Isten békéje és treuga Dei a 11. századi Franciaországban
God's Peace and Treuga Dei in 11th-century France

Summary/Abstract: The movement called pax Dei in Latin started from South France in the tenth century as an answer to the violence afflicting society in general and the Church in particular. According to the traditional interpretation, its cause was the disintegration of the Carolingian administration system as well as the undermining of public order by the rivarly among local authorities emerging around castles. Wanting a strong central power, and in the best position to mobilize society, the Church tried to restore peace. Bishops used councils to persuade the feudal lords in their dioceses to accept resolutions that protected social groups incapable of self defence, and to swear oaths to keep them. Those who violated the peace, had to face ecclesiastical punishment, i.e. anathematization or excommunication. From the 1040s on, a new phase in this process, treuga Dei, was meant to prevent all sorts of bloodshed on church holidays. The two movements, though, cannot be considered, even separately, as a unified series of events, because individual councils or convocations in various regions, driven by diverse interests, tried to enforce different restrictions on chivalry. Studying the texts, one gets the impression that peace councils were only another, new means of the already known practises of the exercise of power, not independent from rivalry within the aristocratic elite, and the movement contributed to the growth of the bishops' secular powers. The forthcoming resolutions, and especially some formal innovations (the great number of relics, the joint oath of knights and bishops), moreover, did not find total support even within the Church. Besides, it seems that not only did the movements take place at different times in the northern and the southern regions, but the councils of the two regions attempted to find solutions to different problems. In the north, where regional power was traditionally stronger than in the south, and Carolingian structures also survived to a larger extent, they did not try to prevent military violence,which heavily oppressed the poor and the Church but rather attempted to put an end to faida, i.e. blood feud,which decimated the families of the chivalry. Peace movements did not bring about the total termination of war in the long run, but contributed to making violence the monopoly of one narrow group of society.

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