"For a one-volume history of the northern crusades, the reader has but one choice; this is it". -- William Urban, American Historical Review The crusades to Catholicize and conquer the pagan and Orthodox Baltic regions were far more successful in leaving long-term effects than the campaigns in the Mediterranean. This lucid study begins when the first holy war against the heathen north was declared by the Pope in the twelfth century and concludes in the sixteenth century, when Rome issued its last crusading bull.
