Medieval Adventure Tourism


More precisely, these campaigns offered adventurous nobles opportunities to show off. Glamorous in repute but difficult, dangerous and sordid in practice, the raids across the wildernesses that marked the Prussian/Livonian/Lithuanian border, were often run by the order [of Teutonic Knights] as chivalrous package tours, complete with special feasts, displays of heraldry, souvenirs, and even prizes. Perfected by Grand Master Winrich of Kniprode (1352—-82), these festivals of knighthood became almost de rigueur for the chivalric classes of western Europe, a rather different clientele to the more habitual Baltic crusaders from Germany and central Europe. The dozen prize winners who dined at the Table of Honour after the 1375 reisa [summer raid] each received a badge bearing the motto “Honour conquers all,” a far cry from the Jerusalem decree of Clermont (“Whoever for devotion alone, not for honour or money goes to Jerusalem . . .”).

—Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, p. 707