Lithuania's entry into Christendom (1009-1387)

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Bažnyčios istorija; Katalikų bažnyčia; Krikščionių tikėjimai; Krikščionybė; Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Lietuvos istorija; Religingumas; Christianity; Church history; Lithuania; Lithuanian history; Religiosity; Christian faiths.

ENIn the middle of the first Christian millennium Europe was clearly divided between an area of Christian civilisation, which had been built on foundations bequeathed by the Roman Empire, and the barbarian lands that lay to the east of the Rhine and to the north of the Danube. The following five hundred years saw Christian civilisation spread and, as a result, a New Europe came into being. While all this was happening far to the west, the Baltic and Finno-Ugrian tribes of the eastern Baltic region were still living their traditional quite closed way of life. This was life in the backwoods, disturbed from time to time from the end of the eighth century by Norsemen travelling into the heart of the continent. In the tenth century the lands of the Baltic Slavs, Balts and Finno-Ugrians formed a narrow corridor along the continent's northern perimeter encompassed by the countries of Christian kings. Christian Europe's knowledge of the Baltic lands remained as phantasmagorical and weak as it had been in Antiquity, when classical writers could only distinguish this area from the other misty barbarian lands that surrounded it because it provided a treasured source of amber. In the early Middle Ages we come across only accidental contacts between Christian European lands and the eastern Baltic area. [Extract, p. 11]