endeavouring to mitigate the horrors of private war by certain
restrictions upon the combatants. During the eleventh century it was not
unusual for the bishop of a diocese to secure the co-operation of
representative men, from all classes of society, in proclaiming a local
Truce of God (_Treuga Dei_). This Truce, which all men were invited
to swear that they would observe, forbade the molestation of
ecclesiastics, peasants and other non-combatants; provided that
cultivated land should not be harried or cattle carried off; and named
certain seasons when no war should be waged. A typical agreement of this
kind enjoins that all private hostilities shall be suspended from
Wednesday evening to Monday morning in each week; from the beginning of
Advent till a week after the Epiphany; from the beginning of Lent till a
week after Easter; from the Rogation Days till a week after Pentecost.
The Truce of God was approved by the Crown both in France and in
Germany; even in the twelfth century it was still recommended by church
councils as a useful expedient. But it was seldom effectual. There was
no machinery for enforcing it; and those who swore to uphold it were so
divided by conflicting class interests that they could not co-operate
with any cordiality. The second of these defects, though not the first,
can also be perceived in the German system of the Land-peace.
Periodically we find an Emperor constraining a particular province, or
even the whole German kingdom, to accept a set of rules which are partly
modelled on those of the _Treuga Dei_ and partly in the nature of
criminal legislation. Thus in 1103 the magnates of the kingdom were
required to swear that for the next four years they would not molest
ecclesiastics, merchants, women, or Jews; that during the same period
they would neither burn nor break into private houses; that they would
not kill or wound or hold to ransom any man. In regard to the last rule
the magnates insisted on some modification; it was finally provided that
a man meeting a private enemy on the high-road might attack him, but