Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper analyses the portrayal of women in the Livländische Reimchronik and Nikolaus von Jeroschin’s Kronike von Pruzinlant, the two earliest German language chronicles written by members of the German Order to describe the conquest of Livonia and Prussia. It concludes that while women played an important role in the Prussian crusades and often appear to be sympathetically portrayed, their depiction is almost always subservient to the development of role models for male warriors in the context of the crusade in the Baltic.