Russia beyond the banks of the Rhine, and which is now, in connection with the new German
Empire, the leading Protestant power on the Continent of Europe.^784
Old Prussia^785 was a colony of the Teutonic Knights (Deutschorden), one of the three military
religious orders which arose during the crusades for the defense of the Holy Land and the protection
of pilgrims. They had the same military and monastic constitution as the Knights Templars, and
the Knights of St. John (Johannitae); but their members were all Germans. They greatly distinguished
themselves in the later crusades, and their chivalrous blood still flows in the veins of the old Prussian
nobility. They wore a white mantle with a black silver-lined cross, and as a special favor an imperial
eagle on their arms, which descended from them to the royal house of Prussia. After the fall of
Jerusalem they removed their headquarters to Venice, and afterwards to Marienburg and Königsberg
(the capital, where the kings of Prussia are crowned). Emperor Frederick II. and Pope Innocent III.
granted them all the lands they might conquer from the heathen on the eastern borders of Germany,
and the grand-master’s received the dignity of princes of the Roman Empire. They were invited by
the Duke of Poland to defend the frontiers of his country against the heathen Prussians (1240). The
conquest was completed in 1283. The Knights Christianized, or rather Romanized and Germanized,
the Prussians, after the military fashion of Charlemagne in his dealings with the Saxons, and of
Otho I. in subduing the Wends. The native heathenism was conquered, but not converted, and
continued under Christian forms. Prussia is said to have contained under the Knights two millions
of people and more than fifty cities, which carried on an extensive trade by means of the Hanseatic
League. The chief cities were Marienburg, Königsberg, Thorn, Danzig, and Culm. But the common
people were treated as slaves.
After nearly two centuries of rule the Knights degenerated, and their power declined by
internal dissensions and the hostility of Poland. In 1466 they were forced by Casimir IV. in the
Peace of Thorn to cede West Prussia with the richest cities to Poland, and to accept East Prussia
as a fief of that kingdom. This was virtually the destruction of the political power of the order. The
incompatibility of the military and monastic life became more and more apparent. Pope Adrian VI.
urged Albrecht to restore the order to its former monastic purity and dignity. But this was impossible.
The order had outlived itself.^786
Luther saw this, and inaugurated a different kind of reform. He seized a favorable
opportunity, and exhorted the Knights, in a public address, March 28, 1523, to forsake the false
monastic chastity so often broken, and to live in true matrimonial chastity according to the ordinance
of God in paradise (Gen. 2:18), which was older and wiser than popes and Councils. "Your order,"
he argued, "is truly a singular order: it is both secular and spiritual, and neither; it is bound to wield
the sword against infidels, and yet to live in celibacy, poverty, and obedience, like other monks.
(^784) "Bei weitem die merkwürdigste und durchgreifendste Veränderung fand in Preussen statt." Ranke, II. 326. Janssen can see in the
Reformation of Prussia only a change for the worse. The best refutation of his view is the subsequent history and present condition of
Prussia. The history of the past must be read in the light of the present. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
(^785) Prussia proper is a division of the kingdom of Prussia, and comprises East or Ducal Prussia and West or Royal Prussia, with a total
area of 24,114 square miles, and a population of about three millions and a half. East Prussia was united with Brandenburg by the Elector
John Sigismund, 1618 West Prussia was severed from Poland by Frederick the Great in the first division of that kingdom, 1772.
(^786) "Der deutsche Orden," says Ranke (II. 334), "und seine Herrschaft in Preussen war ohne Zweifel das eigenthümlichste Product des
hierarchischritterlichen Geistes der letzen Jahrhunderte in der deutschen Nation; er hatte eine grossartige Weltenwirkung ausgeübt und
ein unermessliches Verdienst um die Ausbreitung des deutschen Namens erworben; aber seine Zeit war vorüber."