Faiths & clergy¶

The Baltic religion, Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism in the Grand Duchy, and the saga’s overlay of clergy and Forces.

Labels. [Historical record] is attested in the sources or standard scholarship; [The saga’s invention] was made for this series.

Stance (binding, Cosmology §2.2). The saga never passes judgement on the Christian God, nor on any real faith. The Vulture Forces (Iron Saint, White Silence, Gold-Glutton, Steppe-Hunger) are egregores fed by institutions: crusade, purchased baptism, conquest, ledger. They are not fed by faith. Every faith in this page gets sympathetic and corrupt figures, and the old religion is not romanticised: it burned captives, kept secrets from the people it bound, and sold prophecy to dukes.

1. The Baltic religion as practised in 1382 [Historical record]¶

1.1 The sources and their problems¶

Almost everything written about Lithuanian paganism before 1387 was written by enemies, converts or later antiquarians. No Lithuanian pagan text survives.

Source	Date	Value	Problem
Peter of Dusburg, Chronicon terrae Prussiae	1326	Describes Prussian religion, the sanctuary of Romowe (Romuva) in Nadruvia and its high priest the Criwe, whom he likens to a pope	An Order priest writing crusade justification. The “pagan pope” may be built by analogy with Rome; Romuva’s location has never been found. Contested.
Livonian Rhymed Chronicle; Hermann von Wartberge; Wigand of Marburg	13th–14th c. (Wigand survives in a 15th-c. Latin version)	Raids, oaths, funerals, burnings of captives	Order perspective; details of rites are second-hand.
Jan Długosz, Annales	c. 1455–80	The 1387 extinction of the Vilnius flame, the felling of the grove, the killing of the sacred snakes; Samogitian conversion
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, De Europa	c. 1458	Anecdotes from Jerome of Prague’s preaching in Lithuania: household snakes, sacred groves, a sacred fire	Hearsay, written decades later.
16th-c. Lithuanian chronicles (incl. Bychowiec)	16th c.	Šventaragis, Lizdeika, the Iron Wolf, Birutė the vaidilutė	Dynastic legend; Renaissance invention of a Roman origin for the nobility.
Jan Łasicki, De diis Samagitarum; Maciej Stryjkowski	c. 1580 (Łasicki published 1615)	Long lists of Samogitian gods	Many names are probably misunderstandings or inventions.
Archaeology	—	Cremation dominant; horse burials; hillforts; sacred hills (alkos kalnai)	Shows practice, not belief.

Consequence for the saga. The terms Krivis, Krivių Krivaitis, vaidilutė and the image of an organised pagan “church” with a hierarchy and a centre are partly a construct of hostile and Romantic sources. The saga is entitled to use them, since folklore taken literally is its premise, but docs should never present them as settled history.

1.2 The clergy¶

Role	What the sources say	Uncertainty
Krivis, Krivių Krivaitis (“Krivis of Krivises”)	Dusburg’s Criwe at Romuva, a high priest whose messenger carried his staff or another sign; the 16th-c. chronicles make Lizdeika a high priest under Gediminas. Later ethnography records the krivulė, a crooked staff carried from farm to farm to summon a village assembly.	High. Whether a single high priest existed in 14th-c. Lithuania is doubtful; the title Krivių Krivaitis is largely 16th-c. and later.
Žyniai (sing. žynys, “one who knows”, from žinoti)	General term for priests and seers: sacrificers, interpreters of omens, healers.	Medium. The word is genuine Lithuanian, but its use as a formal rank is largely modern.
Vaidilos / vaidilutės	Prussian sources (late, e.g. Grunau, 16th c.) mention Waidelotten; Lithuanian tradition makes Birutė a maiden keeper of the sacred fire at Palanga.	High. The vaidilutė as a vestal virgin of an eternal flame is shaped by Romantic historiography (19th c.), though sacred fires themselves are attested (Długosz).
Burtininkai (lot-casters, from burtai, lots)	Lots and omens before war and for choosing offerings are reported by Order chroniclers.	Low to medium. Divination is well attested in general terms.
Raganos (witches, seers; linked to regėti, “to see”, though the etymology is debated)	Folklore: women who see, heal, curse, fly to hilltop gatherings (Šatrija).	They belong to folk belief, not to any priesthood; witch-trial records are post-1500.

1.3 Sacred places¶

Alkai (sing. alkas): sacred groves, hills, stones or fields where no tree was cut and no plough went. The word survives in hundreds of place names (Alkos kalnas, Alkupis). Oaths were sworn and offerings left there. [Historical record]
Eternal flames: Długosz describes the perpetual fire in Vilnius, tended by priests and extinguished by Jogaila in 1387. Lithuanian tradition places another on Birutė’s hill at Palanga. Długosz and others describe Samogitian sacred fires extinguished during the 1413 conversion. [Historical record, late sources]
Šventaragis: in the 16th-c. chronicles, a legendary prince who asked to be burned at the confluence of the Neris and the Vilnia; the valley took his name and later rulers were cremated there. The traditional site lies under or beside Vilnius Cathedral. [Historical record: legend]

1.4 Offerings and oaths¶

Offerings: grain, bread, beer, milk (for the žaltys), first fruits, animals (goats, oxen, horses, cocks); amber and weapons appear in graves. [Historical record]
Oaths: sworn on earth, by the gods, with an animal sacrifice. In 1351 Kęstutis swore a pagan oath to King Louis of Hungary, sacrificing an ox, promised baptism, and then left without keeping it. The saga mirrors it in Vytautas’s 1383 false baptism (master chronology). [Historical record]
Human sacrifice: Order chroniclers repeatedly report captured knights burned as thank-offerings. Dusburg reports that after the 1320 battle at Medininkai the Samogitians burned a captured Order official, Gerhard Rude, mounted on his horse. These are hostile sources, but the reports are too frequent to dismiss. The saga keeps them (see §2.2).

1.5 Cremation¶

Practice: cremation was the normal rite of Lithuanian pagans into the 14th century; graves with horses, weapons and personal goods are common in the archaeology. [Historical record]
Algirdas, May 1377: cremated with his horses and goods in a pagan rite according to Order sources. Some Rus’ chronicles claim instead that he died an Orthodox monk. Contested. The saga takes the cremation (master chronology), and it can hint at the Orthodox rumour through his widow Uliana (§3). [Historical record, contested]
Kęstutis, August 1382: cremated with full pagan rites in Vilnius, with his horse, arms, hounds and falcons, by order of the nephew whose men killed him.

1.6 Sacred animals¶

Žalčiai (grass snakes): kept in houses and sanctuaries, fed milk, killing one a disaster. Długosz says the snakes of the Vilnius sanctuary were killed in 1387; Aeneas Silvius tells of households keeping snakes as guardian spirits. [Historical record]
Horses: sacrificed and burned with their lords; white horses used in divination in Baltic sources. [Historical record, partial]
Wolves, aurochs, bees, the cuckoo carry heavy folk symbolism (the Iron Wolf, the aurochs of Tauras hill, the cuckoo of the Eglė tale), but there is no reliable record of cult.

1.7 What the Order and the chroniclers saw¶

Western chivalric writers often called the Lithuanians “Saracens”, and the Order presented them as worshippers of fire, groves, snakes and stones, so that the Reise could be preached as a crusade with indulgences. Its chroniclers were not stupid: they knew the land and its people well, recorded real oaths and real funerals, and negotiated with pagan dukes as equals when it suited them. Their descriptions are accurate observations framed by a purpose. The saga’s priests and knights should talk that way too: precise about the enemy’s rites and wrong about their meaning.

2. Saga overlay: the clergy and the Forces [The saga’s invention]¶

2.1 Who does what, in the three-layer cosmology¶

Role	Relation to the gods and Forces	Relation to Senovės Kalba	Book I examples
Krivis	Keeper of the Silent Pact (Cosmology §4.1). He does not command the gods; he witnesses and binds. The Krivis office moved from Romuva to Vilnius (Šventaragis) when Prussia fell in 1283 (master chronology). The line claims descent from Lizdeika.	Rarely casts. His power is the binding (Senovės Sutartis, magic §6) and the oath-memory of the flame. Carries the krivulė, the crooked staff that “remembers” every oath sworn while it was held.	The Krivis of 1382 (unnamed in Book I; offstage).
Žyniai	Petitioners of gods; negotiators with spirits of place.	Trained askers, taught in a living lineage; the gift itself still comes by one of the three paths (born, noticed, bound; magic §2). The Order gags captured žyniai because Kalba needs words aloud (magic §3.2).	Galminas, “the last of the old žyniai” (ch. 29), also the Root-Mother’s host.
Vaidilutės	Keepers of the sacred flames that are clause 1 of the Pact. Gabija’s servants.	Born (prigimtis), usually down the maternal line. Fire workings.	Eglė of Šventaragis, before she becomes Pelkių Eglė.
The Palanga amber line	A distinct sisterhood: vessels of the Amber Queen (Cosmology §3.4). Not subordinate to the Krivis, and older than his office in Lithuania.	Born; amber as universal medium; Water and Stars.	Birutė.
Burtininkai	Readers of Laima’s threads through lots.	Minor Stars workings. Their weakness: lots, like Laima’s words, admit many readings, so a lot-caster can always find the answer the paymaster wants without technically lying (Law of Truth, magic §5.2).	Jogaila’s court lot-caster (prologue context; see §2.2).
Raganos	Outside the Pact. Never sworn into it, so never protected by it and never bound by its courtesy. They bargain directly with Forces (the Root-Mother, sometimes the Shadow-Seller).	Born seers; the most dangerous independents.	None on the page in Book I; they rise after 1387.

Rule: the pagan clergy are not the gods’ servants in any simple sense. They are brokers between mortals and powers that are indifferent (gods) or hungry (Forces). Like all brokers, some are honest, some are frightened, and some take a cut.

2.2 Sympathetic and corrupt: the old faith¶

Sympathetic:
- Eglė, who told Jogaila’s captain the truth to his face and paid for it with her mortality.
- Birutė, who used a priestess’s trick to marry for love and paid the bill herself (legends §5).
- Galminas, who in ch. 29 does not curse, only watches. He is stern, unforgiving and honest.
Corrupt or grey:
- The Krivis of 1345–82 (suggested name: Sirvydas; the saga’s invention). He bound two princes to a Pact whose price, royal children’s blood, the people were never told (legends §6). He kept the flame and the secret, and in 1382, when Jogaila’s captain came for a prophecy, he sent his youngest vaidilutė (Eglė) to give it rather than face the duke himself.
- Jogaila’s court burtininkas (the saga’s invention). A lot-caster who has never once in twelve years cast an unfavourable lot for his master. He is not a liar; he is a good reader. Henė likes him.
- The žyniai who burn captives (grounded in the record, §1.4). After the first Order raid of Book I, a captured young knight is burned on his horse as a thank-offering to Perkūnas. Vytautas does not stop it.

2.3 The fate of the pagan hierarchy after 1387¶

[Historical record] In February–March 1387, Jogaila, now King of Poland, came to Vilnius with Polish clergy. According to Długosz he had the perpetual fire extinguished, the sacred grove felled and the sacred snakes killed, while the people watched and wondered that the gods did nothing. Commoners were baptised in groups, each group given one Christian name, and the baptised received woollen garments, which drew many to the font. Few Polish priests spoke Lithuanian, and Długosz says Jogaila himself taught the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer in Lithuanian. The Vilnius bishopric was founded, a cathedral begun on the sanctuary site, and privileges were issued favouring Catholic boyars. Samogitia remained pagan until 1413–17.

[The saga’s invention] What happened to the clergy:

The Krivis stays by the flame as it is put out. He does not resist. When the water hits the embers, he speaks the Pact’s ending aloud (”Sutartis baigta”), so that the spirits of place hear it from a human mouth and not from a priest’s Latin. That is the moment the Unbinding begins (Cosmology §4.3). He walks into the felled grove and is not seen again.
The vaidilutės of the city are baptised and married off to Catholic boyars, which is what the privileges reward. One or two go west to the Hidden Groves of Samogitia. Their flames are the last legal pagan fires in Europe until 1413.
The žyniai scatter into the villages as healers, bone-setters and weather-askers. With no Krivis and no flames, nobody can bind new oaths with the gods, only bargains with Forces. That is the Unbinding in a sentence: after 1387, the only supernatural contracts left are bargains (magic §1), and bargains are Velnias’s trade.
The raganos rise. They were outside the Pact, so they lose nothing when it ends. In Books II–V the peasantry turns to them, quietly (Cosmology §4.3).
The žalčiai. The snakes killed in Vilnius were the descendants of Žilvinas (legends §2). Eglė’s is the last of the line. The threshold lullaby (legends §12.3) begins to be sung that spring.

2.4 Christian clergy and the Forces¶

Christian priests cannot see the Baltic spirits, and holy water does nothing to things that do not believe in it (Cosmology §4.3). This is not a verdict on Christianity. Two orders of meaning are passing each other without touching.
Consecrated stone dampens Kalba (magic §9): the old powers are strangers in a church, as a Franciscan would be a stranger in an alkas. Cold iron forged by a Christian smith on a feast day burns spirits (magic §9), the one point where the two orders collide, and the saga should enjoy the irony of peasants hanging Order horseshoes over their doors after 1387.
The egregores feed on appetite wearing faith’s clothes, not on faith. A Franciscan praying for a dying pagan feeds nothing. A Reise launched for indulgences and slaves feeds the Iron Saint. A baptism bought for a crown or a woollen shirt feeds the White Silence. A bishopric’s tithe-ledger, once it outweighs its almonry, feeds the Gold-Glutton.
Christian grace is never mocked and never explained. If an honest priest’s blessing seems to steady a frightened man, the saga does not say whether God did it or the man did. The camera does not go there.

3. Orthodox Christianity in the Grand Duchy [Historical record]¶

Most of the Grand Duchy was Orthodox. By 1382 the Ruthenian lands (Polotsk, Vitebsk, Kyiv, Volhynia, Chernihiv-Siversk, Smolensk’s borders) made up the greater part of the realm’s territory and population. Algirdas ruled them through Orthodox sons (e.g. Andrei of Polotsk, Dmitri of Bryansk). Ruthenian was the chancery language. [Historical record]
Algirdas’s wives were Orthodox: Maria of Vitebsk (died c. 1346) and Uliana of Tver (married 1350), Jogaila’s mother. Uliana was devout, politically formidable and a patron of monasteries, and she remained a power at court after 1377. Whether Jogaila was baptised Orthodox as a child is disputed. [Historical record]
Orthodox Vilnius: the city had a Ruthenian quarter and several Orthodox churches by the mid-14th century; tradition ascribes St Paraskeva’s church to Maria of Vitebsk. [Historical record, partly traditional]
The Vilnius martyrs. Tradition holds that in 1347 three Orthodox courtiers of Algirdas, Anthony, John and Eustathius, were executed for refusing to renounce their faith (the story includes a refusal to break the fast), and were hanged on an oak at an execution place where the Holy Trinity church and monastery later stood. They were venerated early and are saints of the Orthodox Church; their relics are kept in Vilnius (Church of the Holy Spirit). [Historical record: tradition]
Church organisation: Constantinople at times appointed a separate metropolitan for Lithuania, against Moscow’s objections; Cyprian was consecrated in 1375 for Kyiv and Lithuania. Orthodox Lithuania was therefore a diplomatic battlefield between the Grand Duke, Moscow and the Patriarchate. [Historical record]
Vytautas and Orthodoxy: Vytautas is often said to have taken Orthodox baptism (as Yuri / Jurgis) during his 1384 reconciliation. Ona’s origins are uncertain; some identify her with a Smolensk princely family, which would make her Orthodox-born.

3.1 Saga overlay [The saga’s invention]¶

Orthodoxy in Book I is a household faith, not a crusading one. It is the faith of mothers, wives and the eastern half of the realm. The Vulture Forces barely notice it in 1382, because nobody is buying a crown with it yet. That changes in Book II, when Sofija’s marriage to Vasily I of Moscow (1391) puts an Orthodox throne on the ledger.
Double faith: in Ruthenian Lithuania the žaltys gets milk and the icon gets a candle in the same house. The saga treats this as wisdom, not confusion.
Sympathetic:
- The 1347 martyrs. Pagan Vilnius killed them. The saga does not soften that. Their oak is the first holy tree in Vilnius that the old gods did not plant.
- Uliana, a pious woman who loved her son and taught him to hide what he wanted. She is grey, not corrupt.
Corrupt (the saga’s invention): the hegumen of Holy Trinity, who sells splinters of the “martyrs’ oak” to Hanseatic merchants at a price that rises each Lent, and whose counting-room has a warm coin on every shelf (a Gold-Glutton sign, Cosmology §3.3).

4. Catholicism [Historical record unless marked]¶

4.1 The Franciscans in Vilnius¶

Gediminas’s letters (1323) invited merchants, craftsmen and clergy, mentioned friars (Franciscans and Dominicans) already serving in his realm, and spoke of churches built for them. Catholic merchants and friars had a quiet presence in Vilnius through the pagan period. [Historical record]
The Franciscan martyrs. Later Franciscan tradition remembers friars killed in Vilnius under the pagan dukes: two in Gediminas’s time and a larger group (often given as fourteen, sometimes dated 1369, sometimes 1341) under Algirdas. The accounts are late and partly legendary; dates, numbers and circumstances vary. [Historical record: tradition, historicity debated]
The Franciscan church “on the Sand” (Church of the Assumption, Smėlynė) is traditionally the old Franciscan site of Vilnius.

4.2 The 1387 bishopric¶

Jogaila founded the Vilnius bishopric in 1387, endowed the cathedral (dedicated to St Stanislaus) on or beside the sanctuary site, and the papacy confirmed it. The first bishop was Andrzej Wasilko (Andrew Jastrzębiec), a Franciscan. The new parishes were few and their clergy mostly Polish.
Archaeology: excavations under Vilnius Cathedral (led by Napoleonas Kitkauskas from the 1980s) found earlier structures. Whether they include a pagan sanctuary, Mindaugas’s 13th-century cathedral, or both is debated. The saga may stack all three: the cathedral of 1387 on the ruins of Mindaugas’s church on the flame of Šventaragis. [Historical record, contested interpretation]

4.3 The Teutonic Order’s spirituality¶

A religious order: the Ordo fratrum domus hospitalis Sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum in Jerusalem (the Brothers of the German House of St Mary). Knight-brothers and priest-brothers took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, kept the hours, and lived under a Rule. [Historical record]
Marian devotion: Mary was the Order’s patroness; its capital was Marienburg; Prussia itself was “Mary’s land”. The castle church carried a colossal image of the Virgin. The great campaigns were timed around Marian feasts, especially the Purification (2 Feb) for winter and the Assumption (15 Aug) for summer. [Historical record]
The Reise: seasonal raids into Lithuania joined by Western “guests” (French, English, German, Scottish nobles) for honour and indulgence, sometimes celebrated by the Table of Honour (Ehrentisch) feast. Henry Bolingbroke rode in 1390 and 1392 (master chronology 1390). Chaucer’s Knight is the period’s own witness: “In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce.” [Historical record]
Irony for the books: Kęstutis died on 15 August 1382, the Feast of the Assumption (master chronology), the Order’s high summer feast, when Marian hymns were being sung in Marienburg. The saga should let a knight remark on it, and should let the remark be devout rather than gloating.

4.4 Saga overlay [The saga’s invention]¶

Sympathetic Catholics:
- Kuno von Liebenstein, komtur of Osterode, who historically warned Kęstutis of Jogaila’s treaty in 1381 (Ivinskis, via en.wikipedia; master chronology). He was a knight of the Order who kept faith with an enemy duke. Perkūnas would approve of him. (The saga’s Günther von Hohenstein is a different, invented young brother of Book VI, not the informant.)
- Konrad Zöllner von Rotenstein (Grand Master 1382–90; H1): old, devout, a chess player. He believes honestly in Vytautas’s conversion, which makes Vytautas’s lie in ch. 19 cost something.
- The Franciscans of Vilnius (Cosmology §2.2): poor, Lithuanian-speaking in a few cases, and victims of both the pagan dukes and, later, of the bishops who arrive with money. A Franciscan in ch. 29 who baptises a frightened child by name, instead of by group, is the saga’s quiet answer to the White Silence.
- Andrzej Wasilko, the first bishop: portray him as an honest Franciscan placed in a political job. He is a historical person; keep invention light.
- Jadvyga, at her best (Cosmology §2.2): a young queen who gave up the man she loved for a duty she believed in. The White Silence uses her; she is its victim, not its servant.
Corrupt or grey Catholics:
- The amber wardens of Prussia, who hang poor gatherers for a pocket of sea-gold, all in the name of Mary’s land.
- The commander who prices baptisms: in Book I, an Order Komtur who keeps a tariff of how many Lithuanian villages each converted boyar is worth. The Iron Saint walks behind him like heat from a forge.
- The Polish clerk of 1387 (the saga’s invention): he counts woollen shirts against names at the Neris font. He is not cruel, only efficient, and frost forms on his ink.

5. Holy places gazetteer¶

#	Place	[Historical record]	[The saga’s invention] notes
1	Šventaragis valley, Vilnius (Neris–Vilnia confluence)	Legendary cremation site of dukes (16th-c. chronicles); site of the perpetual fire extinguished in 1387 (Długosz); now the cathedral square	Seat of the Krivis and the Silent Pact (1345). Eglė’s flame. The dead under the city are kept asleep by the fire (legends §3); the Unbinding starts here in 1387. The burnt-church meeting place of ch. 26 belongs here.
2	Tauras hill, Vilnius	Named in the Iron Wolf legend as where Gediminas killed the aurochs (16th c.)	The price paid for the city (legends §3). No aurochs comes near it.
3	Holy Trinity, Vilnius (the martyrs’ oak)	Traditional execution site of the 1347 Orthodox martyrs	The first holy tree in Vilnius not planted by the old gods. Pagan and Orthodox Vilnians both avoid sitting under it, for different reasons.
4	Franciscan church “on the Sand”, Vilnius	Traditional Franciscan site	The friars’ bell is the one Christian sound the spirits of the Vilnia do not flee. Nobody knows why; the saga never says.
5	Birutė’s hill, Palanga	Traditional site of Birutė’s sanctuary and grave; archaeology found traces of a wooden structure, interpreted by some as a pagan sanctuary or observatory. A chapel stands there now (19th c.).	The Palanga shore-fire of the amber line; the Šventasis akmuo of ch. 11 and 27; the amber kneeling woman on the beach below (ch. 27). The surf here speaks only through amber (Cosmology §5).
6	Šventoji river mouth, near Palanga	Folk placing of Jūratė’s palace	Where Kastytis fished. Storm amber from here is “wall-amber” and too dangerous to work: it remembers the palace (legends §1).
7	Romuva / Romowe, Nadruvia (Prussia)	Dusburg’s sanctuary of the Criwe; location unknown; under the Order since the 13th c.	Fell in 1283; the Krivis office moved to Vilnius (master chronology). In 1382 it is a ruin under an Order chapel, and not the prologue’s location. Book V flashback only, flagged as a stretch.
8	Rambynas hill, on the Neman (Lithuania Minor)	Sacred hill of Lithuania Minor; its sacrificial stone was reportedly broken in the early 19th c.	In 1382 on the Order’s side of the river. Lithuanians cross at night to leave offerings; the Order’s priests know and let it happen, which is either tolerance or a trap.
9	Šatrija hill, Samogitia	In folklore the gathering place of witches (Šatrijos raganos)	A Hidden Grove after 1384. The raganos meet here because it was never part of the Pact, so the Pact’s ending cannot hurt it.
10	Medvėgalis hill, Samogitia	Besieged in the Order’s 1329 campaign with John of Bohemia; its defenders were forcibly baptised and reverted once the army left	The saga’s emblem of baptism under duress: the White Silence came, tasted, and went hungry. The local žyniai still keep the shirts as relics of a victory.
11	Kernavė, on the Neris	Early political centre with a hillfort complex; archaeology of a 13th–14th c. town; burned by the Order in 1390	The oldest alkas of the Neris valley. Pagan lore says the first Krivis to leave Romuva rested here before Vilnius.
12	Krėva castle	Where Kęstutis died (15 Aug 1382) and where the Union of 1385 was signed	Not a holy place but an unholy one: residue of a kin-murder (magic §5.3). The White Silence settles here in 1385 (Cosmology §4.2). Seers cannot sleep in the tower.
13	Puntukas boulder, near Anykščiai	Folk tale (recorded after Christianisation): Velnias meant to smash the Anykščiai church with it and dropped it at cock-crow	Saga retelling for 1382, before any church stood there: Velnias was carrying it to dam the Šventoji and drown a village that had cheated him (legends §9). After 1387 the villagers retell it with a church, because that story is safer.
14	Marienburg (Malbork), Prussia	Seat of the Grand Master from 1309; centre of the Marian cult of the Order	The Iron Saint’s forge-heart. The amber pebble goes cold here (magic §9; ch. 19). The Golden Gate’s carved virtues are sincere, and so is the furnace heat in the cellars.
15	The secret flame, Trakai island castle	—	Saga only (magic §6). Lit by Vytautas on the night of the 1387 extinguishing; it goes out at his death in 1430. Not yet a “place” in Book I, but the gazetteer should hold its slot.