blood is satiated. Hence the feuds^346 and private wars, or deadly quarrels between families and
clans. The same custom of self-help and unbridled passion prevails among the Mohammedan Arabs
to this day.
The influence of Christianity was to confine the responsibility for a crime to its author, and
to substitute orderly legal process for summary private vengeance. The sixteenth Synod of Toledo
(693) forbade duels and private feuds.^347 The Synod of Poitiers, a.d. 1000, resolved that all
controversies should hereafter be adjusted by law and not by force.^348 The belligerent individuals
or tribes were exhorted to reconciliation by a sealed agreement, and the party which broke the peace
was excommunicated. A Synod of Limoges in 1031 used even the more terrible punishment of the
interdict against the bloody feuds.
These sporadic efforts prepared the way for one of the most benevolent institutions of the
middle ages, the so-called "Peace" or "Truce of God."^349 It arose in Aquitania in France during or
soon after a terrible famine in 1033, which increased the number of murders (even for the satisfaction
of hunger) and inflicted untold misery upon the people. Then the bishops and abbots, as if moved
by divine inspiration (hence "the Peace of God"), united in the resolution that all feuds should cease
from Wednesday evening till Monday morning (a feriae quartae vespera usque ad secundam feriam,
incipiente luce) on pain of excommunication.^350 In 1041 the archbishop Raimbald of Arles, the
bishops Benedict of Avignon and Nitard of Nice, and the abbot Odilo of Clugny issued in their
name and in the name of the French episcopate an encyclical letter to the Italian bishops and clergy,
in which they solemnly implore them to keep the heaven-sent Treuga Dei, already introduced in
Gaul, namely, to observe peace between neighbors, friends or foes on four days of the week, namely,
on Thursday, on account of Christ’s ascension, on Friday on account of his crucifixion, on Saturday
in memory of his burial, on Sunday in memory of his resurrection. They add: "All who love this
Treuga Dei we bless and absolve; but those who oppose it we anathematize and exclude from the
church. He who punishes a disturber of the Peace of God shall be acquitted of guilt and blessed by
all Christians as a champion of the cause of God."
The peace-movement spread through all Burgundy and France, and was sanctioned by the
Synods of Narbonne (1054), Gerundum in Spain (1068), Toulouse (1068), Troyes (1093), Rouen
(^346) Saxon Faehth, or Faeght, Danish feide, Dutch veede, GermanFehde, low Latin faida or faidia. Compare the German
Feind, the English fiend. Du Cange defines faida: "Gravis et aperta inimicitia ob caedem aliquam suscepta, and refers to his
dissertation De Privatis Bellis.
(^347) Hefele III. 349.
(^348) IV. 655, 689.
(^349) TreugaDei, Gottesfriede. See Du Cange sub. "Treva, Treuga, seu Trevia Dei." The word occurs in several languages
(treuga, tregoa, trauva, treva, trêve). It comes from the same root as the Germantreu, Treue, and the English true troth, truce,
and signifies a pledge of faith, given for a time to an enemy for keeping peace.
(^350) Rodull Glaber, a monk of Cluny, gives a graphic account of this famine and the origin of the Peace movement, in his
Historia sui Temporis, lib. IV. c.4 and 5 (in Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 142, fol. 675-679). Hefele, IV. 698, traces the movement to
Provence and to the year 1040 with a "perhaps," but Rodulf Glaber makes it begin "in Aquitaniae partibus anno incarnati
Christi millesimo tricesimo tertio," from whence it spread rapidly "per Arelatensem provinciam, atque Lugdunensem, sicque
per universam Burgundiam, atque in ultimas Franciae partes " (Migne, l. c. fol. 678). Comp. lib. V. 1 (fol. 693): "primitus
inpartibus Aquitanicis, deinde paulatim per universum Galliarum territorium," etc. He also reports that the introduction of the
Peace was blessed by innumerable cures and a bountiful harvest. "Erat instar illius antiqui Mosaici magni Jubilaei." Balderich,
in his Chronicle of the Bishops of Cambray, reports that in one of the French synods a bishop showed a letter which fell from
heaven and exhorted to peace. The bishop of Cambray, however, dissented because he thought the resolution could not be
carried out.