"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

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 and, though pagan, competed with Moscow to gain a special church structure. Many of the general crises in this book have a familiar ring: crusade, famine, collapse of central authority in the German empire and the papacy. In this deeply-researched study, first published in 1994, the middle ages emerge as interesting and as varied as our own times.

Introduction
1. Central and eastern Europe, 1290–1320
2. Sources
3. An introduction to Lithuanian political and economic history before 1315
4. The expansion of Lithuania
5. Political ramifications of the pagan cult
6. The Metropolitanate of Lithuania
7. Pagans, peace, and the pope, 1322–84
8. The harshest realpolitik
9. 1339–45: endings and beginnings
10. Factors contributing to the formation of the Grand Duchy
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]