Efforts to Contain Violence

The rise of the castellans meant an increase in violence. Supported by their knights, castellans were keen to maintain their new authority over the peasants in their vicinity in the face of older regional powers, like counts and dukes. Threatened from below, those higher-ranking authorities looked to the bishops for help. The bishops, themselves resentful of local castellan claims and, moreover, generally members of the same elite families as counts and dukes, were glad to oblige. To do so, they enlisted the lower classes—peasants who were tired of wars that destroyed their crops or forced them to join regional infantries. The result was the Peace of God, which united bishops, counts, and peasants in an attempt to contain local violence. The movement began in the south of France around 990 and had spread over a wide region by 1050. At impassioned meetings of bishops, lords, and crowds of enthusiastic men and women, the clergy set forth the provisions of this peace. “No man in the counties or bishoprics shall seize a horse, colt, ox, cow, ass, or the burdens which it carries. . . . No one shall seize a peasant, man or woman,” ran the decree of one early council. Anyone who violated this peace was to be excommunicated: cut off from the community of the faithful, denied the services of the church and the hope of salvation.

The Peace of God proclaimed at local councils like this limited some violence but did not address the problem of conflict between armed men. A second set of agreements, the Truce of God, soon supplemented the peace. The truce prohibited fighting between warriors at certain times. Enforcement fell to the local knights and nobles, who swore over saints’ relics to uphold it and to fight anyone who broke it.

The Peace of God and the Truce of God were only two of the mechanisms that attempted to contain or defuse violent confrontations in the tenth and eleventh centuries. At times, lords and their vassals mediated wars and feuds at grand judicial assemblies. In other instances, monks or laymen tried to find solutions to disputes that would leave the honor of both parties intact. Rather than establishing guilt or innocence, winners or losers, these methods of adjudication often resulted in compromises on both sides.