88 ballads and balladry
ballads and balladry(ballata)Ballads were the domi-
nant lyric form or narrative folk song in French poetry of
the 14th and 15th centuries. Their strict form consisted
of three stanzas of eight lines each, with an envoi,or four-
line conclusion, addressing either a person of importance
or a personification. Each stanza, including the envoi,
ends in a refrain. They are usually anonymous narrative
rhymed poems, generally sung and part of an oral tradi-
tion. Ballads were passed on by word of mouth, so they
existed in many versions, even within one language, and
were and still are sung to more than one tune. Ballad
meter was simple, so a single tune was used for many bal-
lads. Ballads were on a variety of topics. A few were of
religious or romantic origin, and ballads about outlaws,
fairies, the return to life by a dead person, and raids
across contested borders were common. Enmity, capture,
revenge, and jealousy were other frequent themes. Many
had a tragic ending. What is known of them is largely the
result of 18th-century antiquarian scholarship, with its
interest in origins and in a nationalistic past.
Further reading:Francis J. Child, ed., The English
and Scottish Popular Ballads,5 vols. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1882–1898); Gwendolyn Morgan, “Ballads (Bal-
ladry),” in Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature,ed. Robert
Thomas Lambdin and Laura Cooner Lambdin (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000), 35–46.
Balts The Balts, made up of a number of peoples,
reached the banks of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe
around 500 B.C.E. They were among the oldest Indo-
European peoples. The Pomeranians and the Prutheni-
ans settled between the Vistula and Niemen Rivers. They
consisted of many groups of peoples, Lithuanians, Prus-
sians, and Estonians, among others. The Lithuanians
grouped between the Niemen and the Dvina Rivers; the
Letts and Estonians settled farther north as far as the
Gulf of FINLAND. The term Baltwas first used in the 19th
century.
CHRISTIANIZATIONThese peoples were still pagan at the dawn of the 13th
century. The Pomeranians, were converted by Saint Otto
of Bamberg (1062–1130) between 1124 and 1128. The
first attempts to Christianize the Pruthenians failed, pro-
ducing numerous martyrs. Believing that conversion and
evangelization needed the assistance of military persua-
sion, Pope GREGORYIX called a CRUSADEin 1230 and
gave any acquired territories to Hermann of Salza (d.
1239), the grandmaster of the TEUTONIC Order, thus
entrusting the conversion of PRUSSIAto the order. The
first successes were made in 1249 but were reversed by
the Prussians’ Lithuanian neighbors, who returned to
PAGANISMin 1253. Warfare and massacres began and then
intensified between 1260 and 1274. The insurgents in the
end capitulated and submitted to Christianity in 1284.
LITHUANIAcontinued to resist conversion and colo-
nization, fiercely opposing all attempts at Christianization
and Germanization. The Lithuanians sought Polish sup-
port against this common enemy. Mindaugas (1200–63),
the federate king, was be seduced by the GOSPEL, to guar-
antee his western frontiers and to continue expansion into
Rus ́ and Tartar lands. But under pressure from his pagan
subjects, Duke Gedyminas (r. 1316–41), the founder of a
Lithuanian state, had to renounce the Christian faith.
Eventually a union with the Poles decided the conversion
of the Lithuanians. Jogaila, grandson of duke Gedyminas
(r. 1315–41) and grand prince of Lithuania (1377–1434),
adopted Christianity in 1386, marrying Hedwig, heiress of
the kingdom of POLAND. By becoming King Ladislas II
Jagiello (r. 1386–1434) of Poland, he united Poland and
Lithuania.
Teutonic Knights, the Danes, and the HANSEATIC
cities, with the CISTERCIANS, carried out the Christian-
ization of LIVONIAor Estonia. From 1180, Meinhard (d.
1196), an Augustinian canon of Segebert in Holstein,
trailed Hanseatic merchants up the Drina River and in
1184 obtained authorization from a prince of Polotsk to
build a church. Built in 1186, this church of Üxhüll was
the first in Livonia. However, all this had collapsed by- In 1201, Albert of Buxtehude (d. 1229) founded
the city of Riga in Latvia and became bishop. In 1225,
Pope INNOCENTIV gave Livonia to the Danes, who had
occupied it from 1216 and had founded, in 1219, the
bishopric of Tallinn, attaching it to their bishopric of
Lund.
GERMAN CONTROL
Valderman II (1202–47), the king of DENMARK, gave
Livonia in fief to the German Knights of the Sword and
the Teutonic Knights in 1228. German merchants and
artisans, originally from the Hanseatic towns of LÜBECK,
Hamburg, and Bremen, had already established them-
selves in the urban centers. The clergy received two-
thirds of the occupied territories, controlled most of the
land, and kept themselves apart from the local laity. In
1346 Valdemar IV, whom the Hanse had put in power,
tried to cede Estonia to the Teutonic Knights, opponents
of the Hanse, for 19,000 Prussian marks. From then on
the Christianized Livonians were entirely subject to Ger-
man power. Nevertheless, German culture affected only
urban and rural elites and with difficulty penetrated the
villages, where traditional culture and social structures
were maintained. The Germans and the Poles fought overItaly in the 14th and 15th Centuries
See alsoJAGIELLONIANS,DYNASTY OF; PRUSSIA.
Further reading:William L. Urban, ed., The Baltic
Crusade (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press,
1975); Eric Christianson, The Northern Crusades,new ed.
(New York: Penguin Books, 1977); Albert d’Haenens, ed.,
Europe of the North Sea and Baltic: The World of the Hanse
(Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1984); Philippe Dollinger,