Wojtek Jezierski

Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim, 1000-1300

(Brepols, 2022), 356pp. €50

Wojtek Jezierski’s Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim, 1000-1300 investigates how perceptions of risk and danger shaped the mentalities of missionaries and crusaders in the Baltic. The book argues that both groups existed within Ulrich Beck’s conception of a “risk society” which was “underpinned by amplified senses of risk and uncertainty.” (23) Although the model of a “risk society” is not new, previous scholarship has argued that modernity is a requirement for risk assessment. Jezierski turns to the intersection of hospitality and emotion to make the case that while medieval people on the Baltic frontier may not have had the same notions of risk as modern people, their assessments of risk and danger played a vital role in both societal function and self-definition. Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim combines several chapters of Jezierski’s past work with new research. Each chapter can be read on its own, but the book is broadly organized chronologically with the exceptions of chapters 3 and 4. Utilizing a wealth of primary sources, historiographical material, and pioneering research methods, Jezierski’s Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of missionaries and crusaders in the Baltic.

Jezierski begins his work with an overview of the theoretical considerations of adopting risk theory in the medieval Baltic. The introduction makes the case that a study of emotions and hospitality offers the best prospect to study medieval conceptions of risk, citing Will Hasty’s and Max Liebermann’s work on premodern risk assessment, Barbara Rosenwein’s conception of emotional communities, and Jacques Derrida’s writings on hospitality. Chapter 2 continues constructing the base of his argument by focusing on prior arguments about Baltic frontier societies, emotions, and hospitality. Although Jezierski builds on past scholarship, he outlines several critical interventions. Whereas other scholars have presented the Baltic Crusades as either a clash between different societies or as a meeting of the minds, Jezierski claims that the junction of emotions and hospitality reveals that both schools have much more in common than formerly considered. Furthermore, instead of concentrating entirely on crusaders, Jezierski’s additional focus on missionaries produces a wider understanding of the medieval Baltic. Finally, the acknowledgment of authorial intent and the blurring of fact and fiction in Baltic chronicles allows Jezierski to present written depictions of fear and terror as part of a “feedback loop” (62) that reenforced past sentiments, whether real or imagined, onto new generations.

The following three chapters centers on missionary accounts of fear and hospitality in the Baltic. Chapter 3 presents a broad picture of fear in missionary chronicles. Focusing on the chronicles of Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau, and Henry of Livonia, the chapter divides itself into three sections. The first part explores the ways missionaries experienced fear and risk. Although religious expectations about missionary fearlessness certainly played a role in the written representations of terror in these works, the practicalities of missionizing guided authors who worked in pagan territory, such as Helmold, to treat fear more practically. The next section charts the frequency of timor (fear), terror, and gaudium (joy) in Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae, allowing Jezierski to point towards a concentration of fear during the establishment of Riga and moments where such emotions motivated feelings of solidarity. The final section returns to Adam’s and Helmold’s chronicles, arguing that both works used the Bible to present pagan territory as places of horror and dread. Chapter 4 uses hagiographies and missionary texts to analyze host-guest relations in the Baltic. Arguing that space was the most important aspect of Baltic hospitality, Jezierski charts scenes of both violence and reception in places such as the assembly or the antechamber. Jezierski claims that security, emotions, the uncertainty principle, and the constant pushing of boundaries by missionaries were the most important aspects of Baltic host-guest relations. Anxiety and fear were not the unintended results of missionary actions, but calculated consequences. Chapter 5 centers on representations of different kinds of hospitality in Helmold’s Chronica Slavorum. Whether describing Slavic host traditions, Danish aristocrats using the guise of guest-host relations to murder their enemies, or popes and kings exploiting the intricacies of medieval reception for political ends, Helmold’s firsthand experiences with the uncertainties of hospitality in the Baltic led him to portray all interactions between hosts and guests as fraught with danger. Furthermore, they led him to advocate for cooperation between missionaries and aristocrats, as Baltic hospitality alone proved too unstable to facilitate pagan conversion.

The next three chapters of Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim focus more exclusively on military and crusader experiences. Chapter 6 focuses on medieval Baltic sieges with the concept of “emotional bonding” (177). Whereas the emotional communities described by Rosenwein created voluntary and long-term ties, the emotional bonding that occurred during sieges connected people rapidly without their consent. Both crusaders and their pagan opponents instrumentalized fear and terror in sieges to unite their communities, to coerce enemies into submission, and to test the strengths of their relationships with allies. Chapter 7 introduces the methodology of “asymmetrical emotional ascription” (210) to compare the treatment of pagan peoples in Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae, and in the Livländische Reimchronik, which was written by an anonymous member of the Teutonic Order. By charting and categorizing each instance of sentimentality in each chronicle, Jezierski illustrates how the Chronicon Livoniae divided pagan and Christian emotionality in contrast to the Livländische Reimchronik which saw small commonalities between the feelings of pagan warriors and Teutonic Knights. However, a deep reading reveals that although the Chronicon Livoniae established a stronger boundary between Christians and pagans, its presentation of baptism as a source of joy devised a path for native inclusion not included in the Reimchronik’s view of constant battle as a source of crusader happiness. Jezierski’s interrogation of the Reimchronik continues in his final chapter of analysis. Places of hospitality in the Reimchronik could be opportunities of integration for both the Teutonic Knights and their opponents, but they could also be ambiguous spaces of anxiety as exemplified by the chronicle’s description of Estonian pagans murdering their Christian guest at a sauna. Metaphors of guest-host relations also served an important role in the Teutonic Order’s understanding of their place in the Baltic. Building on the chronicler’s imagining of a pagan leader’s speech which played with the double meaning of gast as both guest and stranger in Middle German, Jezierski contends that the crusaders may have had concerns about being unwanted intruders in the Baltic. Given the Teutonic Order’s practice of taking local nobles hostage when ratifying treaties, there may have been opportunities for the anonymous member of the Order to understand their opponents’ views.

The epilogue of Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim examines previous scholars’ work on emotions, hospitality, and risk to form a fuller picture of the medieval Baltic. Regarding the historiography of crusader emotions, Jezierski agrees with Stephen Spencer’s beliefs that despite fear’s importance, there was no uniform experience amongst crusaders with terror and that authorial intent was the decisive factor in developing a discourse around anxiety. Turning to the theme of hospitality, Jezierski posits that the ambiguity and blurring of boundaries in spaces of reception indicate that Christianization and acculturation were not one-way processes, but mutualistic and hybridized developments. Jezierski then returns to his original contention that Baltic missionaries and crusaders had their own notions of risk. Operating within Michael Polanyi’s conception of “tacit knowledge,” Jezierski argues that the ambiguity within the discourse of sentimentality and hospitality allowed Baltic writers to understand risk. Such knowledge could help actors navigate the perils of missionizing and crusading, allow writers to frame the source of danger onto their enemies and the landscape, or enable Baltic missionaries and crusaders to understand and differentiate the perspectives of others. Rather than presenting the medieval Baltic as a place where civilizations either clashed or came to terms, Jezierski’s Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim centers the experiences and imaginations of individuals, both Christian and pagan, who inhabited the region.

Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim is a must-read for any scholar interested in the wide variety of topics discussed in this work. Jezierski not only makes convincing arguments, but continuously lays out new methodologies for future research. Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim is a thorough and comprehensive book, but there are still avenues for scholars interested in this field to explore. Jezierski presents the worldview of the Teutonic Order’s Reimchronik as “quite secular” (243) when juxtaposed with Henry’s Chronicon Livoniae. While this description works for this specific comparison, it risks neglecting the importance of religion to members of military orders. Scholars of military orders should take Jezierski’s ideas and methods to investigate how religious ideas shaped the emotionality of knight-brothers given their presence in both monastic and militant spaces. Whether such works explore this question in the Baltic or in other locations such as Iberia or the Latin-East, they will be heavily indebted to Jezierski’s highly innovative book.

Patrick Eickman
University of Wisconsin-Madison
[email protected]