Europe · High and late Middle Ages
Teutonic Order
1226/1230–1525
1226/1230–1525. Invited by Duke Konrad of Masovia (Golden Bull of Rimini, March 1226) to fight the pagan Prussians, the Order built a theocratic monastic state in Prussia, capital at Marienburg (Malbork) from 1308/09, the largest brick castle in Europe.
- Existed
- 1226/1230–1525
- Shown on the map
- 1236–1525
- Peak area
- 191k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
1226/1230–1525. Invited by Duke Konrad of Masovia (Golden Bull of Rimini, March 1226) to fight the pagan Prussians, the Order built a theocratic monastic state in Prussia, capital at Marienburg (Malbork) from 1308/09, the largest brick castle in Europe. It seized Danzig/Gdańsk and Pomerelia in 1308. Its power was broken at Grunwald/Tannenberg (15 July 1410) by Poland-Lithuania under Władysław II Jagiełło and Vytautas, though Marienburg survived the subsequent two-month siege under Heinrich von Plauen. The Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), sparked by the Prussian Confederation's revolt and Casimir IV Jagiellon's intervention, ended with the Second Peace of Thorn (19 October 1466): the Order ceded western (Royal) Prussia including Marienburg to Poland, moved its capital to Königsberg, and became a Polish vassal. In 1525 Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Hohenzollern converted to Lutheranism and secularized the Prussian lands into the Duchy of Prussia (the Prussian Homage, 10 April 1525), Europe's first Protestant state.
Common questions
- What was Teutonic Order?
- 1226/1230–1525. Invited by Duke Konrad of Masovia (Golden Bull of Rimini, March 1226) to fight the pagan Prussians, the Order built a theocratic monastic state in Prussia, capital at Marienburg (Malbork) from 1308/09, the largest brick castle in Europe.
- When did Teutonic Order exist?
- Teutonic Order existed 1226/1230–1525. On this map it is drawn 1236–1525.
- How large was Teutonic Order?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Teutonic Order covered about 191,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, academic works (John Fine on the Balkans, Halperin and Martin on Muscovy, Rady and Veszprémy on Hungary) and, for a few entries, the medieval Livonian Chronicle of Henry itself. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Teutonic Order en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Order
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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