The Truce of God | Page 3

like
Alexander III and of Doctors like St. Thomas Aquinas, were lifted to
proclaim the equality of all men in the sight of God. At the altar, serf
and master, count or cottier, knelt side by side. In the monasteries and
convents, the poor man's son might wear the Abbot's ring and in the
assemblies and councils of the realm, the poor clerk of former days,
might speak with all the authority of a Bishop to sway the destinies of
both Church and State.
One of the greatest evils of feudalism was that it fostered to excess the
warlike spirit. Of its very nature, the system was a complex one. It gave
rise to countless misunderstandings between the various grades of its
involved hierarchy. The opportunities and plausible pretexts for
misunderstandings, quarrels and war were many. A petty quarrel in
Burgundy, in Champagne, in the Berry in France, involved not only the
duke and count of these territories but almost every vassal or feudal
lord in the province. The same might be said of the German nobles in
Suabia, Thuringia and Franconia. Private wars were frequent, and
though the barbarism of the past ages had almost completely
disappeared under the teaching of the Gospel, these contests, as might
be expected, were both sanguinary and wasteful.
The Church fought manfully against these private wars. It took every
possible means to prevent them entirely. When in the nature of things,

it found it impossible to do away with them altogether, it tried to
mitigate their horrors, to limit their field of operation, to diminish their
savagery. If the kingly authority was flouted, save perhaps when a
sturdy ruler like William the Conqueror in England, or Hugh Capet in
France, showed that there was a man at the helm, who meant to rule
and was not afraid to quell rebellious earls and make them obey, there
was one power these mail-clad warriors respected. They respected the
Apostles Peter and Paul, they respected My Lord the Pope, and the
Bishops of France and Normandy and England who shared in their
authority. They flouted a king's edict, but none but hardened criminals
among them laughed at an episcopal or a Papal excommunication.
These rude men, and it places their rude age high in the scale of
civilization, respected religion. They lowered the sword before the
Cross. The Church had for the disobedient and the refractory one
terrible weapon, which she was loath to use, but which she occasionally
used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication.
Many a modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and
in mild contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her
children, much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale
of ogre or hobgoblin before them. Yet the student of history might
profitably study the use which the Church has made of such an
instrument, and find in it one of the most effective causes of social
regeneration in the Middle Ages.
The Church, in order to fight the military and armed excesses of
feudalism, employed many means. It is to her that we owe what is
known as the "Truce of God," or the enforced temporary suspension of
hostilities usually, from the sunset of each Wednesday to Monday
morning. Under pain of excommunication, during that interval, which
at several times was further extended so as to comprise the seasons of
Advent and Lent, and some of the major feasts, the sword might not be
drawn in private quarrel. From a decree of the Council of Elne, in the
South of France, we find that the "Truce of God," the "_Treuga Dei_"
as it was technically called, was in full honor and had reached the
height of its beneficent power in 1207. But long before, in the days
when Gregory VII was Pope, and William of Normandy had just won
his English crown, and Henry III ruled in Germany and Henry I in
France, in the days when feudalism was making its first attempts to

bring order out of chaos, several councils of the Church in France and
in Normandy had traced out the plan and the outlines of the "Truce of
God." Earlier even, at the Councils of Charroux (989), Narbonne (990),
Le Puy and Anse (990), severe penalties were pronounced against those
who wantonly in time of war destroyed the poor man's cattle or harried
his fields, or carried off his beasts of burden. "Leagues of Peace" were
formed to diminish the horrors of war, to protect the helpless, to
enforce order. The Council of Poitiers, where there is one of the earliest
mentions of these "Leagues of Peace," was held 1223 years ago. The
Council of Bourges in 1031 created a species of national militia to
police the rural districts and prevent