Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Truce of God

TRUCE OF GOD.⁠The orderly administration of justice and the universal peace, which the Roman empire established from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, did not long survive the inroads of the Teutonic tribes who in western Europe divided the inheritance of the Latin world. All the early Teutonic codes, being based, however remotely, on the right of private war and private vengeance, might discourage, but were powerless to abolish, the instinct which impels the members of half-civilized communities to avenge their own wrongs. Hence the pax Romana died with the empire; nor could the splendid organization of Charlemagne do more than effect a very partial resuscitation of it. Throughout the 9th and 10th centuries, as the life-benefices of the later Carolingian kings became gradually transformed into hereditary fiefs, the insecurity of life and property grew greater; for there was no central power to curb the injustice of the petty dukes and counts who warred and pillaged at their will. At this moment, when western Europe threatened to sink back into the chaos from which it had been won by Rome, the church came forward to arrest the process of its dissolution. Speaking at first in her own interest and in that of the poor, whose great protector she claimed to be, she decreed a special peace for the unarmed clerk and the industrious husbandman. The council of Charroux in Poitou led the way in 989. With the opening of the next century the movement spread over Aquitaine and the rest of France. Everywhere the bishops set themselves to exact from the whole diocese, noble and simple alike, a novel oath to abstain from violence and to respect the sanctity of churches. William V. of Aquitaine, the most powerful lord of southern France, lent his influence to the cause at the councils of Limoges (994) and Poitiers (999). The latter council prescribed the methods by which all who violated their solemn engagement should be punished. The times, however, were hardly ripe for the inauguration of an era of peace. Gerard of Soissons, perhaps, was not the only bishop who eyed this dream of universal harmony askance, as tending to encroach on the king's prerogative (see Bouquet, x. 201); and, on the whole, it may be said that the "Peace of God" was at best but a somewhat ineffectual protection to churches, priests, and labourers. If there was any hope of restraining the mutual feuds of the barons it must be by other means. And here the church again, re cognizing the impossibility of absolutely stopping all feudal warfare, endeavoured to limit it. This limitation of the right of perpetual warfare, reduced to writing, sanctioned by an oath, and confirmed by the decrees of councils, assumed the name of the "Truce of God" (treva or treuga Dei). The truce of God seems to have been first established at the synod of Tuluges, near Perpignan in Roussillon, on 16th May 1027. In accordance with its decrees all warfare was to be suspended from noon on Saturday till prime on Monday; and the peace of God was permanently extended to all monks, clerks, bishops, and churches. Like the pax ecclesiæ, this laudable example was soon followed elsewhere. About 1041 it extended itself over Aquitaine and all France; in 1042 the council of Caen, under the sanction of Duke William, established it in Normandy a country in which, according to a contemporary writer (Rodolph Glaber, v. 1), it was not at first accepted. By this time its terms had been much enlarged; and we may perhaps take the provisions of a second synod at Tuluges (1041) as representing its normal form. According to this synod the treuga Dei was to last from the Wednesday evening to the Monday morning in every week, from the beginning of Advent to the octave of the Epiphany, from the beginning of Lent till the octave of Pentecost, for the feasts of the Holy Cross, the three great feasts of the Virgin, and those of the twelve apostles and a few other saints. More usually the interval between the Epiphany octave and Lent and that from Easter to Rogations were left subject to the weekly truce only. Thus from being a mere local institution it spread rapidly over all France, and seems to have crossed into Germany, Italy, Spain, and England. It had also its special courts and methods of procedure. Excommunication and banishment for seven or thirty years were its penalties. Before long both the pax ecclesiæ and the treuga Dei were sanctioned by the holy see. Special clauses were added to protect pilgrims, women, merchants, monks, and clerks; while the cattle and agricultural implements of the peasant his ox, horse, plough, and even his olive-trees were covered by the aegis of the church. The first clause of the council of Clermont (1095), at which Urban II. preached the first crusade, proclaimed the weekly truce for all Christendom, and perhaps enjoined it in its most extended form, adding also a clause by which the oath was to be renewed every three years by all men above the age of twelve, whether noble, burgess, villain, or serf.^[1] The same council seems to have accorded safety to all who took re fuge at a wayside cross (cap. 29) or at the plough (homines ad carrucas fugientes). The truce of God was most powerful in the 12th century, during which period it was sanctioned both by local and papal councils, such as that held at Rheims by Calixtus II. in 1119, and the Lateran councils of 1139 and 1179. With the 13th century its influence began to decline, as the power of the king gradually led to the substitution of the king's peace for that of the church.

For an exhaustive account of the whole question, see M. Semichon's book, to which the above article is largely indebted.

1. Labbe's Concilia, xx. 816; with which cf. Semichon, La Paix et la Trêve de Dieu, Paris, 1869, p. 125.