Chronicle of Henry of Livonia

The Livonian Chronicle of Henry (Latin: Heinrici Cronicon Lyvoniae) or Henry's chronicle of Livonia is a document in Latin describing historic events in Livonia (roughly corresponding to today's inland Estonia and north of Latvia) and surrounding areas from 1180 to 1227. It was written by a priest Henry of Latvia (Latin: Henricus de Lettis). Apart from the few references in the Primary Chronicle compiled in Kievan Rus' in the twelfth century, it is the oldest known written document about the history of these countries. For many episodes in the early stages of the Christianization of the peoples of the eastern Baltic, the Chronicle of Henry is the major surviving evidence aside from the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle and the Novgorod First Chronicle.

Papal calls for renewed holy war at the end of the twelfth century inspired not only the disastrous Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople in 1204, but also a series of simultaneous "Northern Crusades" that are less fully covered in English-language popular history, but which were more successful in the long run. Before the crusades, the region of Livonia was a mixed outpost, a pagan society where merchants from the Hanseatic League encountered merchants of Novgorod, and where Germanic, Scandinavian, and Russian trade, culture, and cults all mingled. Scandinavian rulers and German military knightly orders led by the German Prince-Bishops conquered and resettled the Baltic world and drew it into the Western orbit.

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