In the south of France and Catalonia the twelfth century saw the
great lords, lay and clerical, making of the peace of God what T. N.
Bisson has called a ‘statutory structure’ of law and order imposed from
above.^17 In the north the extent to which the peace of God had given
way to the peace of the realm appears in 1147–9 when Louis VII was
away on the Second Crusade, leaving Suger as regent. Unlike the First
Crusade, the Second was led by kings, in whose absence from their
realms the pope showed a necessary concern for the rule of France as
well as Germany. French bishops were ordered to defend the pax regni
by excommunicating malefactors and to be more diligent in preserving
‘the state of the realm’ (ad conservandum statum regni promptiores
existant).^18 The crusade over, Louis ordained a ten-year peace ‘for the
whole realm’ of France at a council at Soissons in 1155, three years after
Barbarossa’s original Landfriedeand eleven years before Henry II’s
Assize of Clarendon were issued with similar purposes. This peace,
which the barons and prelates swore to observe, and the king promised
to enforce ‘as far as he was able’, was never to be specifically renewed,
for the reality behind it was the constant settlement of disputes by the
king and his servants and the supervision of justice in urban communi-
ties.^19
The development of the French state accelerated further at the time
of the third and most spectacular of the crusades, which saw Philip
Augustus and Richard the Lionheart confront Saladin and fall out with
each other at the great siege of Acre. The scale of the crusading enter-
prise taught kings how to mobilize the resources of their countries, and
the pope’s authorization of the taxation even of the clergy for the
purposes of the crusade made them aware of their powers. Like the
Emperor Conrad in 1147 they had to make provision for the rule of
their countries before they left for the Holy Land, and accordingly King
Philip and King Richard of England decreed ‘a firm peace’ between
themselves and their realms at Nonancourt on 30 December 1189. This
included the provisions that their justices and bailiffs should protect the
property of crusaders until their return, and that no one indulging in
private war in one country should be received in the other.^20
Justice on complaint to the king of France 11338 ff., 81 ff.; D. Kenelly, ‘Medieval Towns and the Peace of God’, Medievalia et Humanistica,
15 (1963).
(^17) T. N. Bisson, ‘The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia, ca.1140—
ca.1233’, American Historical Review, 82 (1977).
(^18) H. Hoffmann, Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei, Schriften der MGH 20 (Stuttgart, 1964),
117–25; A. Grabois, ‘De la trêve de Dieu à la paix du roi: Étude sur les transformations du
mouvement de la paix au xiiesiècle’, in Mélanges offerts a Rene Crozet, ed. P. Gallais et
Y.-J. Riou (Poitiers, 1966), i. 591–3; Mansi, Concilia, xxi, col. 717.
(^19) Mansi, Concilia, xxi, cols. 837–8; Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, xiv.
387.
(^20) La France de Philippe Auguste: Le Temps des mutations, ed. R.-H. Bautier (Paris: Centre