Military Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

It is a signal mark of the degree to which religion became enveloped in the military spirit of those miserable days of chivalry, that ecclesiastical preferment was sometimes the reward of bravery on the field, as in the case of that chaplain to the Earl of Douglas who, for his courage displayed at the battle of Otterbourne, was, Froissart tells us, promoted the same year to a canonry and archdeaconry at Aberdeen.

Vasari, in his ‘Life of Michael Angelo,’ has a good story which is not only highly typical of this martial Christianity, but may be also taken to mark the furthest point of divergence reached by the Church in this respect from the standpoint of her earlier teaching. Pope Julius II. went one day to see a statue of himself which Michael Angelo was executing. The right hand of the statue was raised in a dignified attitude, and the artist consulted the Pope as to whether he should place a book in the left. ‘Put a sword into it,’ quoth Julius, ‘for of letters I know but little.’ This was the Pope of whom Bayle says that never man had a more warlike soul, and of whom, with some doubt, he repeats the anecdote of his having thrown into the Tiber the keys of St. Peter, with the declaration that he would thenceforth use the sword of St. Paul. However this may be, he went in person to hasten the siege of Mirandola, in opposition to the protests of the cardinals and to the scandal of Christendom (1510). There it was that to encourage the soldiers he promised them, that if they exerted themselves valiantly he would make no terms with the town, but would suffer them to sack it;[260] and though this did not occur, and the town ultimately surrendered on terms, the head of the Christian Church had himself conveyed into it by the breach.

The scandal of this proceeding contributed its share to the discontent which produced the Reformation; and that movement continued still further the disfavour with which many already viewed the connection of the clergy with actual warfare. It has, however, happened occasionally since that epoch that priests of martial tastes have been enabled to gratify them, the custom having become more and more rare as public opinion grew stronger against it. The last recorded instance of a fighting divine was, it would seem, the Bishop of Derry, who, having been raised to that see by William III. in gratitude for the distinguished bravery with which, though a clergyman, he had conducted the defence of Londonderry against the forces of James II., and for which the University of Oxford rewarded him with the title of Doctor of Divinity, was shot dead at the battle of the Boyne. He had, says Macaulay, ‘during the siege in which he had so highly distinguished himself, contracted a passion for war,’ but his zeal to gratify it on that second occasion cost him the favour of the king. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that history should have called no special attention to the last instance of a bishop who fought and died upon a battle-field, nor have sufficiently emphasised the great revolution of thought which first changed a common occurrence into something unusual, and finally into a memory that seems ridiculous. No historical fact affords a greater justification than this for the hope that, absurd as is the idea of a fighting bishop to our own age, that of a fighting Christian may be to our posterity.

As bishops were in the middle ages warriors, so they were also the common bearers of declarations of war. The Bishop of Lincoln bore, for instance, the challenge of Edward III. and his allies to Charles V. at Paris; and greatly offended was the English king and his council when Charles returned the challenge by a common valet—they declared it indecent for a war between two such great lords to be declared by a mere servant, and not by a prelate or a knight of valour.

The declaration of war in those times appears to have meant simply a challenge or defiance like that then and afterwards customary in a duel. It appears to have originated out of habits that governed the relations between the feudal barons. We learn from Froissart that when Edward was made Vicar of the German Empire an old statute was renewed which had before been made at the emperor’s court, to the effect that no one, intending to injure his neighbour, might do so without sending him a defiance three days beforehand. The following extract from the challenge of war sent by the Duke of Orleans, the brother of the King of France, to Henry IV. of England, testifies to the close resemblance between a declaration of war and a challenge to a deed of arms, and to the levity which often gave rise to either: ‘I, Louis, write and make known to you, that with the aid of God and the blessed Trinity, in the desire which I have to gain renown, and which you likewise should feel, considering idleness as the bane of lords of high birth who do not employ themselves in arms, and thinking I can no way better seek renown than by proposing to you to meet me at an appointed place, each of us accompanied with 100 knights and esquires, of name and arms without reproach, there to combat till one of the parties shall surrender; and he to whom God shall grant the victory shall do with his prisoners as he pleases. We will not employ any incantations that are forbidden by the Church, but make use of the bodily strength given us by God, with armour as may be most agreeable to everyone for the security of his person, and with the usual arms, that is lance, battle-axe, sword, and dagger ... without aiding himself by any bodkins, hooks, bearded darts, poisoned needles or razors, as may be done by persons unless they are positively ordered to the contrary....’[261] Henry IV. answered the challenge with some contempt, but expressed his readiness to meet the duke in single combat, whenever he should visit his possessions in France, in order to prevent any greater effusion of Christian blood, since a good shepherd, he said, should expose his own life for his flock. It even seemed at one time as if wars might have resolved themselves into this more rational mode of settlement. The Emperor Henry IV. challenged the Duke of Swabia to single combat. Philip Augustus of France is said to have proposed to Richard I. to settle their differences by a combat of five on each side; and when Edward III. challenged the realm of France, he offered to settle the question by a duel or a combat of 100 men on each side, with which the French king would, it appears, have complied, had Edward consented to stake the kingdom of England against that of France.

In the custom of naming the implements of war after the most revered names of the Christian hagiology may be observed another trace of the close alliance that resulted between the military and spiritual sides of human life, somewhat like that which prevailed in the sort of worship paid to their lances, pikes, and battle-axes by the ancient Scandinavians.[262] Thus the two first forts which the Spaniards built in the Ladrone Islands they called respectively after St. Francis Xavier and the Virgin Mary. Twelve ships in the Armada were called after the Twelve Apostles, and so were twelve of his cannons by Henry VIII., one of which, St. John by name, was captured by the French in 1513.[263] It is probable that mere irreverence had less to do with this custom than the hope thereby of obtaining favour in war, such as may also be traced in the ceremony of consecrating military banners, which has descended to our own times.[264]

To the same order of superstition belongs the old custom of falling down and kissing the earth before starting on a charge or assault of battle. The practice is alluded to several times in Montluc’s Commentaries, but so little was it understood by a modern French editor that in one place he suggests the reading baissèrent la tête (they lowered their heads) for baisèrent la terre (they kissed the earth). But the latter reading is confirmed by passages elsewhere; as, for instance, in the ‘Memoirs of Fleurange,’ where it is stated that Gaston de Foix and his soldiers kissed the earth, according to custom, before proceeding to march against the enemy;[265] and, again, in the ‘Life of Bayard,’ by his secretary, who records it among the virtues of that knight that he would rise from his bed every night to prostrate himself at full length on the floor and kiss the earth.[266] This kissing of the earth was an abbreviated form of taking a particle of it in the mouth, as both Elmham and Livius mention to have been done by the English at Agincourt before attacking the French; and this again was an abbreviated form of receiving the sacrament, for Villani says of the Flemish at Cambray (1302) that they made a priest go all over the field with the sacred elements, and that, instead of communicating, each man took a little earth and put it into his mouth.[267] This seems a more likely explanation than that the custom was intended as a reminder to the soldier of his mortality, as if in a trade like his there could be any lack of testimony of that sort.

It is curious to observe how war in every stage of civilisation has been the central interest of public religious supplication; and how, from the pagans of old to modern savages, the pettiest quarrels and conflicts have been deemed a matter of interest to the immortals. The Sandwich islanders and Tahitians sought the aid of their gods in war by human sacrifices. The Fijians before war were wont to present their gods with costly offerings and temples, and offer with their prayers the best they could of land crabs or whales’ teeth; being so convinced that they thereby ensured to themselves the victory, that once, when a missionary called the attention of a war party to the scantiness of their numbers, they only replied, with disdainful confidence, ‘Our allies are the gods.’ The prayer which the Roman pontifex addressed to Jupiter on behalf of the Republic at the opening of the war with Antiochus, king of Syria, is extremely curious: ‘If the war which the people has ordered to be waged with King Antiochus shall be finished after the wish of the Roman senate and people, then to thee, O Jupiter, will the Roman people exhibit the great games for ten successive days, and offerings shall be presented at all the shrines of such value as the senate shall decree.’[268] This rude state of theology, wherein a victory from the gods may be obtained for a fair consideration in exchange, tends to keep alive, if it did not originate, that sense of dependence on invisible powers which constitutes the most rudimentary form of religion; for it is a remarkable fact that the faintest notions of supernatural agencies are found precisely among tribes whose military organisation or love for war is the lowest and least developed. In proportion as the war-spirit is cultivated does the worship of war-presiding deities prevail; and since these are formed from the memories of warriors who have died or been slain, their attributes and wishes remain those of the former earthly potentate, who though no longer visible, may still be gratified by presents of fruit, or by slaughtered oxen or slaves.

The Khonds of Orissa, in India, afford an instance of this close and pernicious association between religious and military ideas, which may be traced through the history of many far more advanced communities. For though they regard the joy of the peace dance as the very highest attainable upon earth, they attribute, not to their own will, but to that of their war god, Loha Pennu, the source of all their wars. The devastation of a fever or tiger is accepted as a hint from that divinity that his service has been too long neglected, and they acquit themselves of all blame for a war begun for no better reason, by the following philosophy of its origin: ‘Loha Pennu said to himself, Let there be war, and he forthwith entered into all weapons, so that from instruments of peace they became weapons of war; he gave edge to the axe and point to the arrow; he entered into all kinds of food and drink, so that men in eating and drinking were filled with rage, and women became instruments of discord instead of soothers of anger.’ And they address this prayer to Loha Pennu for aid against their enemies: ‘Let our axes crush cloth and bones as the jaws of the hyæna crush its prey. Make the wounds we give to gape.... When the wounds of our enemies heal, let lameness remain. Let their stones and arrows fall on us as the flowers of the mowa-tree fall in the wind.... Make their weapons brittle as the long pods of the karta-tree.’

In their belief that wars were of external causation to themselves, and in their endeavour to win by prayer a favourable issue to their appeal to arms, it could scarcely be maintained that the nations of Christendom have at all times shown any marked superiority over the modern Khonds. But in spite of this, and of the fierce military character that Christianity ultimately assumed, the Church always kept alive some of her earlier traditions about peace, and even in the darkest ages set some barriers to the common fury of the soldier. When the Roman Empire was overthrown, her influence in this direction was in marked contrast with what it has been ever since. Even Alaric when he sacked Rome (410) was so far affected by Christianity as to spare the churches and the Christians who fled to them. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, inspired even Attila with respect for his priestly authority, and averted his career of conquest from Rome; and the same bishop, three years later (455), pleaded with the victorious Genseric that his Vandals should spare the unresisting multitude and the buildings of Rome, nor allow torture to be inflicted on their prisoners. At the instance of Gregory II., Luitprand, the Lombard king, withdrew his troops from the same city, resigned his conquests, and offered his sword and dagger on the tomb of St. Peter (730).