The developed peace-oath did not attempt the impossible task of
suppressing the private wars of the aristocracy completely, but rather
the moderation of their consequences for churches and the mass of the
population. Those who swore the oath assumed an obligation not to
threaten the livelihood of the peasantry by destroying their mills and
uprooting their vines; villagers’ beasts might still be killed to feed the
lord and his retinue, but their goods must not be distrained for their
lords’ debts; buildings were not to be set on fire unless they were known
to hold enemy knights or criminals; merchants, pilgrims, widows,
noblewomen travelling without their husbands, huntsmen, fishermen
and seamen were to go on their way unmolested; and during Lent,
according to the oath, a knight who was unarmed should also be free
from attack, and wrongs should not be pursued violently until time had
been allowed for getting justice by agreement.^9
The oath extended the concept of wrongs against the public peace,
but also made more urgent the question of enforcement. It was ‘because
of the weakness of the king (imbecillitas regis), the precarious state of
the kingdom, and the confounding of people’s rights’ that the bishops
of Beauvais and Soissons proposed to introduce the methods of the
Burgundian bishops into the province of Rheims in 1023.^10 Opposition
came, however, from Gerard, bishop and count of Cambrai, who
objected that everyone swearing the oath would be laid open to the sin
of perjury; also that the two bishops encroached on the rights of the
king and confounded the state of holy church, which had been put
under the dual authority of king and priest. It was for the king to
combat sedition, calm wars, and spread the enjoyment of peace, Gerard
asserted: for bishops to admonish kings to fight manfully in defence of
their countries (patriae) and to pray that they might win. The see of
Cambrai, though in the province of Rheims, looked to the empire, and
Gerard had been brought up in the imperial chapel at Aix. He under-
stood the status ecclesiae and the status imperii as synonyms for
Christian society, within which king and bishop each had a distinct
God-given status, and feared, with some reason, that sworn peace asso-
ciations would become popular conspiracies subverting the natural
order and pitting communities and classes against one another. Never-
theless, Gerard had to accept the demands of the people of Cambrai for
a sworn peace, complete with the parading of relics and giving of
hostages, as an answer to the problem of the castellan, Walter of Lens,
and his unruly knights. The strength of the movement did not lie in
The peace of God 71(^9) Pfister, Règne de Robert le Pieux, pp. lx–lxi, 165 ff.; The Peace of God, ed. Head and
Landes, pp. 332–4; Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 48–9; E. I. Strubbe, ‘La Paix de Dieu dans le
Nord de la France’, La Paix, i. 493–6.
(^10) Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, 102–3, 262–3.