The pagan grand duke who dangled baptism in front of the Pope
Gediminas ruled a realm where Orthodox Christians outnumbered pagans more than two to one, yet he stayed loyal to the old gods until he died. What he offered Rome instead was the prospect of converting, a promise he could extend or withdraw as the war with the crusading knights demanded.
Almost nothing certain is known of his early life. Written records from Lithuania at the time are sparse, and the two stories that circulated for centuries were both composed long afterwards. Chronicles of the Teutonic Knights, Lithuania's sworn enemies, cast him as a stable hand who murdered his master Vytenis and seized the throne. Lithuanian chronicles made him Vytenis' son, which is unlikely since the two were close in age. A late 14th-century poem, Zadonshchina, later pointed historians towards an ancestor named Skalmantas, though whether that makes Gediminas and Vytenis cousins remains disputed.
He became grand duke around 1316, aged about 40, and reigned for a quarter of a century. His inheritance included Lithuania proper, Samogitia, Minsk and several other lands, all eyed hungrily by the Teutonic and Livonian orders, whose raids were justified as missionary work. In 1319 he allied with the Tatars against them, and late in 1322 he wrote to Pope John XXII asking for protection and for legates to baptise him.
The letters worked, briefly. In January 1323 he invited merchants, knights and farmers from the Hanseatic towns to settle under their own laws, and priests to build churches at Vilnius. A peace with the Livonian Order followed that October. But Prussian bishops denounced him, his Orthodox subjects feared Latin influence, and his pagan heartland threatened revolt, so he turned away the papal envoys. Privately he told them his conversion was merely postponed, and they barred his neighbours from attacking him for four years.
His policy tolerated Catholic clergy serving Catholics while harshly punishing anyone who tried to convert pagans, including two Bohemian friars executed around 1339. He also married his daughter Aldona to the future Polish king Casimir III. Tradition credits him with founding Vilnius, and the dynasty named after him later ruled Poland, Hungary and Bohemia.
Source: Gediminas
