bishops and lay nobles were similar: bishops were men of property, lords of vassals,
and faithful to patrons, such as kings, who appointed them to their posts. In some
places, bishops wielded the powers of a count or duke. Bishop Guillem Guifred (see
p. 133) is a good example. Some bishops ruled cities. Nevertheless, bishops were also
“pastors,” spiritual leaders charged with shepherding their flock, which included the
laity, priests, and monks in their diocese (a district that gained clear definition in the
eleventh century).
As episcopal power expanded and was clarified in the course of the tenth and
eleventh centuries, some bishops in southern France, joined by the upper crust of the
aristocracy, sought to control the behavior of the lesser knights through a movement
called the “Peace of God.” They were not satisfied with the current practices of
peace-making, in which enemies, pressured by their peers, negotiated an end to—or
at least a cessation of—hostilities. (Behind the negotiation was the threat of an ordeal
—for instance a trial by battle whose outcome was in the hands of God—if the two
sides did not come to terms.) This system of arbitration was not always satisfactory.
Hugh of Lusignan, the discontented vassal (see above, p. 132), complained that his
lord “[did not] broker a good agreement.” Beginning in 989, the Peace developed
apace. Its forum was the regional church council, where bishops galvanized popular
opinion, attracting both grand aristocrats and peasants to their gatherings. There,
drawing upon bits and pieces of defunct Carolingian legislation, the bishops declared
the Peace, and knights took oaths to observe it. At Bourges a particularly enthusiastic
archbishop took the oath himself: “I Aimon... will wholeheartedly attack those who
steal ecclesiastical property, those who provoke pillage, those who oppress monks,
nuns, and clerics.”^9 In the Truce of God, which by the 1040s was declared alongside
the Peace, warfare between armed men was prohibited from Lent to Easter, while at
other times of the year it was forbidden on Sunday (because that was the Lord’s
Day), on Saturday (because that was a reminder of Holy Saturday), on Friday
(because it symbolized Good Friday), and on Thursday (because it stood for Holy
Thursday).
To the bishops who promulgated the Peace, warriors fell conceptually into two
groups: the sinful ones who broke the Peace, and the righteous ones who upheld
church law. Although the Peace and Truce were taken up by powerful lay rulers,
eager to sanctify their own warfare and control that of others, the major initiative for
the movement came from churchmen eager to draw clear boundaries between the
realms of the sacred and the profane.
