AH Challenge: Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights survives to the present

Here's a simple AHC:
Find a way to keep the Monastic State alive in a contiguous, Catholic, sovereign state indefinitely. Bonus points if it is at least a secondary European power. Popular government is acceptable to a degree, but the Order must retain the control of the executive and military.

What are your thoughts on the matter?
 
It is a necessary statement the teutonics must remain catholic? If for instead they embraced at some point the Protestantism to affirm indipendence from Rome?
 
It is a necessary statement the teutonics must remain catholic? If for instead they embraced at some point the Protestantism to affirm indipendence from Rome?

Yes, solely because the Order would cease to truly be if it became Protestant. Whem the Grand master did so OTL, he seized noble secular power.
 
Yes, solely because the Order would cease to truly be if it became Protestant. Whem the Grand master did so OTL, he seized noble secular power.


Ok. So for start... Teutonic victory at lake Peipus and conquest of Novogrod > Expansion in Russia > defeat of the Khanates?
 
Hmm I think the Teutonic Knights just lend themselves to very pretty maps.

Ordensland1410.png
 
Probably, considerating the fact the Teutonics will managed to conserve the bulk of their territories ( Estiona, Latvia and Prussia), the main directions of expansion could be: 1) Russia 2) Lithuania 3) Scandinavia 4) Balkan Germany... in this case Teutonics protectors of the Hansa?

Poland... i don't know, maybe in the period the country risked to become protestant?
 
I wouldn't think they'd need to expand in order to survive. If anything being surrounded by hostile, religiously driven states might be necessary to keep them as a religious order.
 
I wouldn't think they'd need to expand in order to survive. If anything being surrounded by hostile, religiously driven states might be necessary to keep them as a religious order.

Also this is a reasonable statement... in effect, the ACH says "surviving" and not "expansion" of the Teutonic order... I guess i will go a little over the lines.
 
Part of the issue was that the failure of the crusades in the Middle East, combined with the fact that the original task of the Knights had been completed, both discredited the idea of Monastic orders, and left the Teutonic Order as something of a 5th Wheel, without purpose or a real sense of support from Catholicism.

Perhaps if the Kingdom of Jerusalem etc. last a bit longer (into the late 1200s with Jerusalem, perhaps even late 1300s) we might see the Teutonic Order seeming more relevant, and the idea of being a Knightly Order as a more presitgious ideal.
 
Part of the issue was that the failure of the crusades in the Middle East, combined with the fact that the original task of the Knights had been completed, both discredited the idea of Monastic orders, and left the Teutonic Order as something of a 5th Wheel, without purpose or a real sense of support from Catholicism.

Perhaps if the Kingdom of Jerusalem etc. last a bit longer (into the late 1200s with Jerusalem, perhaps even late 1300s) we might see the Teutonic Order seeming more relevant, and the idea of being a Knightly Order as a more presitgious ideal.

Do you think that this would discourage the secularization of the order at any point? It will certainly be harder for other Catholics to pick a fight with the Teutonics while Jerusalem is in Latin hands.
 
Part of the issue was that the failure of the crusades in the Middle East, combined with the fact that the original task of the Knights had been completed, both discredited the idea of Monastic orders, and left the Teutonic Order as something of a 5th Wheel, without purpose or a real sense of support from Catholicism.

IMO this is the cause of their ultimate decline. Once Lithuaniaconverted and Novgorodproved to be too tough a nut to crack they were simply left without a mission. Even other cathlic powers washed their hands over them and their continuing confrontation with former pagan now catholics was seen as mere land grab.

One possible option would be to bitch slap Novgorod but not destroy it. This would weaken it but keep it in state of perpetual conflict. Teutonics are then seen as bulwark against othodox christianity, if catholication of Lithuania goes per OTL (or close to it), something like Hospitaler holdings in eastern Med (Rhodes, Malta)

If they can reinvent themselves this way and continue their religious duty and order state and others recognize their such role they could be used as some sort of elite fighting armof catholicism against protestantism. Of course different developments in 3 centuries could mean protestantism is very different from what we would recognize.

Perhaps if the Kingdom of Jerusalem etc. last a bit longer (into the late 1200s with Jerusalem, perhaps even late 1300s) we might see the Teutonic Order seeming more relevant, and the idea of being a Knightly Order as a more presitgious ideal.

Well, longer KoJ could mean Teutonics remainin Levant (no need to vacate it as per OTL) and would stay there always in the shadows of Templars and Hospitalers.
 
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