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INVENTING LIVONIA: RELIGIOUS AND GEOGRAPHICAL
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EASTERN BALTIC REGION
IN EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Abstract
The PhD thesis “Inventing Livonia: Religious and Geographical Representations of the Eastern
Baltic Region in Early Thirteenth Century” explores narrative texts from the first half of
the 13th century dealing with the events, peoples and natural environment of the eastern shore
of the Baltic Sea. The thesis is composed of seven articles which have been previously published
or accepted for publishing and which are united into a thematic ensemble by a common
methodological approach and a similar empirical basis. All of the seven articles are in a more
or less explicit way inspired by a semiotical understanding of the text as a modelling system.
All the articles analyse Latin narrative texts from the first half of the 13th century dealing
with the Eastern Baltic region. These texts are viewed as forming a certain mental unity which
contributed in one way or another to spreading information and raising awareness of a new
region in Christian Europe.
By the “inventing of Livonia” I mean the ways how the image of a new Christian colony on
the shore of the Baltic Sea was developed in Latin narrative texts. Primarily two aspects of
this image creating process are studied: how information about Livonia reached contemporary
narrative texts, and how this information was integrated into existent religious and geographical
notions. Or, in other words: the spread and reception of information on Livonia in
early 13th-century Western Europe.
The main empirical basis of the thesis is formed by the following texts: Dialogus miraculorum
(1219–1223) and Libri VIII miraculorum (1225–1227) of Caesarius of Heisterbach;
Chronicle (c. 1224–1227) of Henry of Livonia, Chronicle (c. 1227–1241) of Alberic of Trois
Fontaines, De proprietatibus rerum (c. 1245) of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the anonymous
Descriptiones terrarum (c. 1255), and also anonymous Historia Ordinis Praedicatorum in
Dacia (c. 1261).
It is argued that many of these records of the Eastern Baltic region clearly reflect earlier
Christian patterns of interpretation and offer more information on the cultural convictions of
medieval Europe than on the actual conditions in the new territories. The texts of these various
authors exhibit a clear intention to fuse the new regions into the current geographical
and religious discourse in order to make them intelligible to a Christian audience. With this
purpose in mind, many rhetorical and narrative devices are used that can be summed up as an
attempt at intertextual integration.
Information about the new Christian colony on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea disseminated
rather slowly. Thus, the 13th century can be called the formative period of the invention
of Livonia. In this early phase, religious orders seem to have played a crucial role as mediators
of information. It is thanks to the network of Cistercians and of the mendicant orders
that the information about events in Livonia reached the broadest circles in the shortest time.
However, it was not before the end of the 15th–beginning of the 16th centuries that the notion
of Livonia took root in the consciousness of learned men in Western Europe
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