1217 Death of Kaupo the Accursed
One of the joys of being a medieval historian is understanding the nicknames of famous leaders of the day. A single battle in 1066, for example, transformed William “the Bastard” into William “the Conqueror” while a lifetime of feckless behaviour earned Ethelred the label of “the Unready”. Wonderful stories lie behind the origins of sobriquets like “Bushy-Brow”, “the Impotent”, “the Boneless”, “Hare-Foot”, “the Twister”, and “Blood-Axe”. But what about Kaupo of Livonia who ended up being known as “the Accursed”?
The last parts of Europe to be Christianized lay at the eastern end of the Baltic, between the Orthodox lands of Russia and Catholic Germany and Poland, inhabited by tribes of Finns, Livonians, Latvians, etc. Attempts to peacefully evangelize them were met with resistance, prompting a series of Northern Crusades by military orders such as the Teutonic Knights or Knights of the Sword who combined missionary work with brutal conquest.
As these German-speaking orders pressed eastward, one of the first Livonians to accept baptism was Kaupo of Turaida, a local chieftain who so impressed the Bishop of Riga that he took him to Rome where he was presented to the pope. On his return to his native land, however, Kaupo was rejected for his new religion and alliances with foreigners. He had to reconquer his own castle and died fighting along side crusaders against pagan Estonians; for his divided loyalties he was labelled a traitor and “the Accursed”. It was not until the early 1300s that the territory was nominally Christianized.