The Truce of God. George Henry Miles
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George Henry Miles
The Truce of God
A Tale of the Eleventh Century
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066164126
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAP. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X.
INTRODUCTION
"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.
After the tide of barbarian invasion, Goths and Vandals, Heruli, Burgundians and Franks had swept away the edifice of Roman civilization, had it not been for the regenerating influence of Christianity, another empire as cruel would have risen on the ruins of Rome. No other power would then have ruled but the sword. The sword was king, and received the worship of thousands. Now and then a ruler appeared like Theodoric, Charlemagne, the Lombard Luitprand, who used the sword on the whole for just and beneficent ends. And because these warrior kings, even in the midst of their conquests, brought some of the blessings of peace to their subject peoples, these peoples welcomed their sway. Peace was, then as now, one of the world's needs.
Although the eighth, ninth and succeeding century were not without their brighter sides and were not those totally Dark Ages they have been represented by the enemies of the Church, nevertheless, seeds of evil passions, which in spite of her endeavors the Church had been unable completely to stifle, lingered in the hearts of those strong-limbed, strong-passioned Teutonic races which had succeeded to the tasks and responsibilities of pagan Rome. Those races did not have Rome's organizing power. By force, it is true, in a great measure, but force intelligently applied, but also by patience, by an instinct for justice and for order, Rome had welded her vast empire into a coherent whole. Rome really, and effectively ruled. She had authority, she had prestige, she was respected and feared, until the fatal day when, for her vices and tyranny, she began to be hated. That day her fate was sealed.
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 instinct for that one essential of ordered life drove the individual to take the execution of the law and of justice into his own hands and to claim his rights at the point of the sword. The result can be easily imagined. The sword was never for a long time thrust back into the scabbard. Incessant wars, not at the bidding of the ruler, nor sanctioned by the voice of public authority or for the public welfare, 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 that went under the name, seemed powerless, for the simple reason that the strong arm of either a Charlemagne or a Charles Martel too seldom appeared to check the culprits, or because the civil government itself only added fuel to the flame, by the encouragement it gave to license and violence by its own evil example.
But society had to protect itself. Conscious of its danger, and that it was doomed to destruction, if some remedy were not found, it evolved in the tenth and the following century, not an absolutely efficacious remedy, but one which enabled it to pass in comparative safety that dangerous period and carried European civilization to the full glories of the age of Dante, St. Louis and the Angel of the Schools. The remedy was feudalism.
That institution has been misunderstood. It was called forth by special needs, and when the conditions which it met in an almost providential manner changed, it quietly passed away. But it rendered an important and never-to-be forgotten service to war-torn Europe. Feudalism can scarcely be called a complete and rounded system. For it was constantly undergoing modification. It was not the same north as south of the Loire. It was one thing on the west, and quite another on the east of the Rhine. In general it was, as Stubbs described it ("Constitutional History." Vol. 1, pp. 255, 256), "a regulated and fairly well graduated method of jurisdiction, based on land tenure, in which every lord, king, duke, earl or baron protected, judged, ruled, taxed the class next below him; … in which private war, private coinage and private prisons took the place of the imperial institutions of power." Land, "the sacramental tie" then, "of all relations," and not money, was the chief wealth of those ages. For services rendered, therefore, fiefs or landed estates were the reward. Feudalism thus rested on a contract entered into by the nation represented by the king, which let out its lands to individuals who paid the rent not only by doing military service, but by rendering such services to the king as the king's courts might require. The bond was frequently extremely loose, and it was hard then to say which of the two was in reality the stronger, the feudal lord or the technically lower, but sometimes in reality stronger, vassal.
The feudal lord was bound to support his vassal, and in return, had a right to expect his help in the hour of danger. The feudal lord owed his vassals justice, protection, shelter and refuge. If certain privileges, claimed by the feudal lord, were onerous, the vassal was not without some guarantee that he would be shown fair play; for it was evident that unless in some way rights and obligations were fairly well balanced, and there was a fair return for service rendered, the whole system would soon crumble to pieces.
The "system," if it can be called one, was, as we have said, by no means perfect, but it bridged the historic gap which stretches between the fall of the Carolingian power and the full dawn of the Middle Ages. It saved Europe from anarchy. Its blessings cannot be denied. It helped to foster the love of independence, of self-government, of local institutions, of communal and municipal freedom. The vassal that lived under the shadows of the strong towers of a feudal lord did not look much further beyond, to the king in his palace or in his courts of justice, for protection. He found it closer at home. The vassal, moreover, began to think of his own rights and privileges, to value them and to ask that they be enforced. The idea of right and law, one of the most deeply engraved in the Christian conscience in the Middle Ages, grew and developed. The barons were the first to claim these rights; gradually the whole nation imitated them. Even when they claimed them, primarily for themselves, the whole nation participated sooner