Free Teutonic Knights by William Urban

smaller than Peter von Dusburg’s calculation. Although not as numerous as their Lithuanian or Livonian neighbours, the Prussians were settled more densely on the land and were better organised. There were numerous forts that served as refuges for the people in wartime, and although these were not comparable to Western castles of the first rank they served their purpose effectively.
    Peter von Dusburg described Prussian paganism thus:
    The Prussians had no knowledge of God. Because they were primitive, they could not understand Him by reasoning, and because they had no letters, they could not learn of Him through the Scriptures. They appeared to be primitive beyond measure and marvelled greatly that anyone could make his thoughts known to another by writing. Because they did not know God, they took erroneously all creations for gods, such as the sun, the moon, and the stars, thunder, birds, and even animals and so on right down to the toads. They had forests, fields, and sacred waters in which no one was allowed to cut down trees, plough, or fish. In the midst of that perverse nation, apparently in Nadrovia, in a place called Romow, which owed its name to Rome, dwelt a man named Criwe, whom they honoured as a pope, since just as the pope rules over all the faithful of the Church, so he ruled over not only this one people, but also over the Lithuanians and the many nations of Livonia. Such was his authority that not only he himself or others of his blood, but even his messengers sent with a staff or other sign who crossed the boundaries of the infidel nations were held in great reverence by the rulers, the nobles, and the common people. He guarded, according to the old writings, an eternal fire. The Prussians believed in life after death, but not as they should believe. They believed that one, if he were noble or base, rich or poor, powerful or weak in this life, so also would he be after the resurrection into the future life. And that required the nobles to take with them in death their arms, horses, servants and maids, clothes, hunting dogs and hawks, and everything else pertaining to a warrior. With lesser people were burned the things pertaining to their work. They believed that the burned things were resurrected with them and would be used by them. With each death the following devil’s game occurred: when the relatives of the deceased came to the pope Criwe and asked if on such-and-such a day or night he had seen someone going by his house; then Criwe described without hesitation the appearance of the deceased according to his clothes and weapons, his horse and retinue, and predicted, so as to strengthen his augury, that the deceased left such-and-such a sign on his house with a spear or other such tool. After a victory they bring their gods an offering, and from the booty won in the victory they give a third to Criwe, who burns it. 9
    While Peter von Dusburg was fascinated by the thought of a pagan anti-pope, it is obvious from other sources that Prussian religion was far from a mirror image of Christianity that worshipped the dark lord, Satan, and his ilk. It was rather a development of that Indo-European nature worship that is familiar to us through Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic mythology. There was a strong element of Scandinavian religious thought that was probably introduced during those centuries when the Vikings exercised a loose authority over the region; and also some Christian ideas that had come in recently from Orthodox Rus’ and Roman Catholic Europe. Western missionaries had visited Prussia since the tenth century, although without making many converts.
    The customs of the Prussians were like those of their Baltic neighbours, the Livonian and Lithuanian tribes. The dominant class was the warrior nobility, who lived from booty, hunting, and the produce of their slaves. The free men lived by a combination of hunting and farming that gave them experience in the use of arms and a sense of tribal