Western Civilization - History Of European Society

226 Chapter 12

Poland, established early in the eleventh century, and

by a rapidly expanding Lithuanian state whose rulers

were still pagan. In 1386 the two states merged for mu-

tual defense. Under the leadership of the Lithuanian

Jagiello, who converted to Catholicism and became

king of Poland as well, the Knights were defeated at the

battle of Tannenburg in 1410.

The Knights no longer existed as an aggressive

force, but conflict did not end. Poland-Lithuania did

not evolve into a centralized territorial state. It re-

mained an aristocratic commonwealth with an elected

king and few natural defenses. However, it was at this

time a remarkably open society in which people of

many faiths and languages could coexist. It even be-

came the place of refuge for thousands of Jews. Driven

from western Europe by the persecutions that followed

the Black Death, they found that their capital and fi-

nancial skills were welcomed by the rulers of an under-

developed frontier state. The parallels with the Iberian

kingdoms are striking. By the mid-fifteenth century,

Poland and Lithuania were the centers of a vigorous

Jewish culture characterized by a powerful tradition of

rabbinic learning and the use of Yiddish, a German di-

alect, as the language of everyday speech.

To the south, in the Balkan Peninsula, the four-

teenth and fifteenth centuries marked the emergence of

the Ottoman Empire as a threat to Christian Europe. By

1300 virtually all of the Byzantine lands in Anatolia had

fallen under the control of ghaziprincipalities. The

ghazis,of predominantly Turkish origin, were the Mus-

lim equivalent of crusaders, pledged to the advance-

ment of Islam. The last of their states to possess a

common frontier with Byzantium was centered on

the city of Bursa in northwest Anatolia. Under the

Danube

R.

Black Sea

Baltic Sea

Dniep

erR.

Adr

iat

icS

ea

DENMARK
Copenhagen

Cracow

Warsaw

Buda Pest

Belgrade

Venice

Smolensk

Azov

Moscow

Novgorod

Riga

Kiev

Prague

Alps

Mts.

SWEDEN

POLAND

LITHUANIA

MOLDAVIA

HUNGARY

BULGARIA

SERBIAN

PRINCES

BOSNIA

WALLACHIA

MUSCOVY

MONGOL EMPIRE

BOHEMIA

BRANDENBURG

SAXONY SILESIA

Stockholm

AUSTRIA Carpathia

n

M

ts

.

Vienna

Danzig Königsberg

DonR.

TE

UT

ON

IC

KN

IGH

TS

0 300 600 Miles

0 300 600 900 Kilometers

Areas of German Settlement

MAP 12.1

Europe’s Northeastern Frontier, c. 1386–1415