The truce of God: A tale of the eleventh century

by George H. Miles

Feudalism had its flaws. It was strictly an aristocratic institution. It fostered the spirit of pride and bore harshly at times upon the serf and the man of low degree. But its harsher features were softened by the teachings of the Church. When it was at its height, voices of Popes like Alexander III and of Doctors like St. Thomas Aquinas, were lifted to proclaim the equality of all men in the sight of God. At the altar, serf and master, count or cottier, knelt side by side. In the monasteries and convents, the poor man's son might wear the Abbot's ring and in the assemblies and councils of the realm, the poor clerk of former days, might speak with all the authority of a Bishop to sway the destinies of both Church and State.

One of the greatest evils of feudalism was that it fostered to excess the warlike spirit. Of its very nature, the system was a complex one. It gave rise to countless misunderstandings between the various grades of its involved hierarchy. The opportunities and plausible pretexts for misunderstandings, quarrels and war were many. A petty quarrel in Burgundy, in Champagne, in the Berry in France, involved not only the duke and count of these territories but almost every vassal or feudal lord in the province. The same might be said of the German nobles in Suabia, Thuringia and Franconia. Private wars were frequent, and though the barbarism of the past ages had almost completely disappeared under the teaching of the Gospel, these contests, as might be expected, were both sanguinary and wasteful.

The Church fought manfully against these private wars. It took every possible means to prevent them entirely. When in the nature of things, it found it impossible to do away with them altogether, it tried to mitigate their horrors, to limit their field of operation, to diminish their savagery. If the kingly authority was flouted, save perhaps when a sturdy ruler like William the Conqueror in England, or Hugh Capet in France, showed that there was a man at the helm, who meant to rule and was not afraid to quell rebellious earls and make them obey, there was one power these mail-clad warriors respected. They respected the Apostles Peter and Paul, they respected My Lord the Pope, and the Bishops of France and Normandy and England who shared in their authority. They flouted a king's edict, but none but hardened criminals among them laughed at an episcopal or a Papal excommunication.

These rude men, and it places their rude age high in the scale of civilization, respected religion. They lowered the sword before the Cross. The Church had for the disobedient and the refractory one terrible weapon, which she was loath to use, but which she occasionally used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication. Many a modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and in mild contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her children, much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale of ogre or hobgoblin before them. Yet the student of history might profitably study the use which the Church has made of such an instrument, and find in it one of the most effective causes of social regeneration in the Middle Ages.

The Church, in order to fight the military and armed excesses of feudalism, employed many means. It is to her that we owe what is known as the "Truce of God," or the enforced temporary suspension of hostilities usually, from the sunset of each Wednesday to Monday morning. Under pain of excommunication, during that interval, which at several times was further extended so as to comprise the seasons of Advent and Lent, and some of the major feasts, the sword might not be drawn in private quarrel. From a decree of the Council of Elne, in the South of France, we find that the "Truce of God," the "Treuga Dei" as it was technically called, was in full honor and had reached the height of its beneficent power in 1207. But long before, in the days when Gregory VII was Pope, and William of Normandy had just won his English crown, and Henry III ruled in Germany and Henry I in France, in the days when feudalism was making its first attempts to bring order out of chaos, several councils of the Church in France and in Normandy had traced out the plan and the outlines of the "Truce of God." Earlier even, at the Councils of Charroux (989), Narbonne (990), Le Puy and Anse (990), severe penalties were pronounced against those who wantonly in time of war destroyed the poor man's cattle or harried his fields, or carried off his beasts of burden. "Leagues of Peace" were formed to diminish the horrors of war, to protect the helpless, to enforce order. The Council of Poitiers, where there is one of the earliest mentions of these "Leagues of Peace," was held 1223 years ago. The Council of Bourges in 1031 created a species of national militia to police the rural districts and prevent war. Our ancestors believed in leagues with "teeth in them." From France where the movement had its origin and culminated at Elne (1207) in the full organization of the "Truce of God," it spread eastward into Germany and Thuringia. The German duchies and the Austrian marches submitted soon after to its humanitarian and Christian code. In 1030, the Pope, the French and German princes united their efforts for the development of the forerunners of the "Truce of God," the conventions known as the "Peace of God." The Peace, the earlier institution of the two, exempted from the evils of war, churches, monasteries, clerics, children, pilgrims, husbandmen; the cattle, the fields, the vineyards of the toiler; his instruments of labor, his barns, his bakehouse, his milch cows, his goats and his fowl. The Truce forbade war at certain "closed seasons." It gave angry passions time to subside, and endeavored to discredit war by making peace more desirable and its blessings more prolonged. It is probable that the Council of Charroux already mentioned laid the germs of the Truce. At the Council of Elne we see it fully organized. In 1139 the Tenth General Council, the Second Lateran, gave in its eleventh Canon its official approbation to what must be considered one of the most beautiful institutions of the Middle Ages.

Under the guidance of our American author, George Henry Miles, we are led back to the days of the eleventh century. He is an accurate and picturesque chronicler of that iron, yet chivalrous age. If on the one hand, we see the sinister figure of Henry IV of Germany, on the other we find the austere but noble monk Hildebrand, who became Pope St. Gregory VII. We hear the clash of swords drawn in private brawl and vendetta, but see them put back into the scabbard at the sound of the church bells that announce the beginning of the "Truce of God." The tale opens beneath the arches of a Suabian forest, with Gilbert de Hers and Henry de Stramen facing each other's swords as mortal foes; it closes with Gilbert and Henry, now reconciled, kneeling at the tomb of the fair and lovely Lady Margaret, their hates forgotten before the grave of innocence and maidenly devotion, and learning from the hallowed memory of the dead, the lesson of that forgiveness that makes us divine.

The American novelist, like the Italian Manzoni, teaches the lesson inculcated in "The Betrothed" ("I Promessi Sposi"). It is a lesson of forgiveness. It is noblest to forgive. Forgiveness is divine. Forgive seventy times seventy times, again and again. In Manzoni's story, the saintly Frederick Borromeo preaches and acts that sublime lesson in his scene with the Innominato with compelling eloquence. In "The Truce of God," the Lady Margaret, the monk Omehr, the very woes of the Houses of Hers and Stramen, the tragic madness of the unfortunate Bertha, the blood shed in a senseless and passionate quarrel, the bells of the sanctuary bidding the warring factions sheathe the sword, incessantly proclaim the same duty. In writing his story, George Henry Miles was not only painting for us a picture aglow with the life of olden times, but pointing out in a masterly way, the historic rôle of the Church in molding the manners of an entire generation.

The reader of "The Truce of God," in spite of the fact that the romance seems to be sketched only in its broadest outlines, gets a distinct knowledge of its chief actors. They live before his eyes. De Hers and Stramen are not mere abstractions. They have the rugged, clear-cut character, the sudden passions, the quick and at times dangerous and savage impulses of the men of the eleventh century. In them the barbarian has not yet been completely tamed. But neither has he been given full rein. Somewhere in these hearts, there lurks a sentiment of honor, of knighthood, which the Church of Christ has ennobled, and to which the helpless and the innocent do not appeal in vain.

The American has caught this sentiment and plays upon it skillfully. His setting is in keeping with his story. The wandering minstrel, the turreted castle, the festive board, the high-vaulted hall with its oaken rafters, the chase, the wide reaches of the forests of Franconia, the beetling ramparts of old feudal castles by the Rhine or the lovely shores of the Lake of Constance, the vineyards on the slopes of sunny hills, the bannered squadrons, the din of battle, the crash of helm and spear, are brought before us with dramatic power. Historic figures appear on the scene. Close to the principal actors in the story, we see the gallant Rodolph of Arles, Godefroi de Bouillon, Berchtold of Carinthia, Hohenstaufen and Welf, acting their life drama at the council board or on the field of battle. We see a woman and an old man, Mathilda of Tuscany and Pope St. Gregory VII, slowly but surely building on the foundations of a half-molded civilization the ramparts of the City of God. "The Truce of God" is true to the requirements of the historical romance. It summons before us a forgotten past, and makes it live. We forget in the vitality and artistic grouping of the picture, in the nobility of the author's purpose and the lasting moral effect of the story, the occasional stiffness of the style. It is the style of the refined scholar, perhaps also of the bookman and the too conscious critic. Occasionally it lacks spontaneity, directness and naturalness. It might unbend more and forget ceremony. But it is picturesque, forcible, clear, and bears us along with its swing and dramatic movement.

American Catholics must not forget the excellent work done by George Henry Miles for the cause of Catholic literature, the more so as his name is not infrequently omitted from many popular histories of American literature. Yet the author of "The Truce of God" had mastered the story teller's and the dramatist's art. "If there was ever a born littérateur," writes Eugene L. Didier, in The Catholic World for May, 1881, "that man was George Henry Miles. His taste was pure, exquisite and refined, his imagination was rich, vivid, and almost oriental in its warmth." Moreover, he consecrated his life and his talents to the cause of Catholic education, identifying himself for many years with Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, with whose annals so much of the early history of the Catholic Church in the United States, is closely linked.