Don’t you know that we are your Pope, for our Pope is the Sword, and our Pope is never far from you.
In many ways, the Northern Crusades, a general term applied to the campaigns undertaken by various Catholic powers in Germany, Poland, the Baltics and Finland, though obscure today, produced the longest lasting and most significant consequences of any of the medieval Crusades, and also gave birth to traditions and institutions that lasted well into modernity. The need to recruit Crusaders from Europe to come and take part in never-ending warfare at the edge of the world also caused the evolution of very creative war fighting and marketing techniques that survive to this day.
The most fascinating of these were the Reisen, the great safari like trips that the Teutonic Order organized and marketed in the West to lure Western knights to this desolate land to take part in a great chivalrous adventure and hone their martial skills while cleansing their souls with the blood of the unbelievers. The deliberate mythology of the Reise, cultivated by the Teutonic Order, spread to every corner of Europe and the "Reysa" is even mentioned by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. Curious?