the Order was formed from the remnants of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword after their defeat by Samogitians in 1236 at the Battle of Schaulen. They were incorporated into the Teutonic Knights and became known as the Livonian Order in 1237, in 1298 Lithuanians took Karkus castle north of Riga, and defeated the order in the Battle of Turaida, killing Livonian Land Master Bruno and 22 knights. In 1346, the Order bought the Duchy of Estonia from King Valdemar IV of Denmark, life within the Orders territory is described in the Chronicle of Balthasar Russow. The Livonian Orders defeat in the Battle of Swienta on September 1,1435, during the Livonian War, however, the Order suffered a decisive defeat by troops of Muscovite Russia in the Battle of Ergeme in 1560. After coming to an agreement with Sigismund II Augustus and his representatives, in the southern part of the Brothers lands he created the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia for his family. Most of the lands were seized by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The north of Estonia was taken back by Denmark and Sweden, the Livonian Master, like the grandmaster of the Teutonic Order, was elected by his fellow knights for a life term. The grandmaster exercised supervisory powers and his advice was considered equal to a command, the grandmaster of Teutonic knights did not limit local autonomy, he rarely visited Livonia or sent ambassadors for oversight
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Archbishopric of Riga
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The Archbishopric of Riga was an archbishopric in Medieval Livonia, a subject to the Holy See. It was established in 1186 as the bishopric of Livonia at Üxküll, the see was restored as a diocese of the Catholic Church in 1918 and raised into an archdiocese in 1923. A new Bishopric of Livonia was established in Latgalia in 1621 during the Inflanty Voivodeship of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Archbishops of Riga were innovators in the field of minting currency, reviving techniques abandoned since the collapse of Rome. The names of individual archbishops after 1418, as well as the years of their reigns, are stamped on Livonian pennies excavated at archaeological sites. In many cases, this is the biographical data available. No Livonian pennies before 1418 have been found
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Paganism
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Paganism is a term that derives from Latin word pagan, which means nonparticipant, one excluded from a more distinguished, professional group. The term was used in the 4th century, by early Christian community, the term competed with polytheism already in use in Judaism, by Philo in the 1st century. Pagans and paganism was a pejorative for the same polytheistic group, Paganism has broadly connoted religion of the peasantry, and for much of its history a derogatory term. Alternate terms in Christian texts for the group was hellene. In and after the Middle Ages, paganism was a pejorative that was applied to any non-Abrahamic or unfamiliar religion, there has been much scholarly debate as to the origin of the term paganism, especially since no one before the 20th century self-identified as a pagan. In the 19th century, paganism was re-adopted as a self-descriptor by members of various artistic groups inspired by the ancient world. Forms of these religions, influenced by various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe, exist today and are known as contemporary or modern paganism, while most pagan religions express a worldview that is pantheistic, polytheistic, or animistic, there are some monotheistic pagans. It is crucial to stress right from the start that until the 20th century people did not call themselves pagans to describe the religion they practised, the notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church. It was a label that Christians applied to others, one of the antitheses that were central to the process of Christian self-definition, as such, throughout history it was generally used in a derogatory sense. The term pagan is from Late Latin paganus, revived during the Renaissance and it is related to pangere and ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European *pag-. The evolution occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church, elsewhere, Hellene or gentile remained the word for pagan, and paganos continued as a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace. However, this idea has multiple problems, first, the words usage as a reference to non-Christians pre-dates that period in history. Second, paganism within the Roman Empire centered on cities, the concept of an urban Christianity as opposed to a rural paganism would not have occurred to Romans during Early Christianity. Third, unlike words such as rusticitas, paganus had not yet acquired the meanings used to explain why it would have been applied to pagans. Paganus more likely acquired its meaning in Christian nomenclature via Roman military jargon, Early Christians adopted military motifs and saw themselves as Milites Christi. As early as the 5th century, paganos was metaphorically used to persons outside the bounds of the Christian community. In response, Augustine of Hippo wrote De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, in it, he contrasted the fallen city of Man to the city of God of which all Christians were ultimately citizens. Hence, the invaders were not of the city or rural
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Livonia". Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 816–817.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "