current

violence of

1

CHAP. VIII. of the ravages of Count Gilbert. The lower classes then Under- had especial reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; against the yet we can well believe that there were many men of the time. higher rank who were dragged into these wretched contests against their own will, and who would have been well pleased to keep their swords sheathed, save when the lawful command of their sovereign required them to be drawn. These two contending feelings can always be traced side by side. Every attempt to put any kind of check on the violence of the times was always received with general good will; and yet the practical result of so many praiseworthy attempts was, after all, something extremely small. The men who were ready to keep the peace, and to observe the rules made to preserve it, were left in a manner at the mercy of those who refused to obey any rule whatsoever. Whatever laws were made to preserve the peace, the peaceable man was still, as before, driven to fight in his own defence. Still the movement in favour of law and order was a very remarkable and a very general one. The call to observe peace towards Christians at home was a call, quite as general, though much more gradual, than the call to wage war against the Infidels in other lands. But the call to the Crusade fell in with every side of the temper of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God fell in with only one, and that its least powerful, side. Good and bad men alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War. The men who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.

Compari

son be

tween the

Truce of

God and the Crusades.

The form

taken by the movement ne

cessarily ecclesias

tical.

A movement on behalf of peace and good will towards men could not fail in those days to assume an ecclesiastical form. As of old the Amphiktyonic Council, the great religious synod of Greece, strove to put some bounds to

1 See above, p. 215.

THE TRUCE OF GOD.

235

tion of the

the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek,1 CHAP. VIII. so, now, in the same spirit, a series of Christian synods strove, by means of ecclesiastical decrees and ecclesiastical censures, to put some bounds to the horrors of war as waged between Christian and Christian. And at both Moderatimes the spiritual power showed its wisdom in not at- reform attempting too much. War was not wholly forbidden in tempted. either case, for such a precept would have been hopelessly impossible to carry out. But certain extreme measures were to be avoided, certain classes of persons were to be respected, certain holy seasons were to be kept altogether free from warfare. Such at least was the form in which the Truce of God was preached in Normandy. But Normandy was one of the last countries to receive the Truce, and it seems not to have appeared there in its earliest shape. It would rather seem as if the first attempts at its establishment had tried to compass too much, and as if later preachers of peace had been driven to content themselves with a much less close approach to universal brotherhood. The movement began in Aquitaine, and the The Truce vague and rhetorical language of our authority would seem preached to imply that all war, at any rate all private war, was in Aquiforbidden under pain of ecclesiastical censures. It must 1034.

1 See History of Federal Government, i. 128.

2 The account is given by R. Glaber, iv. 5. "Tunc ergo primitus cœpere in Aquitaniæ partibus ab Episcopis et Abbatibus, ceterisque viris sacræ religionis devotis, ex universâ plebe coadunati conciliorum conventus." He goes on to give a summary of their legislation; "In quibus potissimum erat de inviolabili pace conservandâ, ut scilicet viri utriusque conditionis, cujuscumque antea fuissent rei obnoxii, absque formidine procederent armis vacui. Prædo namque aut invasor alterius facultatis, legum districtione arctatus, vel donis facultatum seu poenis corporis acerrime mulctaretur. Locis nihilominus sacris omnium ecclesiarum honor et reverentia talis exhiberetur, ut si quis ad ea cujuscumque culpæ obnoxius confugium faceret, illæsus evaderet, nisi solummodo ille qui pactum prædictæ pacis violâsset, hic tamen captus ab altare præstitutam vindictam lueret. Clericis similiter omnibus, monachis, et sanctimonialibus, ut si quis cum eis per regionem pergeret nullam vim ab aliquo pateretur."

first

taine.

CHAP. VIII. not be forgotten that, in that age, it must have been Difficulty exceedingly difficult to draw the distinction between public public and and private war. In England indeed, where an efficient

of defining

private

war.

constitutional system existed, the distinction was plain. Except when sudden invasion called for the immediate action of the local power, no war could be lawful which was not decreed by the King and his Witan. There might be rebellions and civil wars, but there was no recognized private warfare in the continental sense. But in Gaul it would have been impossible to deny the right of war and peace to the great vassals of the Crown, to the sovereigns of Normandy and Aquitaine. And if the vassals of the Crown might make war on each other, on what principle could the same right be refused to their vassals, to the Lords of Alençon and Brionne? Among the endless links of the feudal chain, it was hard to find the exact point where sovereignty ended and where simple property began. A preacher therefore who denounced private war must have had some difficulty in so doing Enthusi- without denouncing war altogether. But the doctrine, hard tion of the as it might be to carry out in practice, was rapturously received at its first announcement. As the first preaching of the Crusade was met with one universal cry of "God wills it," so the Bishops, Abbots, and other preachers of the Truce were met with a like universal cry of Peace, Peace, Peace.1 Men bound themselves to God and to one another to abstain from all wrong and violence, and they engaged solemnly to renew the obligation every five years. From Aquitaine the movement spread through He adds some more purely religious provisions about fasting and the like.

astic recep

Truce.

2

1 R. Glaber, iv. 5. "Quibus universi, tanto ardore accensi ut per manus Episcoporum baculum ad cœlum elevarent, ipsique palmis extensis ad Deum, Pax, pax, pax, unanimiter clamarent. Ut esset videlicet signum perpetui pacti de hoc, quod spoponderant inter se et Deum."

2 R. Glaber, u. s. "In hâc tamen ratione ut evoluto quinquennio

PREACHING OF THE TRUCE.

2

237

about 1041.

Burgundy, Royal and Ducal.1 But it seems to have been CHAP. VIII. gradually found that the establishment of perfect peace on earth was hopeless. After seven years from the first Relaxation preaching of peace, we find the requirements of its apostles greatly relaxed. It was found vain to forbid all war, even all private war. All that was now attempted was to forbid violence of every kind from the evening of Wednesday till the morning of Monday. It was in this shape Reception that the Truce was first preached in northern and eastern Truce in Gaul. The days of Christ's supper, of His passion, of His Burgundy rest in the grave and His resurrection, were all to be ringia. kept free from strife and bloodshed. The Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the cause; so especially was Richard, Bishop of Verdun in Lotharingia. But Bishop Opposition Gerard of Cambray maintained, on the other hand, that of Camthe whole affair was no concern of the ecclesiastical

power.

confirmandæ pacis gratiâ id ipsum ab universis in orbe fieret mirum in modum."

46

1 R. Glaber, iv. 5. Dehinc per Arelatensem provinciam atque Lugdunensem, sicque per universam Burgundiam usque in ultimas Franciæ partes, per universos episcopatus indictum est qualiter certis in locis a præsulibus magnatisque totius patriæ de reformandâ pace et sacræ fidei institutione celebrarentur concilia." In Martène and Durand's Thesaurus, i. 159, is a circular letter on the subject from Ragenbald Archbishop of Arles and other Burgundian Prelates.

2 Rudolf, under the year 1041 (v. I, Duchèsne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iv. 55 A), recurs to the subject; "Contigit vero ipso in tempore, inspirante divinâ gratiâ, primitus in partibus Aquitanicis, deinde paullatim per universum Galliarum territorium firmari pactum propter timorem Dei pariter et amorem. Taliter ut nemo mortalium, a feriæ quartæ vespere usque ad secundam feriam incipiente luce, ausu temerario præsumeret quippiam alicui hominum per vim auferre, neque ultionis vindictam a quocumque inimico exigere, nec etiam a fideijussore vadimonium sumere. Quod si ab aliquo fieri contigisset contra hoc decretum publicum, aut de vitâ componeret aut a Christianorum consortio expulsus patriâ pelleretur. Hoc insuper placuit universis, veluti vulgo dicitur, ut Treuga Domini vocaretur." I conceive this relaxation to mark a change from the Pax Dei to the Treuga Dei. See Ducange in Treuga, and Palgrave, iii. 201. Something must be allowed for the inherent confusion of Rudolf's way of expressing himself.

3 Hugo Flav. Chron. ap. Pertz, viii. 403.

of the

and Lotha

of Gerard

bray.

CHAP. VIII. It was, he argued, the business of temporal rulers to fight, and the business of spiritual men to pray; the pious scheme of his brethren could never be carried out, and the attempt to enforce it would lead only to an increase of false-swearing.1 This Prelate, in his worldly wisdom, seems to have looked deeper into the hearts of the men of his time than his more hopeful and enthusiastic brethren. At last the new teaching reached Normandy. The luxury of mutual destruction was dear to the Norman mind; for a long time any restraint upon it was strongly resisted, and even the preaching of Bishop Richard himself had for a long time no effect.2 Miracles were needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the apostolic labours of Richard's successor Hagano brought even NorThe Truce mandy to a better mind.3 The young Duke and his the Coun- counsellors were urgent in behalf of the Truce, and it was cils of Caen at last received by the Clergy and Laity of Normandy [1042],

received at

in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen.1

1 Gest. Epp. Cam. ap. Pertz, vii. 474, 485. Gerard's objections are given at great length, and are well worth studying, as a setting forth of the Regale and Pontificale. Some of the French Bishops seemed to have ventured on a pious fraud; "Unus eorum cœlitus sibi delatas dixit esse literas, quæ pacem monerent renovandam in terrâ." The chronicler of

Cambray fully approves of the opposition of the local Prelate; "Alia quoque importabilia quamplurima dederunt mandata, quæ oneri visa sunt replicare. Hâc novitate pulsatus mandati præsul noster, infirmitatique peccantium condescendens, secundum decreta sanctorum patrum ad singula suum formavit eloquium."

2 Hugo Flav. ap. Pertz, viii. 403. "Quam quum noluisset recipere gens Neustriæ, viro Dei Richardo prædicante, et ut eam susciperent, quia voluntas Domini erat, et a Deo non ab homine decretum, hoc processerat, admonente divino judicio cœpit in eos desævire ignis qui eos torquebat; eo anno fere totus orbis [was the whole world plagued for the sins of Nor. mandy?] penuriam passus est pro raritate vini et tritici. Sequuta est e vestigio mortalitas hominibus præmaxima ab inc. Dom. 1042." This passage is made up out of R. Glaber (iv. 5), where however Richard is not mentioned. Hugo Flav. u. s.

The decree of the synod of Caen in given at length in the Concilia Rotomagensis Provinciæ, p. 39. The Fathers are stringent against "caballicationes et hostilitates." The main decree runs, "In pace quæ vulgo