God's Truce.

God's Truce. In the 9th and 10th centuries, when the empire of Charlemagne had begun to break up into small fragments—countships, dukedoms, baronies, &c.—the right of private war and private vengeance, which had been traditionally practised by the early Teutonic races, threatened to become a source of anarchy and dissolution, instead of what it was intended to be, a rough and ready method of enforcing equity between man and man. Accordingly the church, as the guardian of justice and the preserver of moral order, stepped in, and at the end of the 10th century formulated stern ecclesiastical penalties against all who, whilst waging feudal war, should violate the peace of churches, priests, and the tillers of the soil. The God's Truce, technically speaking, was a mutual agreement, confirmed and sanctioned by the church, on the part of the barons and nobles of a particular district, to abstain altogether from private war on and between certain fixed days and times, and to respect permanently the rights and liberties of those who followed purely pacific callings. This movement had its origin in the south of France, having been first set on foot at a synod held at Tuluges, in Roussillon, in 1027. Fourteen years later it embraced the whole of France; and from there it spread rapidly into Germany, Italy, Spain, and England. About 1041 the main provisions of the Peace of God (treuga Dei) were these: Peace was to last from Wednesday evening to Monday morn- ing in each week, also during Advent and Lent, and on certain of the principal saints' days and holy days of the church; the punishments for contumacy and disobedience were money fines, banishment for a long term of years, and excommunication; protection was specially extended to all women, pilgrims, priests, travellers, merchants, and agriculturists, and also to the farm implements and live-stock of the peasantry. The Peace of God was confirmed by several councils of the church, more especially by that of Clermont (1095), when Urban II. proclaimed its universal extension throughout Christendom. With the gradual consolidation of the kingly power in the larger monarchies during the course of the 13th century this institution fell into desuetude. See Semichon, La Paix et la Trève de Dieu (2d ed. 1869).