PeaceDocs | Bibliography | Royal Peace to People’s Peace   

Following is an annotated bibliography of important works in the Christian peace tradition. It is based on Ronald G. Musto, The Peace Tradition in the Catholic Church. An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987. The selections go up to the late 1980s, and will be supplemented and hyperlinked to online sellers or resources as we go along.

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CHAPTER 5: From Royal Peace To People’s Peace, 800-1100


General Introduction


355. See Map of Europe, 800-1100.



  1. 356.Ganshof, F.L. Feudalism. Philip Grierson, trans. New York: Longmans. 1952, with many reprints.

A good introduction to the origins, growth, and institutions of feudalism as a social and political phenomenon that set the scene for Christian peacemaking throughout the Middle Ages.



  1. 357.Hehl, Ernst-Dieter. “War, Peace and the Christian Order,” New Cambridge Medieval History 4.1, 1024–1198. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley Smith, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 185-228.


Good background. “Peace” is used more in terms of the older Carolingian meaning of order.



  1. 358.Loud, G.A. “The Church, Warfare and Military Obligation in Norman Italy.” 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, 31-45.

The attempt to reconcile the Christian message with war was “one of the most important intellectual problems of the Middle Ages,” Loud asserts. The “presence of, and the necessity for, war” is always a problem for the institutional church. In Norman Italy the church’s institutional power meant wealth and land, and therefore military service on that land, both for self-defense and to fulfill feudal obligations.



  1. 359.Nelson, Janet L. “The Church’s Military Service in the Ninth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View.” 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, 15-30.

Examines the problem of provisioning the English and Frankish warrior class and the question of military service rendered by the church for its large land holdings. The church thus performed an “institutionalized military service.”



  1. 360.Ullmann, Walter. The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969.


Good background reading for the intellectual universe of the Carolingians. While the period was decidedly one that prized the warrior, the cultural tradition of the empire was that of Christian Rome that took the Bible as its source of social as well as religious life. Thus the purpose of the empire for Charlemagne and his successors was to transform the world into a Christian republic. This, at least in theory, gave room to calls for Christian virtues as modes of social life. This effort is reflected in the Carolingian Capitularies, its court literature, and its church legislation.


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Carolingian Peace


  1. 361.Attwater, Donald. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.


Good biographies, with some bio-bibliographical references, for such peacemakers as Adalbert of Prague, Aurelius and Natalia, Boniface of Querfurt, Columba of Cordoba, Eskil, Eulogius of Cordoba, Flora and Mary of Cordoba, Pope Nicholas I, Odilo of Cluny, and Romuald.



  1. 362.Bonnaud-Delamare, Roger. L’idée de paix a l’époque carolingienne. Paris: Domat-Montchrétien, 1939.

The best and most comprehensive introduction to peacemaking during the early Middle Ages. Provides both overall interpretation and careful readings of individual thinkers and texts. Carolingian peace was a combination of Germanic pax, royal power to protect and maintain order, and Christian pax, peace of the heart. Earthly peace and order reflect the heavenly. Traces the development of these theories from the royal apologists in Pepin’s and Charlemagne’s courts through Alcuin and the Carolingian capitularies and councils, to monastic thinkers like Smaragdus, Druthmar of Corbie, and Hrabanus Maurus, and to the capitularies of Louis the Pious. Also analyzes the notions of peace found in the False Capitularies and False Decretals produced during the decline of the Carolingians. Finally, it shows how the Carolingian councils passed on all these notions of peace to the Peace and Truce of God.



  1. 363.Cowdrey, H.E.J. “Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance Following the Battle of Hastings,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 20 (1969): 225-42.

The very specific penances imposed by the Norman Council of Westminster upon the victors of the Battle of Hastings for their participation in war had a long tradition in the church legislation found in the penitential literature. This goes back to the Carolingian revival of earlier penitential literature and finds expression in Burchard of Worms and Fulbert of Chartres, among others. See 312 to 324.



  1. 364.Delaney, John J. Pocket Dictionary of Saints. Abridged ed. of Dictionary of Saints. New York: Doubleday, 1983.

Brief biographies of many of the most important Catholic peacemakers of the period, including Angilbert, Eulogius of Cordoba, Frederick of Utrecht, Guibert, Pope Nicholas I, Odilo of Cluny, Odo of Beauvais, Romuald, Stanislaus of Poland, and Theobald of Champagne.



  1. 365.Delaruelle, Étienne. L’Idée de croisade au Moyen Age. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1980, 1-23.

A complete survey from Charlemagne through Urban II to St. Louis. These pages provide some background to Carolingian notions of peace.



  1. 366.Du Cange, Charles Du Fresne. “Pax,” Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis. 10 vols. Paris: Osmont, 1937-38. 2: 228-31.

Pax took on several new meanings and deepened others during the Carolingian period. These range from legal pardon, religious absolution, and the forgiveness of sins to sworn oaths and a call for silence (“Peace!”). It also retained the Germanic notions of special protection or law: the pax regis (the king’s peace), the special protection granted by the king to his retainers, his court, his high roads, and his law and order, the peace of a village and even the village district itself. Stemming from these notions of special protections came the linguistic development inherent in the Peace of God: the special protection afforded various groups, and the pax totius hebdomadae (the peace of the entire week), which eventually emerged into the Truce of God. In all these usages medieval pax seems to have taken on the nature of a commodity to be granted, shared, or won.



  1. 367.Duval, Frederic Victor. De la paix de Dieu a la paix de fer. Paris: Paillard, 1923.


Traces the development of the Peace of God and its popular assemblies to its cooptation into the Truce of God controlled by the princes and used as an instrument of law and order, as often as not insured through compulsion and violence. Useful, though at times overly apologetic for this course of events.



  1. 368.Erdmann, C. The Origins of the Idea of Crusade. Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart, transls. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.


Despite his main topic, the origins of the concept of the crusade, Erdmann is indispensable for the history of medieval peace movements and ideas. Reviews the continuing tradition of Christian nonviolence and condemnation of warfare found in the penitential literature from Hrabanus Maurus to Fulbert of Chartres and Burchard of Worms. Also recounts the condemnations of military life found in Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Rather of Liège, Hincmar of Reims, Atto of Vercelli, and Odo of Cluny. Erdmann reviews the development of Carolingian ideas of peace as order and military stability and traces the origins of the Peace of God. This, he states, shows a new shift of emphasis to the peasant and the ecclesiatic and away from the warrior and represents the first mass religious movement of the Middle Ages



  1. 369.Fournier, Paul E.L., and Gabriel Le Bras. Histoire des collections canoniques en Occident depuis les Fausses Décretales jus qu’au Décret de Gratien. 2 vols. Paris: Sirey, 1931.

On the legal basis of Carolingian peace. Surveys the extent of canon law during the late Carolingian period, including some collections that have direct bearing on Carolingian and later concepts of peace and peacemaking. These include the False Capitularies, False Decretals, and the tradition of the penitentials.



  1. 370.Fuhrmann, H. “False Decretals (Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries),” NCE 5: 820-24.


Detailed analysis of the sources and composition of this legal collection, including much of the penitential literature, and of its later influence. Useful background to the history of peace legislation during the period.



  1. 371.Ganshof, F.L. “La paix au très haute Moyen Age.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 9 (1958): 207-35.

Examines the attempts at peace as political stability achieved through treaty agreements between the various barbarian successor states. Also follows later Carolingian measures to maintain some semblance of this order. Into the mid-ninth century peace thus meant maintaining both the order of the empire and protection over the church.



  1. 372.Miller, William. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.


Uses the saga literature of medieval Iceland to examine both the feud and its reconciliation, roughly from the ninth to the 12th century. Chapter 8 discusses peacemaking and arbitration and their methods. Forms involved separating the combatants, arbitration, and specifically institutionalized peacemaking by the Christian clergy with an emphasis on forgiveness and forbearance. Clergy could also use the threat of ecclesiastical ban and other spiritual tools to prevent violence, press reconciliation, or punish wrongdoers. There also existed an unofficial class of person, the godgjarnir menn, or people of good will, who actively made peace, not out of self-interest, but for the common good. In the end peacemaking had its practical means: settlements — often monetary — were made binding with legal and social sanctions to enforce them. Good bibliography on conflict resolution in early medieval and “stateless societies.”



  1. 373.Prinz, Friedrich. Klerus und Krieg im Früheren Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Hiersmann, 1971.


Useful background material for the continuing tradition of clerical nonviolence into the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, but relies on Erdmann (368) to a great extent.



  1. 374.Renna, Thomas. “The Idea of Peace in the West, 500-1150,” Journal of Medieval History 6, 2 (1980): 143-67.

Official Carolingian and post-Carolingian ideas of peace seem to have been primarily those of law and order, the internal order of empire and its defense against external enemies. At the same time, Carolingian monastic thought held that only the ascetic can achieve true spiritual peace. Yet this monastic virtue put pressure on the monk to become the peacemaker, and the Cluniacs were among the first to take up this call. The Peace of God emerged from these traditions as a means to bring about Christ’s peace on earth by using his spiritual weapons. No pacifism in the twentieth-century sense existed.



  1. 375.Rosenthal, J.T. “The Public Assembly in the Time of Louis the Pious,” Traditio 20 (1964): 25-40.

Traces the origins of the popular assembly to its Germanic tribal roots, notes that the assemblies were nonmilitary in nature, and then demonstrates that they were held at a rate of two to three a year between 814 and 840. These assemblies discussed all sorts of issues, including those of war and peace. While the “people” were not given any significant role at these assemblies, they certainly were in attendance and were sometimes appealed to for at least a formal acclamation. In theory, and sometimes in practice, then, the Carolingians preserved the voice of the people that was later to come to the fore in the the peace demonstrations of the Peace of God.



  1. 376.Russell, Frederick H. The Just War in the Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975, 4-30.


During the collapse of the Carolingian Empire individual writers, such as Agobard of Lyons and Hrabanus Maurus, and the penitential literature attempted to stem the tide of war by stressing the nonviolence of the Christian message or by imposing sanctions. The Peace and the Truce of God, while not necessarily pacifist, also sought to bring peace by limiting war.



  1. 377.Ullmann, Walter. “Public Welfare and Social Legislation in Early Medieval Councils,” Studies in Church History 7 (Cambridge, 1971): 1-39.


During the Carolingian period the Frankish bishops met regularly to legislate on a wide variety of religious and social issues, from weights and measures to due process in property transfers, to ameliorating the condition of slaves and the plight of the poor, of the workers, unwed mothers, Jews, the sick, the imprisoned. The central concern of all their legislation was to translate the New Testament virtue of charity into the concrete world. The Frankish councils thus naturally legislated against capital punishment and attempted to eliminate violence or to protect society’s weakest members from it. Ullmann unabashedly seeks to draw modern attention to earlier parallels in an age thought barbarian and indifferent to suffering.


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Carolingian Monasticism, Missions and Antimilitarism


  1. 378.Latourette, Kenneth S. History of the Expansion of Christianity. 7 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1937-1945. Vol. 2, The Thousand Years of Uncertainty, A.D. 500-A.D. 1500. Reprinted Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1976.

Still the best historical synthesis of missionary history. Comprehensive, well written, and given to useful detail on the lives of many of the period’s foremost peacemakers.



  1. 379.McNeill, John T. “Asceticism versus Militarism in the Middle Ages,” Church History 5 (1936): 3-28.


Medieval monasticism was a direct response to the militarism and violence of the feudal class and an attempt to tame its barbarism. Uses several examples of knights who convert to the monastic life and become leading peacemakers, especially among the Cluniacs. “All in all, before the rise of the university, the monasteries were the principal cultural agency leading Europe toward a pacific and progressive civilization.”



  1. 380.Sullivan, Richard. “The Carolingian Missionary and the Pagan,” Speculum 28 (1953): 705-40.

Outlines the methods used to contact, convince, and teach the barbarian. For the Carolingians the use of force certainly played a part in conversion. Important reminder that not all Christian missionary work was exemplary of nonviolence and that violent conversion was not without result.



  1. 381.—. “Carolingian Missionary Theories,” Catholic Historical Review 42 (1956-57): 273-95.

Forced conversion was the Carolingian norm, although much theoretical ink was spilt on nonviolent alternatives. Nevertheless, a tradition of peaceful conversionn in action certainly existed. Nicholas I and Boniface of Crediton offer examples of the methods used.



  1. 382.—. “Early Medieval Missionary Activity: A Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Methods,” Church History 23 (1954): 17-35.


Despite the violent methods normal for Carolingian missions, peaceful means were often attempted. Alcuin’s criticisms of Charlemagne’s forced conversion of the Saxons and Willehad’s and Ludger’s activities are examples.



  1. 383.—. “Khan Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria: A Case Study of the Impact of Christianity on a Barbarian Society,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 53-139.


Pope Nicholas I’s response to Khan Boris’ request for Christian instruction. Included in Boris’ questions and the pope’s reply is a lengthy discussion on Christian preparation for war in which Nicholas advises Boris to embrace actions and attitudes that directly contradict all the norms of a warrior society and reveal the existence of a thriving tradition of Christian nonviolence.



  1. 384.—. “The Papacy and Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages,” Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): 46-106.


An excellent review of the role the papacy played in formulating and coordinating the Christian response to the barbarians.


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The Martyrs of Cordoba


384.1. Christys, Ann. Christians in Al-Andalus, 711-1000. London: Routledge, 2002.



384.2. —. “St-Germain Des Pres, St.-Vincent and the Martyrs of Cordoba.” Early Medieval Europe 7.2 (1998): 199-216.



  1. 385.Colbert, Edward P. The Martyrs of Cordoba (850-859). A Study of the Sources. Washington, DC: Catholic University, 1962.

A good general introduction to the sources, historiography, and problems. Introduces the literature, doctrine and theological controversies of the Cordoban church and gives special attention to Eulogius and Alvarus, the leading figures of this decade of Christian nonviolent resistance to Islam.



385.1. Coope, Jessica A. The Martyrs of Córdoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.


Examines the historical record, the ideological impetus of the martyr accounts, and reopens the complex phenomenon of martyrdom to new scrutiny.



385.2. Cutler, Allan. “The Ninth-Century Spanish Martyrs’ Movement and the Origins of Western Christian Missions to the Muslims,” Muslim World 55 (1965): 321-39.

The Cordoba martyr movement was the first Christian mass movement and had profound importance for the history of later Christian missions. Recounts the main personalities and events and stresses the apocalyptic motivations of many in the movement. Cutler, however, sees its apocalyptic drift as the first step in a violent revolution and links it directly to the Crusades movement. He does this in the face of all the evidence explicitly praising the nonviolence of the martyrs, and lacking evidence supporting his notion of such a cynical maneuver on the part of the Christian leadership.



385.2.1. Daniel, Norman. The Arabs and Medieval Europe. London: Longman, 1975. Electronic version available on ACLS Humanities E-Book.


Chapter 2, “The Martyrs of Cordova” (pp. 23–48), offers a good, detailed review and analysis.



385.3. Ecclesiastical History Society, and Diana Wood. Martyrs and Martyrologies: Papers Read at the 1992 Summer Meeting and the 1993 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Studies in church history, 30. Oxford, OX, UK: Published for the Ecclesiastical History Society by Blackwell Publishers, 1993.



385.4. Pochoshajew, Igor. Die Märtyrer von Cordoba: Christen im muslimischen Spanien des 9. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt am Main: O. Lembeck, 2007.



  1. 386.Waltz, James. “The Significance of the Voluntary Martyr Movement of Ninth-Century Cordoba,” Muslim World 60 (1970): 143-59, 226-36.

Excellent analysis of the martyr movement that links its religious motivation and response to very concrete political and social issues, focusing on the widespread conversion to Islam brought about by taxes on Christians, the appeal of Sufic asceticism, and the high social status often accorded Christian converts. Nevertheless, Waltz stresses that the Christian response was not simply a negative reaction but a positive cultural and religious revival that soon matched Islam’s appeal and spurred the martyrdoms as an active demonstration of a reborn Christianity. Waltz traces in detail the progress of the movement, yet concludes, rather in the face of the evidence, that an appeal to force was an essential ingredient of the martyrs’ witness.



386.1 Wolf, Kenneth Baxter. Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain. Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.



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The Peace and Truce of God


  1. 387.Bisson, Thomas N. “The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia c.1140-c.1233,” American Historical Review 82: 2 (1977): 290-311.


Treats the institutional, centralized peace of the feudal lord, the instrument of authority, not the “sanctified” or popular peace movement. Valuable analysis of how the Peace of God, originally intended to protect the poor and weak from the violence of the feudal warrior, became an instrument of power in the hands of feudal government. Briefly traces the origins of the Peace of God in its religious and legal traditions in the influences of monasticism, in the penitentials, and in popular spirituality. By the time of the Council of Clermont in 1095 this peace movement had been institutionalized and made an instrument of royal and papal power. By the late twelfth century in Catalonia pax had lost its otherworldly meanings and had come to mean simply the lord’s militia and his rule of law. By the thirteenth century tax levies to maintain peace forces were actually being converted into war taxes.



  1. 388.Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962.


While his treatment takes up only a few pages (412-19), Bloch was one of the first to discuss the Peace and Truce of God in any comprehensive manner, and his vast prestige as a medievalist and the value of this book has impressed his views on all subsequent students of the movements. Bloch traces the origins of the Peace to Carolingian notions of the peacemaker as one who imposes order. Peace was imposed from above, and the Peace movement had its direct origins in councils of bishops legislating for flocks. As a spiritual movement both the Peace and the Truce were severely limited and needed the sanctions of law and civil authority. Nevertheless, at its height the Peace movement was truly revolutionary, not in its occasional violence but in its insistence on mutual oaths of peace sworn between equals. It thus posed a threat to the hierarchical order of society and provided a basis for the later urban communal movements.



  1. 389.Bonnaud-Delamare, Roger. “Fondement des institutions de paix au xie siècle,” Mélanges d’histoire du Moyen Age dédies à la mémoire de Louis Halphen. Paris: Press Universitaire, 1951, 19-26.


A brief introduction.



  1. 390.—. “Les institutions de paix en Aquitaine au xie siècle.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 14 (1961): 415-87.


The Peace of God in Aquitaine was essentially the ducal peace, forced from the top down. The people did not participate in its creation. Nevertheless, it depended upon the institutions of popular spirituality to bind its adherents: the relics of the saints, anathemas and interdictions on those who defied its bans. Sermons by bishops spoke of both peace and justice and emphasized the role of the Peace in protecting the powerless. Yet their definitions were along older Carolingian lines of peace as order and of justice as law. Also traces the progress of the movement through its individual councils.



  1. 391.—. “La paix d’Amiens et de Corbie au xie siècle,” Revue du Nord 38 (150) (1956): 167-78.

Based on the account of Gerard, abbot of Sauve-Majeure in the diocese of Bordeaux from 1080 to 1095. His Life of Adalhard provides evidence for the popular assemblies that gave form to the Peace of God.



  1. 392.Bouard, M. “Sur les origines de la trêve de Dieu en Normandie,” Annales de Normandie 9 (1959): 168-89.


First traces the origins and development of the Truce in Northern France and Flanders and its royal and papal support, then focuses on its career in Normandy, where Richard de Saint Vanne played a key role. In Normandy the Truce proved an instrument of ducal centralization. The elimination of private wars and the penances, including exiles, imposed on violators all had ecclesiastical backing, strengthened by the force of councils. Bouard then details the elements of the Truce and analyzes its vocabulary in its Gothic, Frankish, and Languedocian roots, showing how in Normandy the vocabulary of the Truce was used interchangeably with that of the Peace. By the late eleventh century both had come to be the exclusive realm of the prince.



  1. 393.Callahan, Daniel F. “Adhemar de Chabannes et la paix de Dieu,” Annales du Midi 89, 1, 131 (1977): 21-43.

Uses the Chronicle of Adhemar de Chabannes and his Vita of St. Martial as sources for the birth and spread of the popular peace movement, which Callahan terms one of the most important phenomena of the eleventh century. Adhemar describes the Peace assemblies in great detail: the participants, oaths, the condemnations of the warrior class, sanctions against violators, and the sermons of bishops who promoted the Peace of God.



  1. 394.Cowdrey, H.E.J. “The Peace and Truce of God,” Past and Present 46 (1970): 42-67.


Valuable synthesis traces the origins and development of both the Peace and Truce of God, discussing the major sources, and detailing the elements of the assemblies, the special protections against feudal violence afforded to classes of people and to times of the year, the oaths, and sanctions imposed on violators. Cowdrey stresses that the Peace movements were more than a mere protection of property or of law and order. They were true religious movements at heart, intent upon renewing the Gospel peace of Christ and of the Apostolic age among all classes of society. Finally, however, the movement was coopted by secular authorities and by a crusading papacy into exactly its antithesis: a call to arms.



  1. 395.Delaruelle, Étienne. “Paix de Dieu et croisade dans la chrétienté du xiie siècle,” in Paix de Dieu et guerre sainte en Languedoc au xiiie siècle. Cahiers de Fanjeaux 4. Toulouse: Privat, 1969, 51-71.

Highlights the various aspects of the Peace: socio-political, ecclesiastical, popular, and religious and mystical, but accepts the coopted language of the Peace and Truce of God used by the Crusades as if the three were really all part of the same movement. Implies that conquest and forced conversion were also the same as nonviolent missionary work.



  1. 396.Duby, Georges. “Laity and the Peace of God,” in The Chivalrous Society. Essays by Georges Duby. Cynthia Postan, trans. London: Edward Arnold; and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, 123-33.

While the original inspiration for the Peace came from the bishops and abbots, they soon gained the adherence of the feudal aristocracy and, then, of the lower laity. While at first the Peace movement made no attempt to restructure society, its continuing attacks on the violence of the

nobility soon emerged into an idealization of pacifism as a form of Christian purity, akin to poverty and chastity. The poor and the unarmed became an ideal figure, linked to the purity of the penitential system, as a renunciator of the old world of sin, violence, and exploitation.



  1. 397.—. The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.


Sections on Gerard of Cambrai (pp. 21-43), Adalbero of Laon (13-19), and the Peace of God (134-39) are of fundamental importance for understanding the Peace movement. Both bishops represent the old Carolingian aristocracy and reflect their disdain for the Peace of God. They see this as a movement of peasants and other inferiors intent upon turning the God-given order of things on its head by assembling together and swearing mutual oaths of love and peace, daring to judge the violence of their superiors. Peace, they contend, is hierarchical order and authority imposed from above. In reaction they crystallize the theory of the three orders of society: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. Duby’s analysis highlights how the Peace movement transformed passive victims into truly active agents of peace and made poverty a virtue to be pursued as a criticism of feudal wealth, violence, and exploitation.



  1. 398.Gernhuber, Joachim. “Staat und Landfrieden im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 15 (1961): 27-78.

The application of the Truce of God as the Imperial Peace spread and enforced by the emperor, parallel by numerous local peaces enforced by the princes of the empire.



  1. 399.Glaber, Ralph. Five Books of Histories. In Marshall Baldwin, ed. Christianity Through the Thirteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1970, 221-22.


Book IV, 5 gives an account of the Peace movement, detailing its most important features.



  1. 400.Gleiman, L. “Some Remarks on the Origins of the Treuga Dei,” Études d’histoire litteraire et doctrinaire. Montréal: Université de Montréal. Institut d’Études Médiévales. Publications. 17 (1962): 117-37.


Sets the Peace and Truce of God within their context of constant feudal warfare, reviews the historiography of the movements and the problems of interpretation. Gleiman stresses that the Peace of God is well documented in the writings of the period: the movement is rooted in monastic discipline and sought the imitation of Christ and the restoration of peace and justice. In fact, there seems some evidence of total pacifism, but this Gleiman attributes to some heretical, perhaps Manichean, bent.



  1. 401.Haines, Keith. “Attitudes and Impediments to Pacifism in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 369-88.


While the Peace and Truce of God were never very successful, peace remained an ideal. It was the highest goal for a ruler and the goal of the urban communal movements, which called themselves “peace.” A medieval pacifism did exist, but this was restricted to individuals and was commonly lost amid the constant suspicions and conflicts of the period.



402.1 Head, Thomas, and Richard Allen Landes. The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France Around the Year 1000. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.


A collection of essays by regional and topical experts.



  1. 402.Heyn, Udo. “Arms Limitation and the Search for Peace in Medieval Europe.” War and Society 2 (Sept. 1984): 1-18.

A review of medieval attempts to limit the effects of war that focuses on the Peace, Truce, and “Imperial” peace. While his notes and bibliography are excellent – this is a superior introduction to the materials in the area – this is really history of the old school.

Heyn’s assumptions are explicit: “to the extent that its causes are atavistic, war must be reckoned endemic to human nature.... The only sensible, the only moral, course of action is to plan to conduct [wars] with as much moderation as is humanly possible.” Peace is the equivalent of “society’s stability” insured by a “superior authority” that will insure ordered change through legal systems, “directed towards the end of psychic and physical survival æ whose historical instrumentality has become, and is likely to remain indefinitely, the sovereign state.”

Heyn’s methods are thus sociological and legal, and it comes as no surprise that in his analysis of medieval peace movements there is not a single reference to the Gospels, the imitation of Christ, the poverty movements, the cult of saints, the Third Orders, missionary work, or anything touching on popular imagination or aspirations, except to say that authority flowed from the top down and the burden of peace, as of war, rested on the peasants.



  1. 403.Hoffmann, Harmut. Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei. MGH, Scriptores 20. Stuttgart: Hiersmann, 1964.


Among the most useful general introductions, this book sets the movements into their historical context, then traces each region by region and chronologically. It also gives attention to major treatises, papal letters, and canon law. Appendixes print important sources. Excellent bibliography.



  1. 404.Joris, André. “Observations sur la proclamation de la trêve de Dieu a Liège à la fin du xie siècle.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 14 (1961):503-45.

The Truce first reached the Holy Roman Empire in 1082 at Liège. Joris details the assemblage here, the special prohibitions against violence in certain seasons, on certain feast days and days of the week, the sanctions imposed against violators, then goes on to discuss the problems posed by the sources.



  1. 405.Kennelly, Karen. “Catalan Peace and Truce Assemblies,” Studies in Medieval Culture 5 (1975): 41-51.


Traces the progress of the Peace and Truce through the eleventh century in church councils attended by clergy, nobility, and laity and notes that toward the end of the century the movements were even used to prepare public opinion for crusades. In general their main functions in the twelfth century seem to have been to protect property and to establish royal authority. By the fourteenth century the Peace was simply identified with the royal protection over the realm.



  1. 406.—. “Medieval Towns and the Peace of God,” Medievalia et Humanistica 15 (1963): 35-53.

Attempts to examine some practical effects of the Peace movement, here reviewing the historiography as far back as Pirenne and questioning whether the commercial movement of the Middle Ages, the “peace” of the towns, was a result of the Peace of God. While she answers in the negative, Kennelly concludes that the Peace of God did lend some of its vocabulary and its methods to the urban communal movement of sworn associations and strengthened the idea that peace was the outcome of people coming together to attain it. In this she agrees with Bloch (381) in seeing the Peace as a revolutionary movement. Good bibliography.



  1. 407.—. “The Peace and the Truce of God: Fact or Fiction?” Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California, 1962.


Not seen.



  1. 408.MacKinney, Loren C. “The People and Public Opinion in the Eleventh-Century Peace Movement,” Speculum 5 (1930): 181-206.

The Peace of God grew out of the church’s desire to aid the defenseless and from a popular desire for peace. It ended by being coopted by the princes, who used it as an instrument for their own power. Details the progress of the Peace movement: the church councils, the elements of the assemblies, the aspects of the Peace, the sanctions, and the effects of the Peace. Then treats the Truce of God as an extension of the Peace, follows its spread and the opposition that it met from the entrenched hierarchy. The Council of Clermont was both the climax of the Peace and the Truce, which succeeded in creating internal peace, and paradoxically, their transformation into a mechanism for foreign war, which they were unable to prevent.



  1. 409.Mayer, Hans Eberhard. The Crusades. John Gillingham, trans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.


The Peace of God grew out of the church’s desire to preserve its own privileges and properties. Despite the church’s own self-interest, however, benefits did accrue. Armed enforcement was essential to the movement. Mayer is, of course, writing a history of the Crusades, but his unspoken cynicism about any form of antimilitarism during the period should be treated warily.



  1. 410.Strubbe, E.I. “La paix de Dieu dans le Nord de la France.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 14 (1961): 489-501.

Traces the spread of the Peace of God throughout southern France, then into northern France via Burgundy. Emphasizes that in the north the Peace and the Truce were essentially the creatures of the prince, and that in its earlier form the Peace’s spiritual sanctions were drawbacks in a society where physical force ruled.



  1. 411.Töpfer, Bernhard. Volk und Kirche zur Zeit der beginnenden Gottesfriedensbewegung im Frankreich. Berlin: Rutten & Loening, 1957.

This is a work of synthesis that reviews the origin and development of the Peace of God in great detail and with a careful eye to chronology. Töpfer remains true to his Marxist historical tradition in stressing the popular nature of the Peace of God, calling it a true people’s movement, yet here he also depends on the populism of American historians of the 1930s, like MacKinney. See 409.



  1. 412.Wohlhaupter, Eugen. Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte der Gottes- und Landfrieden im Spanien. Heidelberg: Winter, 1933.


Concentrates on the legal aspects of the peace movement in Spain from the eleventh to the fourteenth century.


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