PEACE OF GOD. - The disintegration of the Carolingian Empire brought about the fading of that program of peace and justice which Charlemagne had identified with the imperial mission and which he had entrusted to his successors in the Empire. The feudal world that dominated all of Europe in the 10th century was full of wars. Conflicts arose around the concessions that princes made to their vassals of comital offices and beneficed lands: the organization of the fief demanded continuous struggles: struggles of vassals with the princes their lords, struggles between vassals and vassals, struggles within the fief. The authority of the princes could not assert itself; there were no tribunals, no arbiters. Violence dominated; any order, decision, or action immediately took on the appearance of a violent, extra-legal act. The Church proceeded rigidly: it struck with grave penalties whoever killed; it forbade vengeance and struck whoever killed for vengeance; it forbade the usurpation of goods of churches and monasteries and struck whoever violated the prohibition; likewise for whoever damaged ecclesiastical lands and killed or captured the peasants attached to them. The Church even extended the notion of sacrilege, applying it to all ecclesiastical goods without distinction, and proclaimed the anathema against whoever made himself guilty of it.
It would seem that the evil must have been more serious in certain regions of France, if in 989 at the diocesan Council of Charroux (Poitiers) the bishops launched the anathema against whoever by violence took goods from churches, whoever seized the goods of the poor, whoever committed violence against churchmen. The following year a similar problem was discussed at the Council of Le Puy: the bishop convoked the neighboring bishops and the feudal lords of the region. Here too ecclesiastical penalties were launched against those who did violence to churches and churchmen, then against those who harmed peasants by taking away their horses and livestock, against those who robbed merchants on the road. At Le Puy the bishops gathered the feudal lords and imposed on them the swearing of the conciliar decisions, and since they refused, recourse was had to the dependents of the Church, who imposed themselves on the rest by arms. The idea of imposing peace on the feudal lords by means of religious penalties spread and was gradually perfected. In 997 it was the Duke of Guyenne who, urged by the bishop, gathered a council at Limoges: after having issued a ban similar to those of Le Puy and Charroux, the feudal lords present were invited to swear a pact of peace and justice. At Poitiers, in 1000, the Duke of Guyenne took part in the Council: in order to impose peace in the area it was established that every dispute over usurpation of land be decided judicially before the duke; if the procedure failed, the feudal lords would impose the law on the oppressor by arms. King Robert too, around 1010, assembled bishops and feudal lords at Orleans to impose the preservation of peace by ecclesiastical penalties, because the Capetian monarchy did not have the strength to give effect to its laws.
Thus, outside royal action, the decisions taken at Le Puy in 990 continued to be adopted in the various French councils, making the feudal lords swear the commitment to respect the goods of churches, sacred persons, the wretched, and merchants. At Verdun-sur-Doubs in 1016 bishops, nobles, and commoners took an oath to observe a broad formula that aimed to protect, besides the churches, the rural populations, agricultural goods, and the animals necessary for the cultivation of the fields. A similar oath was imposed in 1023 at Soissons by the bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Reims; in 1026 at Poitiers, then at Bourges, at Limoges. By now there was no council in the land of France in which similar bans based on the love of God and neighbor were not issued. It was called P. of G. because in the name of God peace had been announced to men of good will. Often, to be sure, these were fleeting enthusiasms; often the one who swore was not the one who was ready never to do it. In several places recourse was had to the organization of voluntary militias under the bishops to combat violence with violence: thus at Poitiers in 1038 the archbishop imposed on all the faithful who had reached the age of majority the obligation to observe the peace and to rush in arms to fight whoever violated it.
The p. of G. protected the Church and the weak, but did not prevent war from continuing to rage. Therefore in 1027 at the diocesan Synod of Elne (Roussillon) there was talk of how to suspend war in certain periods: the pact (trenge) was established that no one should fight from Saturday evening to Monday morning: thus Sunday, the day of the Lord, was respected. The idea developed rapidly: in 1041 at a Council of the province of Arles it was decided that the Trenge Dei, as it came to be called, should last from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, so as to protect the days of the Passion. Communication of the decision was sent to the various dioceses and it found favor: at the Council of Montrioud (Lausanne) it was decided to place under the protection of the truce not only the last four days of the week, but also the entire period of Advent, the whole of Lent up to the octave of Easter; later, in other councils, the days of Pentecost and the feasts of the Virgin and of certain saints, such as St. John the Baptist, St. Lawrence, and St. Michael, were included.
From France these canons passed into Italy and Germany. There the idea was welcomed and spread by the Emperor Henry IV, who at Constance in 1043 spoke in church to a conciliar assembly to proclaim the dies indulgentiae. This institution does not appear to have been welcomed with enthusiasm by the Papacy as a local initiative. In 1070 Alexander II, in a letter to the bishop of Turin Cunibert, wrote: «De treva Dei noviter intenta, specialem poenitentiam iniungere nolumus, quia in canonibus non habetur». Only at the Council of Clermont in 1095 did Urban II adopt it and proclaim it an official institution of the Church.
The influence of the p. of God and of the truce of God must not be exaggerated. The organization of diocesan militias and the use of force to combat violence in practice brought dangerous consequences: excommunications and interdicts were generally not sufficient weapons to repress the violent. Social order and peace were strengthened with the growth of the authority and material power of monarchs: feudal anarchy was disappearing within the great territorial organisms because the princes imposed their authority by arms and the violent were struck as enemies of the monarchical order. Thus it happened, for example, in France during the 12th century, thanks to the development of the Capetian monarchy; in Italy and Germany it was the emperors who proclaimed the territorial peace; in Italy the peace would be definitively implemented by the Lords of the 14th century; in Germany feudal anarchy would disappear only with the formation of the great States after the 16th century.