[2] Meinhard traveled with Lübeck merchants, probably trading costly furs, to Livonia on a Catholic mission in the 1170s or early 1180s to convert pagan Semigallians, Latgalians, and Livonians into Christianity.

With the construction of the Riga Hydroelectric Power Plant in the 1970s, an artificial island was erected to prevent water from flooding the ruins.

[5] When he briefly returned to Germany in 1186, Meinhard was consecrated as Bishop of Üxküll (present-day Ikšķile, Latvia) by Hartwig of Uthlede, Archbishop of Bremen.

Meinhard initially converted the pagans by peaceful means, but faced with resistance and apostasy, he turned to the idea of a crusade.

On 8 September 1993, then Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Baltic states solemnly proclaimed that he would formally restore the veneration of Saint Meinhard on 14 August each year, in a papal act considered equivalent to canonization.