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{"id":18279,"date":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=51"},"modified":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","slug":"peace-of-god-truce-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/08\/peace-of-god-truce-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace of God, Truce of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

T<\/span>he late 10th century was a period or feuding, pillaging, and general disorder. In their editorial introduction to The Peace of God<\/a>, Thomas Head and Richard Landes cite the Peace of God as an effort to reign in in the chaos: \u201cLeading regional bishops convoked councils of their fellow bishops, meetings that were also attended by the abbots of important monastic communities and by various secular leaders. Monks from the region raised up the relics enshrined in their churches and took them to the sites of the councils, where the saints could serve as witnesses and representatives of divine authority. The presence of such treasures drew large numbers of men and women from an enthusiastic populus<\/em>. All converged on the large open fields that were the favored sites of Peace councils. There \u2013 surrounded by clerical and lay magnates, by saints, and by their social inferiors \u2013 members of the warrior elite took oaths of peace, framed in a context that mobilized what a modern observed might call popular opinion\u201d (2). <\/p>\n

Peace decrees required knights to protect noncombatants, on pain of excommunication. Three crimes were often included: \u201crobbery of church property, assaults on clerics, and theft of cattle from peasants\u201d (4).<\/p>\n

The Truce of God was more drastic. The Peace movement \u201chad been first and foremost concerned with the unarmed. They had not punished violence perpetuated against armed men, and thus they had in essence failed to question the right of the milites<\/em> to take up arms at will.\u201d The truce closed this loophole, judging \u201cthe very shedding of Christian blood\u201d to be sinful. According to a canon of the council of Narbonne in 1054: \u201cNo Christian should kill another Christian, since whoever kills a Christian doubtless shed the blood of Christ\u201d (8).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a noble principle, and a right one. It did, however, have the (un?)intended effect of encouraging Europe\u2019s knights to seek non-Christian opponents whose blood they could spill to their heart\u2019s content. Head and Landes note, \u201cMany modern scholars have investigated [the Truce] as one of the building blocks of the Christian ideology of holy war which led to the undertaking of the Crusades\u201d (9).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"