Cross. The Church had for the disobedient and the refractory one
terrible weapon, which she was loath to use, but which she occasionally
used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication. Many a
modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and in mild
contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her children,
much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale of ogre or
hobgoblin before them. Yet the student of history might profitably study
the use which the Church has made of such an instrument, and find in it
one of the most effective causes of social regeneration in the Middle
Ages.

The Church, in order to fight the military and armed excesses of
feudalism, employed many means. It is to her that we owe what is known
as the "Truce of God," or the enforced temporary suspension of
hostilities usually, from the sunset of each Wednesday to Monday
morning. Under pain of excommunication, during that interval, which at
several times was further extended so as to comprise the seasons of
Advent and Lent, and some of the major feasts, the sword might not be
drawn in private quarrel. From a decree of the Council of Elne, in the
South of France, we find that the "Truce of God," the "_Treuga Dei_" as
it was technically called, was in full honor and had reached the height
of its beneficent power in 1207. But long before, in the days when
Gregory VII was Pope, and William of Normandy had just won his English
crown, and Henry III ruled in Germany and Henry I in France, in the days
when feudalism was making its first attempts to bring order out of
chaos, several councils of the Church in France and in Normandy had
traced out the plan and the outlines of the "Truce of God." Earlier
even, at the Councils of Charroux (989), Narbonne (990), Le Puy and Anse
(990), severe penalties were pronounced against those who wantonly in
time of war destroyed the poor man's cattle or harried his fields, or