Chapter 32

36Bethune-Baker,op. cit.p. 73.

37Bonet,L'arbre des batailles, iv. 2, p. 86: “Selon la sainte Escripture nous ne pouvons et si ne devons contredire ne efforcer ung mescreant à recepvoir ne le saint bapteme ne la sainte foy ainsi les devons laisser en leur franche volonté que Dieu leur a donnée.”

38Franciscus a Victoria,Relectiones Theologicæ, vi. 10, p. 231: “Caussa iusti belli non est diuersitas religionis.” Yet infidels may be constrained to allow the Gospel to be preached (ibid.v. 3. 12, p. 214sq.).

39Soto,De justititia et jure, v. 3. 5, fol. 154.

40Covariuvias a Leyva,Regulæ,Pecatum, ii. 10. 2 (Opera omnia, i. 496): “Infidelitas non priuat infideles dominio, quod habent iure humano, vel habuerunt ante legem Euangelicam in prouinciis et regnis, quae obtinent.”

41Suarez, cited by Nys,Droit de la guerre et les précurseurs de Grotius, p. 98.

42Ayala,De iure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari, i. 2. 29sq.

43Nys,op. cit.p. 89.Idem, in his Introduction to Bonet’sL’arbre des batailles, p. xxiv. According to Conradus Brunus (De legationibus, iii. 8, p. 115), for instance, any war waged by Christians against the enemies of the Christian faith is just, as being undertaken for the defence of religion and the glory of God in order to recover the possession of dominions unjustly held by infidels.

Out of this union between war and Christianity there was born that curious bastard, Chivalry. The secular germ of it existed already in the German forests. According to Tacitus, the young German who aspired to be a warrior was brought into the midst of the assembly of the chiefs, where his father, or some other relative, solemnly equipped him for his future vocation with shield and javelin.44Assuming arms was thus made a social distinction, which subsequently derived its namefrom one of its most essential characteristics, the riding a war-horse. But Chivalry became something quite different from what the word indicates. The Church knew how to lay hold of knighthood for her own purposes. The investiture, which was originally of a purely civil nature, became, even before the time of the crusades, as it were, a sacrament.45The priest delivered the sword into the hand of the person who was to be made a knight, with the following words, “Serve Christi, sis miles in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”46The sword was said to be made in semblance of the cross so as to signify “how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lying”;47and the word “Jesus” was sometimes engraven on its hilt.48God Himself had chosen the knight to defeat with arms the miscreants who wished to destroy his Holy Church, in the same way as He had chosen the clergy to maintain the Catholic faith with Scripture and reasons.49The knight was to the body politic what the arms are to the human body: the Church was the head, Chivalry the arms, the citizens, merchants, and labourers the inferior members; and the arms were placed in the middle to render them equally capable of defending the inferior members and the head.50“The greatest amity that should be in this world,” says the author of the ‘Ordre of Chyualry,’ “ought to be between the knights and clerks.”51The several gradations of knighthood were regarded as parallel to those of the Church.52And after the conquest of the Holy Land the union between the profession of arms and the religion of Christ became still more intimate by the institution of the two military orders of monks, the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

44Tactitus,Germania, 13. According to Honoré de Sainte Marie (Dissertations historiques et critiques sur la Chevalerie, p. 30sqq.), Chivalry is of Roman, according to some other writers, of Arabic origin. M. Gautier (La Chevalerie, pp. 14, 16) repudiates these theories, and regards Chivalry as “un usage germain idéalisé par l’Église.” See also Rambaud,Histoire de la civilisation française, i. 178sq.

45Scott, ‘Essay on Chivalry,’ inMiscellaneous Prose Works, vi. 16. Mills,History of Chivalry, i. 10sq.For a description of the various religious ceremonies accompanying the investiture, seeThe Book of the Ordre of Chyualry or Knyghthode, fol. 27 bsqq.Cf.also Favyn,Theater of Honour and Knight-Hood, i. 52.

46Favyn,op. cit.i. 52.

47Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 31 asq.

48Mills,op. cit.i. 71.

49Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 11 b.

50Le Jouuencel, fol. 94sqq.

51Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 12 a.

52Scott,loc. cit.p. 15.

The duties which a knight took on himself by oath were very extensive, but not very well defined. He should defend the holy Catholic faith, he should defend justice, he should defend women, widows, and orphans, and all those of either sex that were powerless, ill at ease, and groaning under oppression, and injustice.53In the name of religion and justice he could thus practically wage war almost at will. Though much real oppression was undoubtedly avenged by these soldiers of the Church, the knight seems as a rule to have cared little for the cause or necessity of his doing battle. “La guerre est ma patrie, Mon harnois ma maison: Et en toute saison Combatre c’est ma vie,” was a saying much in use in the sixteenth century.54The general impression which Froissart gives us in his history is, that the age in which he lived was completely given over to fighting, and cared about nothing else whatever.55The French knights never spoke of war but as a feast, a game, a pastime. “Let them play their game,” they said of the cross-bow men, who were showering down arrows on them; and “to play a great game,”jouer gros jeu, was their description of a battle.56Previous to the institution of Chivalry there certainly existed much fighting in Christian countries, but knighthood rendered war “a fashionable accomplishment.”57And so all-absorbing became the passion for it that, as real injuries were not likely to occur every day, artificial grievances were created, and tilts and tournaments were invented in order to keep in action the sons of war when they had no other employments for their courage. Even in these images of war—which were by no means so harmless as they have sometimes been represented to be58—the intimate connectionbetween Chivalry and religion displays itself in various ways. Before the tournament began, the coats of arms, helmets, and other objects were carried into a monastery, and after the victory was gained the arms and the horses which had been used in the fight were offered up at the church.59The proclamations at the tournaments were generally in the name of God and the Virgin Mary. Before battle the knights confessed, and heard mass; and, when they entered the lists, they held a sort of image with which they made the sign of the cross.60Moreover, “as the feasts of the tournaments were accompanied by these acts of devotion, so the feasts of the Church were sometimes adorned with the images of the tournaments.”61It is true that the Church now and then made attempts to stop these performances.62But then she did so avowedly because they prevented many knights from joining the holy wars, or because they swallowed up treasures which might otherwise with advantage have been poured into the Holy Land.63

53Ordre of Chyualry, foll. 11 b, 17 a. Sainte-Palaye,Mémoires sur l’ancienne Chevalerie, i. 75, 129.

54De la Nouë,Discours politiques et militaires, p. 215.

55See Sir James Stephen’s essay on ‘Froissart’s Chronicles,’ in hisHoræ Sabbaticæ, i. 22sqq.

56Sainte-Palaye,op. cit.ii. 61.

57Millingen,History of Duelling, i. 70.

58Sainte-Palaye,op. cit.i. 179; ii. 75. Du Cange, ‘Dissertations sur l’histoire de S. Louys,’ in Petitot,Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France, iii. 122sq.Honoré de Sainte Marie,op. cit.p. 186.

59Sainte-Palaye,op. cit.i. 151.

60Ibid.ii. 57.

61Ibid.ii. 57sq.

62Du Cange,loc. cit.p. 124sqq.Honoré de Sainte Marie,op. cit.p. 186. Sainte-Palaye,op. cit.ii. 75.

63Du Cange,loc. cit.p. 125sq.

Closely connected with the feudal system was the practice of private war. Though tribunals had been instituted, and even long after the kings’ courts had become well-organised and powerful institutions, a nobleman had a right to wage war upon another nobleman from whom he had suffered some gross injury.64On such occasions not only the relatives, but the vassals, of the injured man were bound to help him in his quarrel, and the same obligation existed in the case of the aggressor.65Only greater crimes were regarded as legitimate causes of private war,66but this rule was not at all strictly observed.67Asa matter of fact, the barons fled to arms upon every quarrel; he who could raise a small force at once made war upon him who had anything to lose. The nations of Europe were subdivided into innumerable subordinate states, which were almost independent, and declared war and made treaties with all the vigour and all the ceremonies of powerful monarchs. Contemporary historians describe the excesses committed in prosecution of these intestine quarrels in such terms as excite astonishment and horror; and great parts of Europe were in consequence reduced to the condition of a desert, which it ceased to be worth while to cultivate.68

64The right of private war generally supposed nobility of birth and equality of rank in both the contending parties (Beaumanoir,Coutumes du Beauvoisis, lix. 5sq.vol. ii. 355sqq.; Robertson,History of the Reign of Charles V.i. 329). But it was also granted to the Frenchcommunes, and to the free towns in Germany, Italy, and Spain (Du Boys,Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes, ii. 348).

65Du Cange,loc. cit.pp. 450, 458.

66Ibid.p. 445sq.Arnold,Deutsche Urzeit, p. 341. von Wächter,Beiträge zur deutschen Geschichte, p. 46.

67We read of a nobleman who declared war against the city of Frankfort, because a lady residing there had promised to dance with his cousin, but danced with another; and the city was obliged to satisfy the wounded honour of the gentleman (von Wächter,op. cit.p. 57).

68Robertson,op. cit.i. 332.

The Church made some feeble attempts to put an end to this state of things. Thus, about the year 990, ordinances were directed against the practice of private war by several bishops in the south of France, who agreed to exclude him who violated their ordinances from all Christian privileges during his life, and to deny him Christian burial after his death.69A little later, men engaged in warfare were exhorted, by sacred relics and by the bodies of saints, to lay down their arms and to swear that they would never again disturb the public peace by their private hostilities.70But it is hardly likely that such directions had much effect as long as the bishops and abbots themselves were allowed to wage private war by means of their vidames, and exercised this right scarcely less frequently than the barons.71Nor does it seem thatthe Church brought about any considerable change for the better by establishing the Truce of God, involving obligatory respite from hostilities during the great festivals of the Church, as also from the evening of Wednesday in each week to the morning of Monday in the week ensuing.72We are assured by good authorities that the Truce was generally disregarded, though the violator was threatened with the penalty of excommunication.73Most barons could probably say with Bertram de Born:—“La paix ne me convient pas; la guerre seule me plaît. Je n’ai égard ni aux lundis, ni aux mardis. Les semaines, les mois, les années, tout m’est égal. En tout temps, je veux perdre quiconque me nuit.”74The ordinance enjoining thetreuga Deiwas transgressed even by the popes.75It was too unpractical a direction to be obeyed, and was soon given up even in theory by the authorities of the Church. Thomas Aquinas says that, as physicians may lawfully apply remedies to men on feast-days, so just wars may be lawfully prosecuted on such days for the defence of the commonwealth of the faithful, if necessity so requires; “for it would be tempting God for a man to want to keep his hands from war under stress of such necessity.”76And in support of this opinion he quotes the first Book of the Maccabees, where it is said, “Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the sabbath day, we will fight against him.”77

69‘Charta de Treuga et Pace per Aniciensem Praesulem Widonem in Congregatione quamplurium Episcoporum, Principium, et Nobilium hujus Terrae sancita,’ in Dumont,Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens, i. 41.

70Raoul Glaber,Histori sui temporis, iv. 5 (Bouquet,Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum Scriptores, x. 49). Robertson,op. cit.i. 335.

71Brussel,Nouvel examen de l’usage général des fiefs en France, i. 144. How much the prelates were infected by the general spirit of the age, appears from a characteristic story of an archbishop of Cologne who gave to one of his vassals a castle situated on a sterile rock. When the vassal objected that he could not subsist on such a soil, the archbishop answered, “Why do you complain? Four roads unite under the walls of your castle” (Du Boys,Histoire du droit criminel de l’Espagne, p. 504).

72Raoul Glaber,op. cit.v. 1 (loc. cit.p. 59). Du Cange,Glossarium ad scriptores mediæ et infimæ Latinitatis, vi. 1267sq.Henault,Nouvel abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France, p. 106.

73Du Cange,Glossarium, vi. 1272. Nys,Droit de la guerre et les précurseurs de Grotius, p. 114.

74Villemain,Cours de littérature française,Littérature du Moyen Age, i. 122sq.

75Belli,De re militari, quoted by Nys,op. cit.p. 115.

76Thomas Aquinas,op. cit.ii.-ii. 40. 4.

77Maccabees, ii. 41.

It seems that the main cause of the abolition of private war was not any measure taken by the Church, but the increase of the authority of emperors or kings. In France the right of waging private war was moderated by Louis IX., checked by Philip IV., suppressed byCharles VI.78In England, after the Norman Conquest, private wars seem to have occurred more rarely than on the Continent, probably owing to the strength of the royal authority, which made the execution of justice more vigorous and the jurisdiction of the King’s court more extensive than was the case in most other countries.79In Scotland the practice of private war received its final blow only late in the eighteenth century, when the clans were reduced to order after the rebellion of 1745.80Whilst, then, it is impossible to ascribe to the Church any considerable part in the movement which ultimately led to the entire abolition of private war, we have, on the other hand, to take into account the encouragement which the Church gave to the warlike spirit of the time by the establishment of Chivalry81and by sanctioning war as a divine institution. War came to be looked upon as a judgment of God and the victory as a sign of his special favour. Before a battle, the service of mass was usually performed by both armies in the presence of each other, and no warrior would fight without secretly breathing a prayer.82Pope Adrian IV. says that a war commenced under the auspices of religion cannot but be fortunate;83and it was commonly believed that God took no less interest in the battle than did the fighting warriors. Bonet, who wrote in the fourteenth century, puts to himself the question, why there are so many wars in the world, and gives the answer, “que toutes sont pour le pechié du siecle dont nostre seigneur Dieu pour le pugnir permet les guerres, car ainsi le maintient l’escripture.”84

78Robertson,op. cit.i. 55, 56, 338sqq.Hallam,View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, i. 207. Brussel,op. cit.i. 142.

79Ibid.i. 343sq.Prof. Freeman (Comparative Politics, p. 328sq.) mentions as the last instance of private war in England one from the time of Edward IV.

80Lawrence,Essays on some Disputed Questions in Modern International Law, p. 254sq.

81I do not understand how M. Gautier can say (op. cit.p. 6) that Chivalry was the most beautiful of those means by which the Church endeavoured to check war.

82Mills,History of Chivalry, i. 147.

83Laurent,op. cit.vii. 245.

84Bonet,op. cit.iv. 54, p. 150.

Similar opinions have retained their place in the orthodox creeds both of the Catholic and ProtestantChurches up to the present day. The attitude adopted by the great Christian congregations towards war has been, and is still, to a considerable degree, that of sympathetic approval. The Catechism of the Council of Trent brings home that there are on record instances of slaughter executed by the special command of God Himself, as when the sons of Levi, who put to death so many thousands in one day, after the slaughter were thus addressed by Moses, “Ye have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord.”85Even quite modern Catholic writers refer to the canonists who held that a State might lawfully make war upon a heretic people which was spreading heresy, and upon a pagan people which prevented the preaching of the Gospel.86Again, when the Protestant Churches became State-Churches, their ministers, considering themselves as in the service of the State, were ready to champion whatever war the Government pleased to undertake. As Mr. Gibb observes, the Protestant minister was as ready with his Thanksgiving Sermon for the victories of a profligate war, as the Catholic priest was with hisTe Deum; “indeed, the latter was probably the more independent of the two, because of his allegiance to Rome.”87The new Confessions of Faith explicitly claimed for the State the right of waging war, and the Anabaptists were condemned because they considered war unlawful for a Christian.88Even the necessity of a just cause as a reason for taking part in warfare, which was reasserted at the time of the Reformation, was subsequently allowed to drop out of sight. Mr. Farrer calls attention to the fact that in the 37th article of the English Church, which is to the effect that a Christian at the command of the magistrate may wear weapons and serve in wars, the wordjustain the Latin form preceding the wordbellahas been omitted altogether.89

85Catechism of the Council of Trent, iii. 6. 5.

86Adds and Arnold,Catholic Dictionary, p. 944.

87Gibb,loc. cit.p. 90.

88Augsburg Confession, i. 16.Second Helvetic Confession, xxx. 4.

89Farrer,Military Manners and Customs, p. 208.

Nor did the old opinion that war is a providential institution and a judgment of God die with the Middle Ages. Lord Bacon looks upon wars as “the highest trials of right; when princes and states that acknowledge no superior upon earth shall put themselves upon the justice of God, for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it shall please Him to give on either side.”90Réal de Curban says that a war is seldom successful unless it be just, hence the victor may presume that God is on his side.91According to Jeremy Taylor, “kings are in the place of God, who strikes whole nations, and towns, and villages; and war is the rod of God in the hands of princes.”92And it is not only looked upon as an instrument of divine justice, but it is also said, generally, “to work out the noble purposes of God.”93Its tendency, as a theological writer assures us, is “to rectify and exalt the popular conception of God,” there being nothing among men “like the smell of gunpowder for making a nation perceive the fragrance of divinity in truth.”94By war the different countries “have been opened up to the advance of true religion.”95“No people ever did, or ever could, feel the power of Christian principle growing up like an inspiration through the national manhood, until the worth of it had been thundered on the battle-field.”96War is, “when God sends it, a means of grace and of national renovation”; it is “a solemn duty in which usually only the best Christians and most trustworthy men should be commissioned to hold the sword.”97According to M. Proudhon, it is the most sublime phenomenon of our moral life,98a divine revelation more authoritative than the Gospel itself.99The warlike people is the religious people;100war is the sign ofhuman grandeur, peace a thing for beavers and sheep. “Philanthrope, vous parlez d’abolir la guerre; prenez garde de dégrader le genre humain.”101

90Bacon,Letters and Life, i. (Works, viii.), 146.

91Réal de Curban,La science du gouvernement, v. 394sq.

92Taylor,Whole Works, xii. 164.

93‘The Sword and Christianity,’ inBoston Review devoted to Theology and Literature, iii. 261.

94Ibid.iii. 259, 257.

95Holland,Time of War, p. 14.

96Boston Review, iii. 257.

97‘Christianity and War,’ inChristian Review, xxvi. 604.

98Proudhon,La guerre et la paix, ii. 420.

99Ibid.i.62; ii. 435.

100Ibid.i. 45.

101Ibid.i. 43.

In order to prove the consistency of war with Christianity appeals are still, as in former days, made to the Bible; to the divinely-sanctioned example of the ancient Israelites, to the fact that Jesus never prohibited those around Him from bearing arms, to the instances of the centurions mentioned in the Gospel, to St. Paul’s predilection for taking his spiritual metaphors from the profession of the soldier, and so on.102According to Canon Mozley, the Christian recognition of the right of war was contained in Christianity’s original recognition of nations.103“By a fortunate necessity,” a universal empire is impossible.104Each nation is a centre by itself, and when questions of right and justice arise between these independent centres, they cannot be decided except by mutual agreement or force. The aim of the nation going to war is exactly the same as that of the individual in entering a court, and the Church, which has no authority to decide which is the right side, cannot but stand neutral and contemplate war forensically, as a mode of settling national questions, which is justified by the want of any other mode.105A natural justice, Canon Mozley adds, is inherent not only in wars of self-defence; there is an instinctive reaching in nations and masses of people after alteration and readjustment, which has justice in it, and which arises from real needs. The arrangement does not suit as it stands, there is want of adaptation, there is confinement and pressure; there are people kept away from each other that are made to be together, and parts separated that were made to join. All this uneasiness in States naturally leads to war. Moreover, there are wars of progress which, so far as they are really necessary for the due advantage of mankind andgrowth of society, are approved of by Christianity, though they do not strictly belong to the head of wars undertaken in self-defence.106A doctrine which thus, in the name of religion, allows the waging of wars for rectifying the political distribution of nationalities and races, and forwarding the so-called progress of the world, naturally lends itself to the justification of almost any war entered upon by a Christian State.107As a matter of fact, it would be impossible to find a single instance of a war waged by a Protestant country, from any motive, to which the bulk of its clergy have not given their sanction and support. The opposition against war has generally come from other quarters.

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