Truce of God A Tale of the Eleventh Century

Henry Miles George

Description

The Truce of God by our American novelist and dramatist, George Henry Miles, is not only a romantic and interesting story, it recalls one of the most striking achievements of the Middle Ages.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819901259
• Langue: English

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INTRODUCTION
"The Truce of God" by our American novelist anddramatist, George Henry Miles, is not only a romantic andinteresting story, it recalls one of the most striking achievementsof the Middle Ages.
After the tide of barbarian invasion, Goths andVandals, Heruli, Burgundians and Franks had swept away the edificeof Roman civilization, had it not been for the regeneratinginfluence of Christianity, another empire as cruel would have risenon the ruins of Rome. No other power would then have ruled but thesword. The sword was king, and received the worship of thousands.Now and then a ruler appeared like Theodoric, Charlemagne, theLombard Luitprand, who used the sword on the whole for just andbeneficent ends. And because these warrior kings, even in the midstof their conquests, brought some of the blessings of peace to theirsubject peoples, these peoples welcomed their sway. Peace was, thenas now, one of the world's needs.
Although the eighth, ninth and succeeding centurywere not without their brighter sides and were not those totallyDark Ages they have been represented by the enemies of the Church,nevertheless, seeds of evil passions, which in spite of herendeavors the Church had been unable completely to stifle, lingeredin the hearts of those strong-limbed, strong-passioned Teutonicraces which had succeeded to the tasks and responsibilities ofpagan Rome. Those races did not have Rome's organizing power. Byforce, it is true, in a great measure, but force intelligentlyapplied, but also by patience, by an instinct for justice and fororder, Rome had welded her vast empire into a coherent whole. Romereally, and effectively ruled. She had authority, she had prestige,she was respected and feared, until the fatal day when, for hervices and tyranny, she began to be hated. That day her fate wassealed.
The Teutonic races lacked the power of organization.They were strong and comparatively free from the vices of Rome;they had a rude sense of justice. But that very sense and instinctfor that one essential of ordered life drove the individual to takethe execution of the law and of justice into his own hands and toclaim his rights at the point of the sword. The result can beeasily imagined. The sword was never for a long time thrust backinto the scabbard. Incessant wars, not at the bidding of the ruler,nor sanctioned by the voice of public authority or for the publicwelfare, but for private ends, for revenge, for greed and booty,were waged throughout the length and breadth of Europe.
The civil government, or the empty simulacrum thatwent under the name, seemed powerless, for the simple reason thatthe strong arm of either a Charlemagne or a Charles Martel tooseldom appeared to check the culprits, or because the civilgovernment itself only added fuel to the flame, by theencouragement it gave to license and violence by its own evilexample.
But society had to protect itself. Conscious of itsdanger, and that it was doomed to destruction, if some remedy werenot found, it evolved in the tenth and the following century, notan absolutely efficacious remedy, but one which enabled it to passin comparative safety that dangerous period and carried Europeancivilization to the full glories of the age of Dante, St. Louis andthe Angel of the Schools. The remedy was feudalism.
That institution has been misunderstood. It wascalled forth by special needs, and when the conditions which it metin an almost providential manner changed, it quietly passed away.But it rendered an important and never-to-be forgotten service towar-torn Europe. Feudalism can scarcely be called a complete androunded system. For it was constantly undergoing modification. Itwas not the same north as south of the Loire. It was one thing onthe west, and quite another on the east of the Rhine. In general itwas, as Stubbs described it ("Constitutional History." Vol. 1, pp.255, 256), "a regulated and fairly well graduated method ofjurisdiction, based on land tenure, in which every lord, king,duke, earl or baron protected, judged, ruled, taxed the class nextbelow him; ... in which private war, private coinage and privateprisons took the place of the imperial institutions of power."Land, "the sacramental tie" then, "of all relations," and notmoney, was the chief wealth of those ages. For services rendered,therefore, fiefs or landed estates were the reward. Feudalism thusrested on a contract entered into by the nation represented by theking, which let out its lands to individuals who paid the rent notonly by doing military service, but by rendering such services tothe king as the king's courts might require. The bond wasfrequently extremely loose, and it was hard then to say which ofthe two was in reality the stronger, the feudal lord or thetechnically lower, but sometimes in reality stronger, vassal.
The feudal lord was bound to support his vassal, andin return, had a right to expect his help in the hour of danger.The feudal lord owed his vassals justice, protection, shelter andrefuge. If certain privileges, claimed by the feudal lord, wereonerous, the vassal was not without some guarantee that he would beshown fair play; for it was evident that unless in some way rightsand obligations were fairly well balanced, and there was a fairreturn for service rendered, the whole system would soon crumble topieces.
The "system," if it can be called one, was, as wehave said, by no means perfect, but it bridged the historic gapwhich stretches between the fall of the Carolingian power and thefull dawn of the Middle Ages. It saved Europe from anarchy. Itsblessings cannot be denied. It helped to foster the love ofindependence, of self-government, of local institutions, ofcommunal and municipal freedom. The vassal that lived under theshadows of the strong towers of a feudal lord did not look muchfurther beyond, to the king in his palace or in his courts ofjustice, for protection. He found it closer at home. The vassal,moreover, began to think of his own rights and privileges, to valuethem and to ask that they be enforced. The idea of right and law,one of the most deeply engraved in the Christian conscience in theMiddle Ages, grew and developed. The barons were the first to claimthese rights; gradually the whole nation imitated them. Even whenthey claimed them, primarily for themselves, the whole nationparticipated sooner or later in their blessings. The Barons ofRunnymede were fighting the battles of every ploughboy in Englandwhen they wrenched Magna Charta from King John.
Although many a feudal lord was a proud andhard-driving master, yet the vassal and the serf knew that therewere limits which his lord dared not transgress; that the veryspirit of his "caste", for such to a certain extent was the socialrank to which the feudal lord belonged, would not tolerate any tooflagrant a violation of his privileges. A bond of united interestswas found between feudal noble and his vassal. They were found sideby side in war; their larger interests were the same in peace.Loyalty, honor, fidelity took deep root in the society which theyrepresented.
As the aristocracy of feudalism was founded, not onwealth or money, but on land tenure, one of the most stable titlesto prestige and authority found in history, there was in theunderlying concept of society in those days a feeling of stabilityand permanency, which for a time made feudalism, in spite of itsflaws, a bulwark of order. It fostered even a strong family spirit.Baron, count or earl, behind the thick ramparts of his castle,lived a patriarchal life. He was, with his retainers andmen-at-arms, his chaplains, to watch over his spiritual needs, hiswife and children and vassals, dependent upon him for protectionand safety, impelled by every sense of honor, duty and chivalry tomake them feel that he was their sword and buckler. They wereclosely knit to him. There was a patriarchal bond between them.Family spirit grew strong and, under the teaching of the Church, itbecame pure.
Feudalism had its flaws. It was strictly anaristocratic institution. It fostered the spirit of pride and boreharshly at times upon the serf and the man of low degree. But itsharsher features were softened by the teachings of the Church. Whenit was at its height, voices of Popes like Alexander III and ofDoctors like St. Thomas Aquinas, were lifted to proclaim theequality of all men in the sight of God. At the altar, serf andmaster, count or cottier, knelt side by side. In the monasteriesand convents, the poor man's son might wear the Abbot's ring and inthe assemblies and councils of the realm, the poor clerk of formerdays, might speak with all the authority of a Bishop to sway thedestinies of both Church and State.
One of the greatest evils of feudalism was that itfostered to excess the warlike spirit. Of its very nature, thesystem was a complex one. It gave rise to countlessmisunderstandings between the various grades of its involvedhierarchy. The opportunities and plausible pretexts formisunderstandings, quarrels and war were many. A petty quarrel inBurgundy, in Champagne, in the Berry in France, involved not onlythe duke and count of these territories but almost every vassal orfeudal lord in the province. The same might be said of the Germannobles in Suabia, Thuringia and Franconia. Private wars werefrequent, and though the barbarism of the past ages had almostcompletely disappeared under the teaching of the Gospel, thesecontests, as might be expected, were both sanguinary andwasteful.
The Church fought manfully against these privatewars. It took every possible means to prevent them entirely. Whenin the nature of things, it found it impossible to do away withthem altogether, it tried to mitigate their horrors, to limit theirfield of operation, to diminish their savagery. If the kinglyauthority was flouted, save perhaps when a sturdy ruler likeWilliam the Conqueror in England, or Hugh Capet in France, showedthat there was a man at the helm, who meant to rule and