Peace (22 page)

Feudalism derived from both Roman and Germanic sources as an agreement between landholding nobles as high up as kings to grant lands to subordinates in return for fealty and the provision of armed forces when called upon. This is why so few early medieval kingdoms had standing armies, but also how so many violent disputes erupted between them. Securing internal peace by the reciprocal obligations of homage, investiture and their chains of command also became a means of defending or extending a kingdom's borders. Below kings were barons, lords and knights, all hereditary titles, who formed the external military and internal police core of the feudal system. The chivalric codes they ostensibly came to live by, while based on martial skills and wherewithal, also required them to defend the weak and be generous to the poor. In theory, war was only justified under Ciceronian circumstances meeting certain criteria: right authority, just cause, right intention, proportionality, last resort and breached peace. Over time, the powers of the chivalric classes grew to the point where they could challenge kings who abused theirs either by revolting or, more peacefully, simply by switching allegiances. To avoid violence by negotiations and to expedite feudal affairs, kings and/or their inferiors also formed the first post-Roman legislatures, such as the Cortes of Spain (twelfth century), the Parliament in England (thirteenth century), the Estates General in France (fourteenth century) and the Diets of German and Northern European states (fifteenth century). As the basis of most European-derived political systems, these early assemblies also formed foundations for modern intra-national peace.

Medieval bishops below the Pope in Rome, but who sometimes rivaled kings in wealth and influence, could enrich themselves and the Church by using their lands for secular as well as religious purposes. By their clerical schools bishoprics came to provide literate administrators, ever-rarer after Rome fell and before the Renaissance, whom kings needed to maintain their realms in order and who also played peacemaking roles. One of them, a French monk named Pierre Dubois (
c
. 1250–1312), proposed
an alliance of all feudal Christian powers to maintain peace by a permanent court, its sole purpose being to prevent warfare by settling disputes nonviolently between its members, which did not attract any support. At the bottom of the feudal hierarchy were the peasants or serfs, whose duties were to live peacefully while providing agricultural or other labor to their lords. In return, lords were supposed to provide protection and subsistence use of their lands. While not technically slaves, the structural violence serfs suffered was often as severe, offset only by the spiritual and material solace they may have received from the Church. Although serfs' direct involvement in warfare before the Hundred Years War between France and England (1337–1453) was limited, they were often its indirect victims. It was only after peasants began to be conscripted that they rebelled
en masse
against their lords, usually after famines or plagues such as the Black Death (fourteenth century), which physically precluded the possibility of any peace, even despite the smartest treaties tendered.

Unlike under the Roman-Christian policy of “one empire, one peace”, backed by a central power capable of enforcing it, the multitude of medieval kingdoms required a multidirectional approach and so formed foundations of modern international peacemaking. To prevent or end territorial wars or to affirm a kingdom's sovereignty, treaties of mutual recognition were signed between rulers, usually represented by noble delegates at each other's courts. In 803, for instance, the Pax Nicephori was tendered between Charlemagne and the Byzantine Empire, recognizing his authority and Venice as Byzantine territory. Similarly, after the Carolingians' fall, West and East Francia (roughly modern France and Germany) recognized each other by the Treaty of Bonn in 921. Treaties were also used to deal with noble family feuds. The Treaty of Alton (1101), by which Robert, Duke of Normandy, recognized his younger brother Henry I as King of England in exchange for a stipend and continental lands, temporarily diffused a succession debate that might otherwise have ended in bloodshed, ensuring cooperation between the two on pre-determined terms. However, to show how fickle all medieval treaties could be, Henry invaded Normandy four years later and jailed Robert for life.

Other pacts such as the Pactum Sicardi (836), between Italian Duchies and the Prince of Benevento, provided for temporary armistices, while still others such as Pactum Warmundi (1123) established temporary alliances, in this case between the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and Venice. Informal leagues of a few small principalities were formed politically, as in the Lombard League (twelfth century) of northern Italy, or economically, such as the Hanseatic League of dozens of guild towns and villages which controlled trade around the Baltic Sea in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Formal alliances were also set in place, as in the Treaty of Windsor (1386),which cemented Anglo-Portuguese alliance and is the
oldest extant interstate treaty. Multilateral peace and defence agreements were also used, as in the Treaty of Venice (1177) between the Lombard League, the Kingdom of Sicily, and the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, occasionally renewed as this one was in the Peace of Constance (1183). Some treaties dealing with a kingdom's internal affairs were called Bulls, not to be confused with Papal Bulls, as in the Golden Bull of 1222 by which King Andrew II of Hungary granted noblemen and clergy the right to disobey the king if he acted contrary to law. Others were called Charters, as is the Magna Carta (1215), which bound English kings to the law while protecting certain of subjects' rights, notably that of Habeas Corpus, or protection from unlawful imprisonment. Those who straddled social and collective peace in crafting these agreements were in most cases betrayed by conditions or participants that had changed before their ink dried.

Conflicts between religious and secular potentates recurred both between and within kingdoms. They were sometimes diffused and resolved through special treaties (
reglements d'avouerie
) aimed at normalizing their relations, in which paid “devotees” acted as arbitrators. Agreements were also reached across religious and linguistic lines, as in the Al-Azraq Treaty (1245) between the Christian King Jaime I of Aragon and the Muslim commander Mohammad Abu Abdallah Ben Hudzail al Sahuir, delimiting property and revenue rights in Spain. Some treaties took on grandiose titles, such the Treaty of Perpetual Peace (1502), halting hostilities between Scotland and England and voided a decade later. While many such secular agreements aimed to end or prevent the use of armed forces, only religious ones aimed at outlawing them outright. The Synod of Toledo (693), for example, forbade duels and private wars and the Synod of Poitiers (1000) resolved that all disputes should be adjured by law, not by force. The Synod of Limoges (1031) used the most terrible spiritual punishment, interdicts, against war. But proactive rather than prohibitive intercessions were Christianity's most influential contributions to peace in the Middle Ages: the related medieval institutions of sainthood and monasticism.

Sainthood, originally reserved for martyrs, was in time granted by a council of bishops to Christians, both men and women, whose exemplary lives were modeled on Christ's and so made for models themselves. The medieval patron saint of peace, Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), founded a monastic order. While the famous “Prayer for Peace” erroneously attributed to him is probably a twentieth-century creation, it nonetheless captures many of the pacific criteria usually required for canonization, save those of a popular cult and the performance of miracles:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

Hagiographies, biographies of saints, were one of the few ways the spirit of early Christian pacifism survived, as in the
Life of Saint Anthony
, the first Christian monk. Maybe medieval warfare would have been better tempered if more people could have read them and did.

Two forms of monasticism emerged in Western Europe based on Near Eastern modes of renouncing earthly pursuits including violence.
Eremite
monks like SaintAnthony in Egypt (251–356) lived ascetically in solitude, striving for perfect spiritual peace on scriptural principles as mendicants. Saint Pachomius (292–338) went on to found the first Christian monasteries with the same goals, but achieved communally and self-sufficiently. His followers, first
cenobite
monks and nuns, began the peaceful monastic movement that spread across Europe. In 526, Saint Benedict put forth his Rule of monastic life. Among his “Instruments of Good Works” for cenobite monks he listed not making false peace, praying for one's enemies and making peace with adversaries. He advised that cenobite monks should be under the direction of an Abbot, upon whose will the “perseveration of peace and charity” of the monastery depended.
⁶
In the following centuries, many monastic orders were founded with different rules, on the surface non-violent and peace-oriented but not always actually so. Among the most prominent were those of Saint Francis, or Franciscan order, stressing inner peace through poverty and chastity (est. 1210); Dominican order, emphasizing social peace through public preaching (est. 1216), but which also carried out the Inquisition; and Society of Jesus or Jesuits (est. 1534), committed to spreading collective peace through education and missionary work, but also conspired in European colonial violence. If kingdoms were as close as medieval societies came to the peace of Augustine's earthly city, monasteries were the closest to that of the heavenly city, and have inspired utopian visions of peaceful communal and spiritual life down to our times.

(Re)Births of Peace: Renaissance Revivals of and Departures from Traditions

Rebirths of peace and peacemaking that took place in the Renaissance did not replace medieval ones but synthesized them with classical ideas and ideals which came back into vogue. Such calculated combinations aside,
there occurred a major development in this history of peace, its exclusive attachment to secularism, arguably for the first time in history. One of the main reasons why secularism was proposed as a political paradigm was to counter the abuses of power by Christian potentates, not least of which was their now incessant support for wars such as the Crusades and indulgences used to pay for them, which also set off the Reformation as discussed below. The ironic implication is that secular and religious revisionisms were opposing peace movements reacting to the same set of circumstances, showing yet again that ongoing military competitions can prepare the way for competing kinds of peace.

Born in Florence during the rise of rich Italian city-states which later spawned humanism, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was at the cusp of these trends in peace and peacemaking: on the one hand supporting the shift from religious to secular authority over affairs of state and, on the other, expressing an unwavering Christian faith. Though known primarily as a poet, he was also a political theorist and peacemaker. In
On World-Government
, written in 1309 but not published until 1559, he argued that only in peace can humanity reach its full potential and only a global government capable of resolving conflicts between local ones can secure peace. His goal: “that each nation develop its peculiar genius to the fullest extent, and in order to be able to do this, let each nation become a member of a World-State, under the guidance of a Central Court of Justice that will regulate international affairs.” “Justice,” he claimed “has greatest power under a unitary government; the best order of the world therefore demands world-government.”
⁷
Just as the protagonist of his
Divine Comedy
, Dante was led by the Roman writer Virgil from the warlike pits of hell to the blinding bliss of heaven's peace, so as a peacemaker he attempted to lead fellow Florentines from conflict to reconciliation. His compatriots would have faired much better had his peacemaking exploits exerted as great an immediate influence as his poetry in posterity.

The ideological differences between the White and Black Parties of Florence originated with the Investiture Controversy in the eleventh century between the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church over the right to appoint bishops and other clergy in service of the State. After civil wars across Europe, an agreement was reached in the Concordat of Worms (1122) that the Emperor could invest bishops with secular authority but not religious, which was reserved for the Pope. And on a century, White Florentines still sought to limit Papal powers, Blacks to enlarge them, repeating while prefiguring conflicts that soon swept Europe. Dante, siding with the Whites despite being a devout Catholic, tried to make peace by leading a popular movement that met with provisional success, seeking city-wide reconciliation in expelling members of both parties who
advocated the use of violence to settle the ongoing conflict. Aligned with his actions and Augustine before him, Dante had earlier written:

All concord depends on a unity of wills; the best state of humanity is a kind of concord, for as individuals are in excellent health when they enjoy concord in soul and body, and similarly a family, city, or state, so humanity as a whole.”
⁸

When the Whites returned, they booted all the Blacks from the city. When the Pope got word, he threatened military action, so the Whites sent a peace delegation to Rome, including Dante. The Pope, probably aware that Dante had pitched his political treatise to the Emperor's deaf ear, held him captive as the Blacks retook the city, to which Dante never returned. An admirer from Padua, Petrarch (1304–1374), followed in Dante's footsteps as a poet-peacemaker: “I thought myself blameworthy if, in the midst of warlike preparations, I should not have recourse to my one weapon, the pen.”
⁹
Petrarch successfully negotiated a truce between Padua and Venice and also participated in other diplomatic missions around Europe, but neither he nor Dante came close to being staunch secular defenders of the peace as another Paduan.