PeaceDocs | Bibliography | Constantine to Charlemagne
CHAPTER 4: Constantine to Charlemagne, 300-800
Introduction: Christian Empire and Imperial Church
254. Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
An interpretative essay on the period, using these key figures as paradigms. Extensive bibliography.
255. Baus, Karl. The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Early Middle Ages. Anselm Biggs, trans. New York: Seabury Press, 1980.
An excellent survey of the period.
256. Bowersock, G. W., Peter Robert Lamont Brown, and Oleg Grabar. Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World. Harvard University Press reference library. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.
257. Brown, Peter R.L. “Aspects of the Christianization of the Aristocracy.” In Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine. London: Faber & Faber, 1972, 161–82.
A review of the historiography around the conversion of the “Romans of Rome” to Christianity toward the end of the fifth century, examining the forms of conversion and their motivations.
258. The New Cambridge Medieval History 1, c.500–c.700. Paul Fouracre, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Still the best general introduction to the period, with articles by experts in each field.
259. Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967.
Excellent, brief introduction to the period, including discussions of the early church in the West, the origins of monasticism, Augustine, and the church and the barbarians.
260. Cochrane, Charles N. Christianity and Classical Culture. A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.
Discusses the New Republic of Eusebius and his attempt to create a political theory of the Imperial Church and the Christian Empire. This work is an important milestone in what many historians consider the shift from the pure pacifism of the early church to the barbarization of Christianity during the Middle Ages.
261. Dörries, Hermann. Constantine the Great. Roland H. Bainton, trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
Examines the impact of the pax ecclesiae, the alliance between Christian church and Roman empire, on the spread of the church and on its attitudes toward the state, including a detailed discussion of the canons of the Council of Arles in 314 concerning police and other military duty performed by Christians.
262. Kidd, Beresford J. Documents Illustrative of the Early Church. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1920-23.
A good source collection in English.
263. Setton, Kenneth M. Christian Attitudes Towards the Emperor in the Fourth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.
Good general background for the range of Christian attitudes, from Eusebius’ eager praises to Athanasius’ condemnations of imperial tyranny.
264. Smith, Michael Auckland. The Church Under Siege. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1976.
A general history of the church from Constantine to Charlemagne, covering the fourth through the eighth century.
265. Stevenson, James. Creeds, Councils, and Controversies. Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church AD 337-461. London: S.P.C.K., 1966.
Many useful documents, including selections from Basil the Great, Athanasius, Ambrose of Milan, the Codex Theodosianus, Salvian of Marseilles, St. Patrick, and Prosper of Aquitaine, many of which underscore a continuing tradition of nonviolence and peacemaking.
Peacemaking in the Roman West: Ambrose and Augustine
266. Augustine. The City of God. Henry Bettenson, trans., David Knowles, ed. New York: Pelican, 1977.
While many historians and political thinkers have used Augustine as the starting point of the Christian just-war tradition, the City of God’s thoughts on war are far more complex and subtle. The City of God is itself the apocalyptic city, the New Jerusalem, the “Vision of Peace.” While peace in one sense is the duly ordered harmony of all elements from the microcosm of the physical body to the universe as a whole, Christian peace is far from static order. Tranquility implies the proper position of each being in its own place in the universe, but this order is maintained by justice. An order imposed by tyranny or the “lust for domination,” which characterizes the imposed peace of the Roman Empire, is not true peace any more than a body hanging upside down is true posture.
States that live for, and on, war are nothing better than bands of pirates. “If justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands?” The peace of the just war smacks of the pride that is a perverted imitation of God’s order. “Even just wars, if considered by the wise man seem lamentable. Consequently there would be no wars for a wise man.” Love of God and of neighbor are the true principles of world justice and order. Peace is impossible without this form of justice. Such love implies to “do no harm to anyone, and second, to help everyone whenever possible.”
267. Bainton, Roland. Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace. Knoxville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1960.
Ambrose’s and Augustine’s chief contribution to the Christian attitude to war was the development of the just-war theory. As has been said, Bainton tends to caricature the Catholic tradition with this oversimplification.
268. Brown, Peter R.L. Augustine of Hippo. London: Faber & Faber, 1967.
The standard biography of the man and his world.
269. —. “St. Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion.” In Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine. London: Faber & Faber, 197, 260-78.
Traces the halting and ambivalent progress of Augustine’s ideas that force can be used against religious dissenters. An important factor in evaluating any of Augustine’s ideas about peace. He surely seems to have believed that one could kill the body of one’s earthly neighbor in an act of love for his or her soul.
270. Egan, Eileen. “The Beatitudes, the Works of Mercy, and Pacifism.” In Thomas A. Shannon, ed. War or Peace? The Search for New Answers. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982, 169-87.
While Augustine might rightly be identified with the just-war tradition, his sources were in Cicero and the Roman pagan tradition, not in the Gospels. He maintained the personal nonviolence of the individual Christian by his insistence on an inner disposition of love. Martin of Tours exemplifies this continuing tradition.
271. Ferguson, John. The Politics of Love: The New Testament and Nonviolent Revolution. Nyack, NY: Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1979.
While Ambrose stressed that God’s servants rely on spiritual, not material, weapons; Augustine represents a shift from early Christian pacifism to the just-war tradition. Constantine marks the great betrayal of Christianity, a pagan, like Satan, tempting the church to accept earthly power. However useful this book is to a study of the New Testament peacemaking, its treatment of the Middle Ages is blurred by a Protestant historiography of decline into barbarity after Constantine.
272. Finn, James. “Pacifism and Justifiable War.” In Thomas A. Shannon, ed. War or Peace? The Search for New Answers. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982, 3-14.
The just-war tradition so well established by Augustine has been the dominant tradition of the Catholic church until the last part of the twentieth century.
273. Hehir, J. Bryan. “The Just-War Ethic and Catholic Theology: Dynamics of Change and Continuity.” In Thomas A. Shannon, ed. War or Peace? The Search for New Answers. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982, 15-39.
The just war has a historical, not a doctrinal association with the Catholic church. Its roots and teachings are not solely Christian or Catholic. Despite this, Augustine must be seen as seminal in the theory’s development, fusing notions of internal intention, Christian charity, and public order that would allow war in public morality if not in private. Roland Bainton, Hehir maintains, connects the just-war tradition far too exclusively to Catholicism.
274. Ladner, Gerhart B. The Idea of Reform. Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
For Augustine the City of God was inextricably bound to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the visio pacis (vision of peace) of the Apocalypse. While this identification had firm root in early Christian thought and appears, for example, in Origen, for Augustine it took on a political as well as a religious meaning. His City of God is the conscious antithesis of Virgil’s Rome, the city that has usurped the powers of God and is dominated by the lust for power. Earthly power is of no avail in God’s city, and the true city of God is bound together not by force but by the conversion and reform of individuals to Christian love.
275. McGuire, M.R.P. “Ambrose, St.,” NCE 1: 372-75.
A basic introduction.
276. Markus, Robert A. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Not seen.
277. —. “Saint Augustine’s Views on the ‘Just War’” In W.J. Shiels, ed. The Church and War. Papers of the Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Studies in Church History 20. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, New York: Harper & Row, 1983, 1-13.
Even though his ideas on other topics might change, Augustine wrote consistently that the Christian could fight if the cause were just and the war carried out justly. By the age of Augustine there were very few pacifists left. Eusebius, Ambrose and Athanasius had made the convincing arguments against it.
277.1 Mattox, John Mark. Saint Augustine and the Theory of Just War. Continuum studies in philosophy. London: Continuum, 2006.
278. Merton, Thomas. “The Christian in World Crisis, Reflections on the Moral Climate of the 1960s.” In Thomas Merton. The Nonviolent Alternative. Revised edition of Thomas Merton on Peace. Gordon Zahn, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux, 1980, 20-62.
Augustine is the father of all modern Christian ideas on war, and in a way the root of the medieval Crusades and Inquisition. His stress on the “tranquility of order” as peace is basically naive as to the good that can be achieved by violence even if combined with good intentions. All later Christian history is witness to the ridiculous attempts to justify war using these criteria. Augustine’s theory belongs on the junk pile. Merton uses Bainton (2) as his primary source for the Catholic peace tradition, thus equating the Catholic tradition exclusively with the just war, and inevitably comes to some rather negative conclusions about the peace tradition in his own church.
279. Regout, Robert. La doctrine de la guerre juste de saint Augustine à nos jours, d’après les théologiens et les canonistes catholiques. Paris: A. Pedone, 1934; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1974.
A survey from Augustine to the twentieth century. Regout first distinguishes the jus ad bellum or the just-war criteria for entering a war, from the jus in bello or the rules governing its proper conduct. His aim is to discuss the former. Study examines just-war theory from the fourth century through Isidore of Seville, Gratian and the canonists and theologians of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century he examines the late scholastics, including Soto, Suarez, and Vitoria.
In our own age the theory has come upon problems of consistency and doctrine, often used as a justification for wars of aggression and confronted by the problems of proportionality that Augustine, supposedly, did not have to face.
280. Russell, Frederick H. The Just War in the Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Chapter 1, pp. 16-39, examines Augustine’s ideas on the just war. The bishop reconciled early Christian pacifism with Roman ideas of just war, making the sin of war an inner attitude, not the external violent act. As such he represents a Christian empire faced with the barbarian threat. Augustine’s roots are in Cicero and late imperial ideas of authority as deriving from God. Wars are therefore fought with divine authority to punish wrongdoers. The individual is absolved from any responsibility through his obedience to authority.
281. Swift. Louis J. “St. Ambrose on Violence and War.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 101 (1970): 533-43.
Ambrose’s thought reflects the Christian situation of the fourth century, as older ideas of peace and forbearance had to be integrated into the larger scope of social justice and order within a Christian empire. The older answers of Tertullian or Eusebius were now too simple. The Roman influence on Ambrose’s ideas of peace are strong and evident. While he praises the role of the military in the empire, he clearly distinguishes between just and unjust wars; and Christian principles are at the heart of his distinctions.
While fully a loyal citizen in matters of the empire’s defense, in matters of personal violence Ambrose remains a pacifist: self-defense is never acceptable for the Christian. However, when a third party is involved, the use of force is just, since the Christian is then acting out of love. This means not simply nonviolent defense but force.
Ambrose was never really able to reconcile these conflicting loyalties and ideas, and his one work in lavish praise of the emperor’s wars saw Valens crushing defeat by the Goths. Subsequently Ambrose never spoke in praise of Roman arms, and in fact opposed both Theodosius’ punishment of rioters and urged nonviolent defense of church rights in Milan.
282. Synan, Edward A. “Augustine of Hippo, Saint.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages (DMA). Joseph R. Strayer, ed. 13 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1982-89, 1: 646-59.
A good introduction.
283. Toporoski, Richard. “Ambrose, St.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages (DMA). Joseph R. Strayer, ed. 13 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1982-89, 1: 230-32.
A good introduction.
284. Zampaglione, Gerardo. The Idea of Peace in Antiquity. Richard Dunn, trans. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.
The City of God is a pacifist essay, condemning the Roman Empire and all earthly states built on violence and suffering. Augustine’s just-war theory is only a defensive answer to attacks on his pacifism following the sack of Rome. Analyzes the basis of Augustine’s theory and the limits he imposes on violence. In his Contra Faustum Augustine summons up Old Testament origins for the just war. He could, at times, even defend the Pax Romana that he seems to condemn in The City of God. See 344.
Christian Peacemakers and the Barbarians: Monks and Missions
285. Attwater, Donald. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Includes biographies of such early medieval peacemakers as Adamnan, Amand of Maastricht, Queen Bathild, Boniface of Crediton, Caesarius of Arles, Columba, Comgall, Germanus of Auxerre, Germanus of Paris, Geneviève of Paris, Pope Gregory the Great, the two Hewalds, Honoratus of Arles, Lambert of Maastricht, Ludger, Lupus of Troyes, Martin of Braga, Martin of Tours, Nicetius of Trier, Patrick, Paulinus of Aquileia, Philibert, Sulpicius, Telemachus, and Victricius.
286. Bainton, Roland H. Early Christianity. New York: Van Nostrand, 1960.
Early monasticism’s birth was a direct criticism of the imperial church and the marriage of Christianity to political power.
287. Baus, Karl. “Early Christian Monasticism: Development and Expansion in the East.” See 288, 337-73.
Discusses the religious and historical background and first development in Egypt under Anthony and Pachomius, in Nitria and Scete, and surveys the forms of anchoritism and cenobitism, developments in Palestine and in Syria, in Asia Minor, and in Constantinople. Concludes with some of the more extreme forms, including Messalianism.
288. —. The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Early Middle Ages. Anselm Biggs, trans. Baus, Karl. From the Apostolic Community to Constantine. In Hubert Jedin and John Dolan. Handbook of Church History (History of the Church). New York: Herder & Herder, Seabury Press, 1965, vol. 2. New York: Seabury Press, 1980.
An excellent synthesis covering the church’s development under the Roman imperial system, the theological disputes of the fifth century, the spiritual development, including missionary work, the growth of the institutional church, of the clergy, the liturgy, preaching and piety, and of monasticism. Then examines social issues and surveys the growth of the Byzantine and Western churches.
289. —. “Latin Monasticism from the Mid-Fifth Century to the End of the Seventh Century.” See 288, 690-707.
Developments in Italy, Merovingian France, Spain, and North Africa.
290. —. “The Monasticism of the Latin West.” See 288, 374-92.
Developments in Rome and Italy, Gaul, Spain, North Africa. Then analyzes St. Augustine’s role in the growth of monasticism, and traces antimonastic sentiment in the West.
291. —. with Eugen Ewig. “Missionary Activity of the Church.” See 288, 181-230.
Early monasticism in the West was indistinguishable from missionary work. Monks acted as the vanguard of the process of nonviolent confrontation with, and conversion of, the barbarian warrior. Only with Gregory the Great was a coordinated effort begun at conversion outside the old Roman world.
292. Bibliotheca Sanctorum. Istituto Giovanni XXIII della Pontificia Università Lateranense, 12 vols. & index. Rome: Società Grafica Romana, 1961-70.
Detailed biographies of such early medieval peacemakers as Adamnan, Amand of Maastricht, Boniface of Crediton, Caesarius of Arles, Columban, Comgall, Germanus of Auxerre, Germanus of Paris, Pope Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, Hilary of Poitiers, Pope Leo the Great, Ludger, Martin of Braga, Martin of Tours, Niceta of Remesiana, Nicetius of Trier, Pachomius, Patrick, Paulinus of Aquileia, Paulinus of Nola, Philibert of Nourmoutier, Severinus of Noricum, and Victricius of Rouen.
293. Brown, Peter R.L. The World of Late Antiquity. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971.
Christian monasticism had many roots, in Christian and pagan asceticism, in the popular spirituality of the simple folk of the provinces, the desire for a literal imitation of Christ, in social revolt from the tyranny of imperial society, in the revolt from the violence of the Roman army. Whatever its roots, Eastern monasticism was a revolt from the Roman world, and it expressed for the first time the aspirations of the downtrodden. It was also an offensive against the Roman world, a revolution whose goals were freedom of the body as well as the soul. The monk, the archetypal holy man and woman, thus became one of the few in the late empire capable of challenging the tyranny of the emperors and their administrators. In so doing they took on the prophetic roles of teaching and denunciation of injustice.
Brown’s remarks on Western monasticism are more negative. In the West, monasticism tended to be snobbish and self-conscious, antibourgeois and aristocratic, more concerned with the rural ideal of books and dinner parties than with real political, moral, and religious issues. By disdaining the Roman political process and the army, this aristocracy unwittingly led to their collapse but soon learned that they could do without both. Brown asserts that the Western monks shunned the barbarians. Christian pacifism during the period was nothing more than sassy, disguised snobbery, turned off to both the soldier and the citizen.
294. Butler, Alban. Lives of the Saints. Donald Attwater and Herbert Thurston, eds. 4 vols. New York: Kennedy, 1956, 3-7.
The best source in English for most of the early medieval peacemakers mentioned in 285 and 292 above.
295. Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966.
Probably the best introduction to date to the early monasticism of the Egyptian hermits, including sections on Anthony the Hermit and Pachomius.
296. Comblin, Joseph. Théologie de la paix. 2 vols. Paris: Éditions universitaires, 1963.
The prophetic protest of the early church was preserved during the early Middle Ages by the monastic movement and the clergy, who did not fear to speak out for peace and justice against both imperial tyranny and barbarian violence.
296.1 Constable, Giles. Medieval Monasticism: A Select Bibliography. Toronto medieval bibliographies, 6. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976
Covers the essential works to the mid-1970s.
297. Courtois, C. “L’évolution du monachisme en Gaule de St. Martin à St. Columban,” Il monachesimo nell’alto medioevo e la formazione della civiltà occidentale. Vol. 4 in Settimane di studi. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1957, 47-72.
A good collection of recent research.
298. Duckett, Eleanor Shipley. Gateway to the Middle Ages: Monasticism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971.
An good introduction to the period and the institution, using anecdotal and narrative sources that enliven by example. Useful background for the lives of Severinus of Noricum and Columban, based closely on the original texts.
299. Frazee, Charles A. “Late Roman and Byzantine Legislation on the Monastic Life from the Fourth to the Eight Centuries,” Church History 51 (September 1982): 263-79.
While monasticism was a major force of nonviolent social change and conversion of the barbarians, this article should remind us that, like all human institutions, monasticism also often represented the forces of violence.
300. Frend, W.H.C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House, 1981, 3-47.
Monasticism’s flight from the urban world of the Roman Empire represented a social protest against injustice and shared much of the spirit of the martyrs. It came predominantly from the lower classes and reflected popular spirituality. Anthony the Hermit æ nondoctrinal, nonhierarchical, and nonintellectual æ was archetypal. The monks set up their own, ideal, Christian social and economic system that replaced oppression and compulsion with nonviolence and cooperation. In Egypt under Pachomius this life attracted tens of thousands.
301. Hillgarth, J.N. The Conversion of Western Europe 300-750. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Revised as Christianity and Paganism, 350-750. The Conversion of Western Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
A collection of primary sources covering the process of conversion from the late Roman Empire to the barbarian successor states. Selections touch on the history of monasticism and attempts to convert the pagan hinterlands by Victricius of Rouen, monasticism as a form of social revolt, the effects of the barbarian invasions on the process of conversion, and the consciously nonviolent methods used to convert them, even in the face of persecution. On the other hand, the church hierarchy took over many of the practices of the Roman imperial administration, preferring to treat only with the leadership of the barbarian peoples. In the process it assimilated much of the ethos of both empire and barbarian. The revised edition has new sections on Ireland and the seventh-century Frankish church.
302. Knöpfer, J. “Die Akkommodation im altchristlichen Missionswesen,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 1 (1911).
For early medieval attempts at peaceful conversion, including Gregory the Great’s attitudes and missions.
303. Knowles, David. Christian Monasticism. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
A good general introduction to the subject. Richly illustrated, with a helpful bibliography. Topics include the Egyptian origins under Anthony and Pachomius, its spread and development in the West, the role of monks as missionaries, and the growth of Benedictine monasticism.
303.1 Lawrence, C. H. Medieval Monasticism. London & New York: Longman, 1984.
Now considered the standard work.
304. Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. New York: ACLS History E-Book Project, 2005.
The classic work on monastic culture.
305. McDermott, William C. Monks, Bishops, and Pagans. Edward Peters, ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
Collection of primary sources, including the works of Gregory the Great, Jonas’ Life of St. Columbanus, and selections from the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours.
306. Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Christianity and Decline.” In Arnaldo Momigliano. The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
Monasticism was both a revolt against Roman society and its spiritual evil and a constructive force that built a new political and economic system based on self-government. Unlike pagan society, which resisted or greeted the barbarians with horror and contempt, the new Christian communities welcomed them and began to convert them. Good evidence for the nonviolent response of Christian Roman society to overwhelming catastrophe and ever-present violence.
307. Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964.
Excellent background to the activities of Christian missionaries among the barbarians, including Augustine of Canterbury and Pope Gregory the Great, Columba, Wilfrid, Columban, and Boniface of Crediton.
308. Opelt, Ilona. “Briefe des Salvian von Marseille: Zwischen Christen und Barbaren,” Romanobarbarica 4 (1979): 161-82.
There is little trace of the barbarian invasions in Salvian’s letters, which fully reflect the nonviolent spirituality of Lérins. Themes of reconciliation of Roman and barbarian found in Livy, of Christian humility, mutual love and compassion (amor, caritas, affectus) go hand in hand with a sense of community with the whole human race.
309. Talbot, C.H., ed. The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1981.
A good account of the missions, the personalities, and the issues involved.
310. Thompson, E.A. “Christianity and the Northern Barbarians.” In Arnaldo Momigliano. The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, 56-78.
No evidence exists that the Roman missionaries under the empire played any significant role in converting the barbarians outside its borders before 476. Most converts during this period were barbarians serving in the Roman army, Christian captives who converted their captors, and missionaries on trade routes. All three methods were haphazard and unorganized. Nevertheless, Thompson does provide some excellent material on early Christian peacemakers and the barbarians, including Niceta of Remesiana, Queen Fritigil of the Macromanni, Victricius of Rouen, and Amantius of Aquileia.
311. Vogt, Hermann Josef. “The Missionary Work of the Latin Church.” See 288, 517-601.
Ranges from St. Patrick and Irish monasticism to Columban and the conversion of the Franks and Burgundians up to the reign of Clovis. Then deals with church councils, Columban, northern and eastern Gaul, Switzerland and extends into the late seventh century.
Educating New Peoples for Peace: Penitentials and Canon Law
312. Bieler, Ludwig. The Irish Penitentials, in Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 5. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1963.
Penalties for homicide and for killing in war or tribal strife exist as early as the Welsh Canons of the sixth century. The Old Irish Penitential, for example, seems to have equated violence done in war with that in a brawl or in an ambush, and imposes a penance of as high as a year and a half.
313. —. “Penitentials,” NCE 11: 86-87.
A brief introduction.
314. Frantzen, Allen J. The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983.
Fine overview of the subject, with chapters on Irish sources, Frankish developments, penance and prayer, preaching penance through homilies, handbooks, and prayers, penance as a theme in Old English poetry. Good general background with some references to violence and warfare. Excellent bibliography.
315. —. “The Penitentials Attributed to Bede,” Speculum 58, 3 (1983): 573-97.
Useful as a review of current research and historiography.
316. —. “The Significance of the Frankish Penitentials,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979): 409-21.
Their sources, spread and influence on life and legislation.
317. —. “The Tradition of Penitentials in Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1982): 23-56.
A good summary of recent research.
318. Hallam, Elizabeth M. “Monasteries as War Memorials: Battle Abbey and La Victoire.” In W.J. Shiels, ed. The Church and War. Papers of the Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Studies in Church History 20. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, New York: Harper & Row, 1983, 47-57.
While no contemporary documents for the foundation of either house exist that can give us explicit information on the motives of their founding, there are later “copies” of both charters, one dating from the nineteenth century. Despite this lack of first-hand material, Hallam rejects outright the penitential motive of William the Conqueror’s founding of Battle Abbey to atone for the deaths of Hastings. Even the explicit wording of the existing charter, “let it be an atonement,” is dismissed. What we have in both cases is military celebration and the visible manifestation of strong rulers’ ability to stamp their bellicose policies on the institution of the church.
319. Hanson, R.P.C. The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick. New York: Seabury, 1983.
Not seen.
320. Le Bras, Gabriel. “Pénitentiels,” DTC 12 (1933): 1160-79.
Defines the literary form and discusses origins and historiography. Then briefly surveys their development up to the mid-seventh century, their apogee between 650 and 800, the Carolingian reform, Pseudo-Isidore, and the penitentials’ incorporation into Gratian’s Decretum and thus into the general canon law of the church.
321. Mansfield, Mary C. The Humiliation of Sinners. Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1995
Focus on the shift from internal spirituality of private penance, which proved an unsatisfactory solution to reintegrating the individual into both secular and spiritual communities, toward more public forms, culminating in the public displays of urban penitence which were to evolve into the rituals and ceremonies of penance and reconciliation of the late Middle Ages.
322. McNeill, John T., and Helen M. Gamer. Medieval Handbooks of Penance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.
Also available online in the ACLS Humanities E-Book collection.
An excellent and far-reaching collection of penitential literature, well edited and presented with useful introductory materials. Offers numerous sources for the history of nonviolence as found in penitential regulations against bloodshed in personal vendettas, feuds, and warfare, with specific penances, often quite severe, attached to each form of violence. These reflect both the violence of the age and very real attempts to curb it.
Useful sources include the Canons attributed to St. Patrick, the Penitentials of Finnian, Cummean, the Irish Canons, the Law of Adamnan, the Old Irish Penitential, the Welsh Canons, the Penitential of Theodore, that attributed to Bede, of Columban, the Burgundian, Paris and Solos Penitentials, and the Laws of Edmund. They range from Ireland to the Continent and from the sixth to the tenth century. The penitentials edited here represent the continuing tradition of Christian peacemaking, even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, that sought to bring peace and to outlaw war.
323. Müller, Wolfgang P. “Violence et droit canionique: Les enseignements de la Pénitenierie apostolique (XIIIe-XVIe siècles).” Revue Historique 309 (Oct. 2007): 771–96.
324. Oakley, T.P. “Cultural Affiliations of Early Ireland in the Penitentials,” Speculum 8 (1933): 489-500.
A survey of the known Irish penitentials as a source for social mores in lay society as a whole. Such evidence provides useful arguments against those who contend that medieval peace represented a turning away from social issues of peace and justice.
325. Vogel, Cyrille. Le pécheur et la pénitence au Moyen Age. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1969.
Good collection of texts in Latin, with comprehensive introduction. Useful selections include the Penitential attributed to Bede, which imposes penance for killing in war, and the Penitential of Finnian.
326. Watkins, Oscar Daniel. A History of Penance. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1920.
Volume 1 focuses on the development of the sacrament, volume 2 on the penitential literature. Selections highlight the penances imposed on both clergy and laity for violence, murder, and war.
Early Medieval Europe: The Continuing Tradition of Peace
327. Bonnaud-Delamare, Roger. L’idée de paix a l’époque carolingienne. Paris: Domat-Montchrétien, 1939.
Christian notions of peace were sorely strained under the impact of the Germanic invasions. The pax ecclesiae, already a juridical and political concept under the Imperial Church, took on the notions of the pax of the German warlord æ is personal protection æ becoming translated as the immunities enjoyed by, or extended by, the church to its dependents. Germanic law codes contained few references to peace. The Lex Alamannorum and the Lex Visigothorum use it in the sense of special protections mentioned above.
328. Brock, Peter. The Roots of War Resistance. Pacifism from the Early Church to Tolstoy. Nyack, NY: Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1981.
Quite simply, “the barbarians militarized Christianity,” and Christian peacemaking was submerged for a millennium until the advent of the Protestant pacifist sects of the Reformation. The clergy existed as an elite group of “vocational noncombatantcy.” No mention is made of the impact of Christianity upon the barbarians, or of the work of scores of Christian peacemakers: monks, martyrs, and missionaries. On the whole, for the medieval Church “the radical antimilitarism of the early Church found no place in its teachings.” What criteria Brock uses to distinguish the clerical pacifists of the early church, our chief documentary source for early Christian pacifism, from the same clerical pacifists of the early Middle Ages are unspoken.
329. La conversione al cristianesimo nell’ Europa dell’ alto medioevo. Vol. 14 in Settimane di studio. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1967.
A good collection on recent research on all aspects of the conversion process.
330. Dalbey, Marcia A. “The Good Shepherd and the Soldier of God: Old English Homilies on St. Martin of Tours,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 85, 4 (1984): 422-34.
This traces the influence of Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin of Tours in England during the period of the Viking invasions. Both in the Old English homilies of c. 960, written during a lull in the attacks and in Aelfric’s life c. 990, written in the context of real war and invasion, St. Martin of Tours remains a nonviolent soldier of Christ who overthrows the devil and establishes Christianity through spiritual weapons. He is the shepherd, educating and converting. While Aelfric admits the need to defend the nation, the tradition of nonviolence exemplified by St. Martin remained strong even in this darkest of the dark ages.
331. Danielou, J., S.J., and Henri-I. Marrou. The First Six Hundred Years. Vincent Cronin, trans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
An excellent reference history.
332. Du Cange, Charles Du Fresne. “Pax,” Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis. 10 vols. Paris: Osmont, 1937-38, 2: 228-31.
The early Middle Ages brought new meanings to the word pax, largely borrowed from the world of the barbarians. These include the concept of the pax regis as the special protection granted the king to his dependents, and the pax firma, security or immunity from harm. The pax ecclesiae between the Christian Empire and the Imperial Church brought the pax Sancti Petri, a municipal peace enforced by imperial police, the pax domini, a liturgical instrument used by the bishop to show himself the vicar of Christ, and the liturgical forms, pax vobis, a salutation, and the pax dare, the kiss of peace.
333. Erdmann, C. The Origins of the Idea of Crusade. Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart, transls. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, 3-80.
The absorption of the Germanic barbarians into Christianity took centuries, but the work was undertaken constantly and consistently. The barbarian moral exaltation of war, heroism, famous deeds, loyalty to leader and contempt for civilized life had first to be overcome. Rather than accommodating to this warrior ethic, however, the church took an even more rigorous view of war than before, forbidding the clergy from participating in bloodshed and using the penitential system to educate the barbarians to peace. Martin of Tours and Boniface of Crediton are examples of medieval peacemakers. Erdmann’s evidence could lead one to conclude that the numerous stories of miraculous defenses without recourse to arms by such saints as Aimoin, Benôit, Fidis, Andreas of Fleury, and Bernard of Angers are simply the medieval interpretation of the effects of nonviolence.
334. Goffart, Walter. Barbarians and Romans A.D. 418-584. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
The barbarians who overwhelmed the Roman world were small in number, and their assimilation was essentially peaceful.
335. Haines, Keith. “Attitudes and Impediments to Pacifism in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 369-88.
While medieval pacifism must be understood in the context of the brutality and warfare of the period, it existed quite over and above any medieval longings for peace in a general way. Nevertheless, the just-war and Augustan traditions dominated most of medieval thought on war and peace despite an ambivalence and some confusion between concepts of earthly and spiritual peace. The penitentials imposed some curbs on the violence of the age.
336. Hornus, Jean-Michel. It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight. Early Christian Attitudes Toward War. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1980, 3-69.
The early Middle Ages saw two major trends in Christian peacemaking. The newly Christianized Pax Romana celebrating the alliance of the empire and the church on behalf of a Christian world order æ represented by such writers as Lactantius and Eusebius æ and the continuing tradition of prophetic protest, now allied with monastic revolt, typified by Martin of Tours. His life, and those of his associates in southern Gaul in the fourth century, was not some monastic hagiographic legend, but a truly antimilitarist movement of protest. By the fifth century these two strains had produced real conflicts of conscience within the Christian community that emerged in regulations for clerical nonviolence and penitential penalties for murder and participation in war by the laity. Nevertheless, Constantine’s conversion does represent a true turning point in the history of Christian nonviolence.
337. Isidore of Seville.
His Differentiarum 10.243 (PL 83:35), Epistemologiarum 10.1.11, Sententiarum 3.51.6 (PL 83), and Synonymorum 2.38 (PL 83: 854) provide rich material for the student of early medieval concepts of peace, combining barbarian notions of peace as protection and privilege, Roman notions of treaty alliance, and Christian ideas of love and tranquility.
338. Le Bras, Gabriel. “The Sociology of the Church in the Early Middle Ages,” Early Medieval Society. Sylvia Thrupp, ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967, 47-57.
The work of the church in the early Middle Ages was to bring about a Christian society. “The invasions, far from interrupting the preaching of the Gospels, made it even more necessary.”
339. McNeill, John T. “Asceticism versus Militarism in the Middle Ages,” Church History 5 (1936): 3-28.
A basic work on the history of peacemaking in the Middle Ages. Focuses on the development of monasticism as the new militia Christi waging a spiritual warfare against Satan. This was essentially a pacifist notion, and the monastic leader was par excellence the peacemaker. These ascetics, typified by Martin of Tours and his conversion from soldier to monk, represented a “flat repudiation of militarism.”
340. Paradisi, Bruno. “L’organization de la paix aux ive et ve siècles.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 14 (1961): 321-95.
Early medieval ideas of peace were borrowed from the late Roman Empire. Peace was a juridical concept, the societas hominum, the transcendent unity existing within the Christian Empire. To the meanings of peace in the words pax and eirene were added those of concordia and homonoia, the world order and tranquility of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Christian thinkers retained, and even strengthened, biblical meanings of peace. Augustine, for example, criticized the Pax Romana as a negative peace, wrought by war and discord. Justice, instead, is the true basis of peace, and this is based on the love within the Mystical Body. With the coming of the barbarians, peace took on even newer meanings, as foedus, a treaty condition of peace gained with Rome, the result of a pact. This meaning was handed on to the Middle Ages through Isidore of Seville. At the same time personal peacemaking tended to become internalized, a transcendental condition.
341. Renna, Thomas. “The Idea of Peace in the West, 500-1150,” Journal of Medieval History 6, 2 (1980): 143-67.
The peace tradition in the early Middle Ages has thus far been neglected, and no synthesis has yet been attempted. Constantine probably did not understand the Christian idea of peace and gave the Middle Ages, instead, a notion of peace as unified control. During the Merovingian period this became an extraordinary privilege, a protection, granted to individuals or churches. Pax Christi was taken as a personal, not a societal condition, an otherworldly extension of monastic notions of hesychia and tranquillitas, earthly detachment and the approach to heavenly peace. Augustine is typical of this development in his contrast between pax Christi and false, external peace.
Yet there were exceptions. One strain in Christian thought held that peace was not simply an inner disposition but a social goal. Gregory the Great believed that conversion of the barbarians could be achieved through the example of charismatic peacemakers. By the sixth century churchpeople were attempting to bring peace by curtailing feuds, and by the eight century imperial notions of peace had fused with ecclesiastical ideas of internal peace. Thus external order was seen as the precondition of internal peace. While an indispensable overview, this article concentrates on official notions of peace, as a concept forced from the top down.
342. Rusch, William G. The Later Latin Fathers. London: Duckworth, 1977.
Brief introductions to the life and writings of the Christian thinkers of the late empire and early Middle Ages, including Damasus I, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Paulinus of Nola, Augustine, Vincent of Lérins, Hilary of Arles, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, and Victor of Vita.
343. Severus, Sulpicius et al. The Western Fathers. F.R. Hoare, ed. and trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
Excellent source materials for the lives of some of the early Middle Ages’ most energetic and attractive peacemakers, including Ambrose and his confrontation with the emperor Theodosius, Augustine and his Letter to Honoratus (recommending martyrdom or flight rather than violence against the invading barbarians), Sulpicius Severus’ life of Martin of Tours, Honoratus of Arles’ biography of Hilary of Arles, and the fascinating life of Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius of Lyons. Hoare’s introductions also remind us that the spirit of nonviolence that breathes through many of these works reflects not only the peacemaking of the heros they praise but also the living tradition of nonviolence of the bishops who commissioned the works and the writers who composed them. The works themselves are evidence of a Catholic pacifism still flourishing in the late fifth century.
344. Thompson, E.A. Saint Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain. Woodbridge, Sussex: Boydell Press, 1984.
This is an excellent study in source analysis. While Thompson’s concern is British history, its sources and dating, by and large Constantius’ picture of Germanus is historically accurate. The British under Germanus’ guidance did win their Alleluia victory without a blow being struck or a prisoner being taken; Germanus did stop an army single-handedly with his stern rebuke to the barbarian King Goar; he did defy the vengeance of the Roman general Aetius; and did travel to Ravenna to work justice for the Armoricans.
345. Zampaglione, Gerardo. The Idea of Peace in Antiquity. Richard Dunn, trans. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.
An excellent survey of the theory of Christian peacemaking in the late empire and early Middle Ages. Topics discussed include the Council of Arles in 314, which Zampaglione asserts abandoned pacifism in favor of Christian military service, and the reassertation of this service in the council of Nicea in 325. On the other hand, the Greek Fathers continued to condemn war. These include Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyassa, and the mystical peace of Dionysius the Areopagite, who saw earthly and community peace as a reflection of divine peace. In the West, the stronger the relation to secular power, the weaker the Christian message of peace tended to be. Nevertheless, Zampaglione cites many early medieval peacemakers, including Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, Prudentius, and Ambrose of Milan. His treatment of Augustine is fundamental to any historical approach to Catholic peacemaking.
346-354. Blank.
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