Review
"...[a] superb scholarly study....whose balanced narrative and analysis effectively portray the many vivid personalities and dramatic developments of this crucial period in the history of east central Europe. General and academic collections at all levels." Choice
"English (and in some respects the first time in any language), the rise of pagan Lithuania during the rule of Grand Duke Gediminas, with attention given also to the reigns of his predecessor Vytenis and successor Jaunutis." Choice
"It deserves careful attention from every serious student of medieval Russia and East Central Europe." Jean W. Sedlar, American Historical Review
"He [Rowell] has utilized the archives of ten different countries and an astounding array of published primary sources, Quellenforschungen, and specialized studies. He carefully introduces and re-introduces his cast of geographic, ethnic, institutional, and human characters, so that the reader does not get lost...Rowell has written a splendid book and has done so with erudition and zest....There is nothing at all like this book in any western language." International History Review
"This superb book is a major contribution to the history of east-central Europe in the Middle Ages, and to medieval history in general. It is an exceptionally welcome and original addition to a series of recent works about east-central Europe in the medieval period that are conceived in...English and that situate this region, and the countries and peoples that make it up, within a new and informed comparative perspective. In exceptionally clear and polished prose, it weaves together political, dynastic, economic, diplomatic, and ecclesiastical history to trace and explain the rise of the Jogaila dynasty to Christianity and the series of unions with Poland that followed in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The book...is, above all else, astonishingly learned." Piotr Górecki, Speculum
Book Description
From 1250 to 1795 Lithuania covered a vast area of eastern and central Europe. Until 1387 the country was pagan. How this huge state came to expand, defend itself against western European crusaders and play a conspicuous part in European life are the main subjects of this book. Chapters are devoted to the types of sources used, to the religion of the ancient Balts (and the discovery of a pagan temple in Vilnius in the late 1980s), and to Lithuanian relations and wars with Poland and the Germans. Under Grand Duke Gediminas, Lithuania came to control more of Russia than the prince of Moscow.
Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345 FROM THE PUBLISHER
From 1250 to 1795 Lithuania covered a vast area of eastern and central Europe. Until 1387 the country was pagan. How this huge state came to expand, defend itself against western European crusaders and play a conspicuous part in European life are the main subjects of this book. The emergence of pagan Lithuania is presented against the background of the political and religious crises of fourteenth-century Byzantine and Catholic Christendom. An attempt is made to show how the Lithuanians manipulated their position on the commercial, denominational and colonial frontier to maintain an expanding dominion in the face of Polish, Teutonic and Rus'ian opposition. It questions the mirage of the 'age of faith' as the 'age of totalitarian Christian Europe'. The book has relevance to the expansion of the Church and Empire between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The rise of the new ruling elites in the fourteenth century familiar to French and English historians has its counterpart in Bohemia, Poland, Rus', and in Lithuania, although centralising forces were very weak, thus contributing to the strength of the later Polish-Lithuanian Republic of the Two Nations. Sources are used from across Europe, from Ireland and Spain to the Caucasus. The use of 'literary', 'mythological' chronicles is analysed. Reliance on non-literary sources has also proved necessary. The lack of extensive Lithuanian documentation requires a focus on all sides of international affairs: a desideratum which is usually missing from western studies.
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