Summary This volume focuses on the complex and often overlooked topic of crusading activities and the crusade movement on the fringes of Latin Christendom in the time frame from approximately 1300 to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It covers a period widely considered as a time of significant political, cultural and religious changes in Europe. A period in which Western Christianity was on the one hand still expanding (vide Lithuania and the western Rus and later the Spanish, Portuguese, French and English expansion in the Americas, Africa and South-East Asia) and on the other hand facing two mighty opponents: the Ottoman Empire and Muscovy. On its eastern and southeastern frontiers, Latin Christian expansion came to a gradual halt???here, the West was now largely under siege! Alone the political, logistical and ultimately also military feasibility of a large-scale crusade to liberate Jerusalem had now receded into a purely theoretical and practically almost unenforceable far distance. Ranging in scope from the Baltic Sea region to the Balkans and Iberia, this book,s nineteen papers explore how these developments influenced the continuation and adaptation of crusading ideas and activities during this later period of crusades. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction. Crusading on the Periphery in the Later Middle Ages: Key Research Issues and Debates Paul Srodecki Part I: Campaigning and Recruiting? Communication between Centre and Periphery in Fifteenth-Century Crusading Norman Housley Crusade Campaigning by Friars of the Observant Franciscan Establishment in the Holy Land Marianne P. Ritsema Van Eck Crusading and Military Orders in the Crowns of Aragon and Castile in the Late Middle Ages Maria Bonet Donato? Army Inspection and Crusade. Wallachia and the Crusade Plans of Pope Leo X Mihai-D. Grigore Part II: Chivalry and Nobility The Bohemo-Moravian Nobility and the Baltic Crusades of the Bohemian Kings Ottokar II Premislas and John of Luxemburg in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Dalibor Jani? How to Uphold a Dying Institution. English Support for the Teutonic Order,s Baltic Crusades in the Early Fifteenth Century Benj min Borb s Lithuanian Participation in the Crusading Movement in the Long Fifteenth Century Darius Baronas Part III: From Expansion to Defence The Crusade of Nicopolis and its Significance for the Western Image of the Ottoman Turks around 1400 Paul Srodecki Hungary and the passagium particulare after Nicopolis (1396-1437) Attila B rany The Last Crusades in the Balkans from 1443- 44 or the Union between Central and South- Eastern Europe against the Ottoman Invasion Nevyan Mitev Converting Heretics into Crusaders on the Fringes of Latin Christendom. Shifting Crusading Paradigms in Medieval Bosnia Emir O. Filipovi? Ziel oder Ausgangsort? Das Gro f rstentum Litauen als verl ngerter Arm der Kreuzzugsbewegung vom Ende des 14. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts Rimvydas Petrauskas Fighting Pagans and Relations between Poland and the Teutonic Order after 1466 Adam Szweda Part IV: Legitimation and Propaganda Infideles et perfidi schismatici. Crusades and Christianisation as Political Tools of the Polish Kings in the Fourteenth Century Andrzej Marzec Against Tartari, Rutheni et Litfani, hostes fidei. The Role and Ambivalence of the Crusading Idea in the Integration of Ruthenia into the Polish Crown in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century Sven Jaros Playing the Crusade Card. Rhetorical References to Outremer and Iberian Crusades in the Conflict between the Teutonic Order and the Crown of Poland in the Early Fifteenth Century Paul Srodecki Zwischen Kreuzzugsrhetorik und B ndnissen. Die Ostpolitik des Gro f rsten Witold von Litauen (1392- 1430) Sergey V. Polekhov Legitimising the Hussite Wars. Anti-Heretical Crusading in the Fifteenth Century Pavel Soukup