movement which was then at work in Normandy, and which was not without its share in bringing about the Conquest of England. When we come to a later stage in our history, we shall see with what art both William and his trusty counsellor Lanfranc contrived to appeal to the religious feelings of the Normans, to represent the English King as a sinner against the local saints of Normandy, and to represent the Conquest of England as a holy war undertaken to chastise the ungodly. Such a vein of sentiment could hardly have been safely appealed to except at a time when there was a great religious stir in the national mind. One side of this movement is shown in the foundation of so many monasteries, in the zeal with which men gave of their substance for their erection, in the eagerness with which men, often the same men, pressed to become members of the holy brotherhoods. But a still more honourable fruit of the religious mind of Normandy, one however which Normandy only shared with many other parts of Europe, is to be found in the acceptance during this period of the famous Truce of God.

This extraordinary institution is the most speaking witness, at once to the ferocity of the times, and also to the deep counter feeling which underlay men's minds. Clergy and laity alike felt that the state of things which they saw daily before their eyes was a standing sin against God and man, repugnant alike to natural humanity and to the precepts of the Christian religion. States were everywhere so subdivided, governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe, every man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which was right in his own eyes. We cannot doubt that in those parts of Britain where the authority of the English Kings was really established, the evil was smaller than it was in any part of Gaul. Neither can we doubt that in Normandy, during the minority of William, the evil was even greater than it was in other parts of Gaul. But the extreme disorder of that minority was simply an exaggerated form of what might be called the normal state of things throughout the greater part of Western Europe. Every man claimed the right of private war against every other man who was not bound to him by some special tie as his lord or his vassal. And the distinction between private war and mere robbery and murder was not always very sharply drawn. It is clear that, in such a state of things, an utterly unscrupulous man, to whom warfare, however unjust, was a mere trifle, had a decided advantage over his more peaceable neighbours. A few men like William Talvas might throw a whole province into disorder; and men who were in no way naturally disposed to wrong or violence were necessarily driven to

1 Was the Truce of God ever preached, or ever needed, in England? I am not aware of any mention of it, unless the so

called Laws of Eadward, c. 2 (Schmid, 492), at all refer to it. See below, p. 236.

constant warfare in sheer self-defence. The poor and the weak were of course the chief victims; when one gentleman harried the lands of another, the immediate tillers of the earth must have suffered far more severely than their master. It was the tenants of Herlwin, rather than Herlwin himself, who had most bitterly to complain of the ravages of Count Gilbert.1 The lower classes then had especial reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; yet we can well believe that there were many men of 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.

2

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 the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek, 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 times the spiritual power showed its wisdom in not attempting too much. War was not wholly forbidden in 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

1 See above, p. 142.

2 See History of Federal Government, i. 128.

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 (1034), and the vague and rhetorical language of our authority would seem to imply that all war, at any rate all private war, was forbidden under pain of ecclesiastical censures.1 It must not be forgotten that, in that age, it must have been exceedingly_difficult to draw the distinction between public and private war. In England indeed, where an efficient 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 rebellious 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 without denouncing war altogether. But the doctrine, hard 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. Men bound

1 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 pœnis corporis acerrime mulctaretur. Locis nihilominus sacris omnium ecclesiarum honor et reverentia talis exhiberetur, ut si quis ad ea cujuscumque

2

THE POWER OF GOD.

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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.1 From Aquitaine the movement spread through Burgundy, Royal and Ducal.2 But it seems to have been gradually found that the establishment of perfect peace on earth was hopeless. After seven years from the first 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 that the Truce was first preached in northern and eastern Gaul. The days of Christ's supper, of His passion, of His rest in the grave and His resurrection, were all to be 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 Gerard of Cambray maintained, on the other hand, that the whole affair was no concern of the ecclesiastical power. 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. This Prelate, in

4

1 R. Glaber, iv. 5. "In hâc tamen ratione ut evoluto quinquennio confirmandæ pacis gratiâ id ipsum ab universis in orbe fieret mirum in modum."

2 Ib. "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.

3 Rudolf, under the year 1041 (v. 1, Duchesne, 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.

4 Hugo Flav. Chron. ap. Pertz, viii. 403. 5 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;

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.1 Miracles were needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the apostolic labours of Richard's successor Hagano brought even Normandy to a better mind.2 The young Duke and his counsellors were urgent in behalf of the Truce, and it was at last received by the Clergy and Laity of Normandy in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen. We are told that it was most carefully observed;1 but, nearly forty years after, when the long reign of William was drawing towards its end, it had to be again ordained in another Council at Lillebonne, and all the powers of the State, ecclesiastical and temporal, were called on to help in enforcing its observance."

The men who laboured to put even this small check on the violence of the times are worthy of eternal honour, and it is probable that the institution of the Truce of God really did something for a while to lessen the frightful anarchy into which Normandy had fallen. But we can hardly doubt that a far more effectual check was supplied by the increasing strength of William's government, as he drew nearer to manhood, and more and more fully displayed the stern and vigorous determination of his character. But neither the one nor the other

66

1 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 Normandy?] 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.

2 Hugo Flav. u. s.

3 The decree of the synod of Caen is 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 dicitur Trevia Dei, et quæ die Mercurii sole occidente incipit, et die Lunæ

sole nascente finit, hæc quæ dicam vobis promptissimâ mente dehinc inantea debetis observare. Nullus homo nec femina hominem aut feminam usquam assaliat, nec vulneret, nec occidat, nec castellum, nec burgum, nec villam in hoc spatio quatuor dierum et quinque noctium assaliat nec deprædetur nec capiat, nec ardeat ullo ingenio aut violentiâ aut aliquâ fraude." See Roman de Rou, 10485 et seqq. The church of Sainte Paix at Caen was built to commemorate the event, but Prevost (note to Roman de Rou, ii. 99) places its building in 1061.

4 Will. Pict. 113, Giles. "Sanctis

sime in Normanniâ observabatur sacramentum Pacis quam Treviam vocant, quod effrænis regionum aliarum iniquitas frequenter temerat."

5 Ord. Vit. 552 A. It was confirmed again for Christendom generally at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Will. Malms. iii. 345; Ord. Vit. 719 D, 721 B.