The Battle on the Ice
April 5, 1242
From AD 1200 onward, the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, a crusading religious order commonly known as the Teutonic Knights, had been engaged in the conquest of areas east and south of the Baltic Sea. Their crusade was driven by both economic and religious factors. The Swedes, also, were pushing east from southwest Finland into pagan areas, and in 1240 the pope declared the Swedish eastward war to be a crusade.
The Orthodox Kievan Rus principalities had strong trading relations with the pagan Baltic and Finnish peoples, and in what is today Estonia they promoted Orthodox Christianity, with some little success. They viewed the expansion of the Teutonic Knights and the Swedes as a political, economic, and religious threat.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
William J. Tighe is Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a senior editor for Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
22.8—November/December 2009
Looking for Beauty & Justice 150 Years After Darwin’s Classic by Charles Taliaferro
30.3—May/June 2017
C. S. Lewis Assesses the Religion of Mohammed by Jacob Fareed Imam
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
