peace decreed in 1084 for turbulent Saxony and the provincial peaces
arranged in 1093–4 in Swabia, Bavaria, and Alsace, and in Swabia
again in 1104, took the form of oaths by the dukes, counts, and
nobility to observe the peace of the clergy throughout the year as well
as the truce of God at its proper seasons.^60
The first Landfriedefor the whole kingdom was promulgated by
Henry IV and the bishops together at Mainz in 1103, and supported by
the oaths of the king’s son and the high nobility. Until the following
Pentecost and for four years thereafter peace would cover the churches
and clergy and no violence was to be done to merchants, women, and
the Jews, nor to one’s enemies in their homes (though they could be
harmed in the street). For the theft of even five shillings a penalty of the
loss of eyes or a hand was prescribed. This ‘shield for the king’s friends
and hindrance to his opponents’ was essentially an amalgam of the truce
promulgated by a bishop and the peace sworn by the community, and
on both counts it retained its provincial character even as it became a
main instrument of royal government.^61 Reichslandfriedenwere again
proclaimed in 1119, 1121, and 1125 by Henry V (1106–1125) as part
of the ‘firm and stable peace’ which he made with the papacy over
investitures.^62 At this emperor’s funeral a group of prelates and princes
conferred de statu et pace regniand called the royal court together at
Mainz to ordain concerning ‘the state and succession of the kingdom’;
the bishops were to proclaim a special peace to last while the court was
meeting and for four weeks longer so that its members could assemble
and disperse in safety. The princes then elected the duke of Saxony as
Lothar III, who is found sitting at Roncaglia in Italy in 1136 ‘ordering
the justice and peace of the realm according to the custom of emperors
of old’.^63 His successor Conrad III (1138–52) was at Utrecht in 1145
taking thought ‘for the peace and state of the realm’ and confirming the
bishop and clergy of the city in the possession of the counties of
Ostergau and Westergau.^64 In 1147, before embarking on the Second
Crusade, he ordained a firm peace throughout all the parts of his realm,
and urged Pope Eugenius, since he was travelling to Gaul, to come also
to the Rhine for a conference ‘by which the peace of churches and of the
Christian religion might be increased and the state of the realm given us
by God made sure by suitable decrees’.^65
The peace of the land 87(^60) Constitutiones 911–1197, 120–1, 605–15; Die Briefe Heinrichs IV, ed. C. Erdman,
MGH Kritische Studientexte 1 (Leipzig, 1937), 22–6: tr. in Imperial Lives and Letters of the
Eleventh Century, 161–5.
(^61) Constitutiones 911–1197, 125–6.
(^62) Ibid. 157–8, 164.
(^63) Ibid. 165.
(^64) Conradi III [etc.] Diplomata, 250. 26.
(^65) Constitutiones 911–1197, 179.