Out of this union between war and Christianity there was born that curious bastard, Chivalry. The secular germ of it existed already in the German forests. According to Tacitus, the young German who aspired to be a warrior was brought into the midst of the assembly of the chiefs, where his father, or some other relative, solemnly equipped him for his future vocation with shield and javelin.44 Assuming arms was thus made a social distinction, which subsequently derived its name from one of its most essential characteristics, the riding a war-horse. But Chivalry became something quite different from what the word indicates. The Church knew how to lay hold of knighthood for her own purposes. The investiture, which was originally of a purely civil nature, became, even before the time of the crusades, as it were, a sacrament.45 The priest delivered the sword into the hand of the person who was to be made a knight, with the following words, “Serve Christi, sis miles in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”46 The sword was said to be made in semblance of the cross so as to signify “how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lying”;47 and the word “Jesus” was sometimes engraven on its hilt.48 God Himself had chosen the knight to defeat with arms the miscreants who wished to destroy his Holy Church, in the same way as He had chosen the clergy to maintain the Catholic faith with Scripture and reasons.49 The knight was to the body politic what the arms are to the human body: the Church was the head, Chivalry the arms, the citizens, merchants, and labourers the inferior members; and the arms were placed in the middle to render them equally capable of defending the inferior members and the head.50 “The greatest amity that should be in this world,” says the author of the ‘Ordre of Chyualry,’ “ought to be between the knights and clerks.”51 The several gradations of knighthood were regarded as parallel to those of the Church.52 And after the conquest of the Holy Land the union between the profession of arms and the religion of Christ became still more intimate by the institution of the two military orders of monks, the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

The duties which a knight took on himself by oath were very extensive, but not very well defined. He should defend the holy Catholic faith, he should defend justice, he should defend women, widows, and orphans, and all those of either sex that were powerless, ill at ease, and groaning under oppression, and injustice.53 In the name of religion and justice he could thus practically wage war almost at will. Though much real oppression was undoubtedly avenged by these soldiers of the Church, the knight seems as a rule to have cared little for the cause or necessity of his doing battle. “La guerre est ma patrie, Mon harnois ma maison: Et en toute saison Combatre c’est ma vie,” was a saying much in use in the sixteenth century.54 The general impression which Froissart gives us in his history is, that the age in which he lived was completely given over to fighting, and cared about nothing else whatever.55 The French knights never spoke of war but as a feast, a game, a pastime. “Let them play their game,” they said of the cross-bow men, who were showering down arrows on them; and “to play a great game,” jouer gros jeu, was their description of a battle.56 Previous to the institution of Chivalry there certainly existed much fighting in Christian countries, but knighthood rendered war “a fashionable accomplishment.”57 And so all-absorbing became the passion for it that, as real injuries were not likely to occur every day, artificial grievances were created, and tilts and tournaments were invented in order to keep in action the sons of war when they had no other employments for their courage. Even in these images of war—which were by no means so harmless as they have sometimes been represented to be58—the intimate connection between Chivalry and religion displays itself in various ways. Before the tournament began, the coats of arms, helmets, and other objects were carried into a monastery, and after the victory was gained the arms and the horses which had been used in the fight were offered up at the church.59 The proclamations at the tournaments were generally in the name of God and the Virgin Mary. Before battle the knights confessed, and heard mass; and, when they entered the lists, they held a sort of image with which they made the sign of the cross.60 Moreover, “as the feasts of the tournaments were accompanied by these acts of devotion, so the feasts of the Church were sometimes adorned with the images of the tournaments.”61 It is true that the Church now and then made attempts to stop these performances.62 But then she did so avowedly because they prevented many knights from joining the holy wars, or because they swallowed up treasures which might otherwise with advantage have been poured into the Holy Land.63

Closely connected with the feudal system was the practice of private war. Though tribunals had been instituted, and even long after the kings’ courts had become well-organised and powerful institutions, a nobleman had a right to wage war upon another nobleman from whom he had suffered some gross injury.64 On such occasions not only the relatives, but the vassals, of the injured man were bound to help him in his quarrel, and the same obligation existed in the case of the aggressor.65 Only greater crimes were regarded as legitimate causes of private war,66 but this rule was not at all strictly observed.67 As a matter of fact, the barons fled to arms upon every quarrel; he who could raise a small force at once made war upon him who had anything to lose. The nations of Europe were subdivided into innumerable subordinate states, which were almost independent, and declared war and made treaties with all the vigour and all the ceremonies of powerful monarchs. Contemporary historians describe the excesses committed in prosecution of these intestine quarrels in such terms as excite astonishment and horror; and great parts of Europe were in consequence reduced to the condition of a desert, which it ceased to be worth while to cultivate.68

The Church made some feeble attempts to put an end to this state of things. Thus, about the year 990, ordinances were directed against the practice of private war by several bishops in the south of France, who agreed to exclude him who violated their ordinances from all Christian privileges during his life, and to deny him Christian burial after his death.69 A little later, men engaged in warfare were exhorted, by sacred relics and by the bodies of saints, to lay down their arms and to swear that they would never again disturb the public peace by their private hostilities.70 But it is hardly likely that such directions had much effect as long as the bishops and abbots themselves were allowed to wage private war by means of their vidames, and exercised this right scarcely less frequently than the barons.71 Nor does it seem that the Church brought about any considerable change for the better by establishing the Truce of God, involving obligatory respite from hostilities during the great festivals of the Church, as also from the evening of Wednesday in each week to the morning of Monday in the week ensuing.72 We are assured by good authorities that the Truce was generally disregarded, though the violator was threatened with the penalty of excommunication.73 Most barons could probably say with Bertram de Born:—“La paix ne me convient pas; la guerre seule me plaît. Je n’ai égard ni aux lundis, ni aux mardis. Les semaines, les mois, les années, tout m’est égal. En tout temps, je veux perdre quiconque me nuit.”74 The ordinance enjoining the treuga Dei was transgressed even by the popes.75 It was too unpractical a direction to be obeyed, and was soon given up even in theory by the authorities of the Church. Thomas Aquinas says that, as physicians may lawfully apply remedies to men on feast-days, so just wars may be lawfully prosecuted on such days for the defence of the commonwealth of the faithful, if necessity so requires; “for it would be tempting God for a man to want to keep his hands from war under stress of such necessity.”76 And in support of this opinion he quotes the first Book of the Maccabees, where it is said, “Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the sabbath day, we will fight against him.”77

It seems that the main cause of the abolition of private war was not any measure taken by the Church, but the increase of the authority of emperors or kings. In France the right of waging private war was moderated by Louis IX., checked by Philip IV., suppressed by Charles VI.78 In England, after the Norman Conquest, private wars seem to have occurred more rarely than on the Continent, probably owing to the strength of the royal authority, which made the execution of justice more vigorous and the jurisdiction of the King’s court more extensive than was the case in most other countries.79 In Scotland the practice of private war received its final blow only late in the eighteenth century, when the clans were reduced to order after the rebellion of 1745.80 Whilst, then, it is impossible to ascribe to the Church any considerable part in the movement which ultimately led to the entire abolition of private war, we have, on the other hand, to take into account the encouragement which the Church gave to the warlike spirit of the time by the establishment of Chivalry81 and by sanctioning war as a divine institution. War came to be looked upon as a judgment of God and the victory as a sign of his special favour. Before a battle, the service of mass was usually performed by both armies in the presence of each other, and no warrior would fight without secretly breathing a prayer.82 Pope Adrian IV. says that a war commenced under the auspices of religion cannot but be fortunate;83 and it was commonly believed that God took no less interest in the battle than did the fighting warriors. Bonet, who wrote in the fourteenth century, puts to himself the question, why there are so many wars in the world, and gives the answer, “que toutes sont pour le pechié du siecle dont nostre seigneur Dieu pour le pugnir permet les guerres, car ainsi le maintient l’escripture.”84

Similar opinions have retained their place in the orthodox creeds both of the Catholic and Protestant Churches up to the present day. The attitude adopted by the great Christian congregations towards war has been, and is still, to a considerable degree, that of sympathetic approval. The Catechism of the Council of Trent brings home that there are on record instances of slaughter executed by the special command of God Himself, as when the sons of Levi, who put to death so many thousands in one day, after the slaughter were thus addressed by Moses, “Ye have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord.”85 Even quite modern Catholic writers refer to the canonists who held that a State might lawfully make war upon a heretic people which was spreading heresy, and upon a pagan people which prevented the preaching of the Gospel.86 Again, when the Protestant Churches became State-Churches, their ministers, considering themselves as in the service of the State, were ready to champion whatever war the Government pleased to undertake. As Mr. Gibb observes, the Protestant minister was as ready with his Thanksgiving Sermon for the victories of a profligate war, as the Catholic priest was with his Te Deum; “indeed, the latter was probably the more independent of the two, because of his allegiance to Rome.”87 The new Confessions of Faith explicitly claimed for the State the right of waging war, and the Anabaptists were condemned because they considered war unlawful for a Christian.88 Even the necessity of a just cause as a reason for taking part in warfare, which was reasserted at the time of the Reformation, was subsequently allowed to drop out of sight. Mr. Farrer calls attention to the fact that in the 37th article of the English Church, which is to the effect that a Christian at the command of the magistrate may wear weapons and serve in wars, the word justa in the Latin form preceding the word bella has been omitted altogether.89

Nor did the old opinion that war is a providential institution and a judgment of God die with the Middle Ages. Lord Bacon looks upon wars as “the highest trials of right; when princes and states that acknowledge no superior upon earth shall put themselves upon the justice of God, for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it shall please Him to give on either side.”90 Réal de Curban says that a war is seldom successful unless it be just, hence the victor may presume that God is on his side.91 According to Jeremy Taylor, “kings are in the place of God, who strikes whole nations, and towns, and villages; and war is the rod of God in the hands of princes.”92 And it is not only looked upon as an instrument of divine justice, but it is also said, generally, “to work out the noble purposes of God.”93 Its tendency, as a theological writer assures us, is “to rectify and exalt the popular conception of God,” there being nothing among men “like the smell of gunpowder for making a nation perceive the fragrance of divinity in truth.”94 By war the different countries “have been opened up to the advance of true religion.”95 “No people ever did, or ever could, feel the power of Christian principle growing up like an inspiration through the national manhood, until the worth of it had been thundered on the battle-field.”96 War is, “when God sends it, a means of grace and of national renovation”; it is “a solemn duty in which usually only the best Christians and most trustworthy men should be commissioned to hold the sword.”97 According to M. Proudhon, it is the most sublime phenomenon of our moral life,98 a divine revelation more authoritative than the Gospel itself.99 The warlike people is the religious people;100 war is the sign of human grandeur, peace a thing for beavers and sheep. “Philanthrope, vous parlez d’abolir la guerre; prenez garde de dégrader le genre humain.”101

In order to prove the consistency of war with Christianity appeals are still, as in former days, made to the Bible; to the divinely-sanctioned example of the ancient Israelites, to the fact that Jesus never prohibited those around Him from bearing arms, to the instances of the centurions mentioned in the Gospel, to St. Paul’s predilection for taking his spiritual metaphors from the profession of the soldier, and so on.102 According to Canon Mozley, the Christian recognition of the right of war was contained in Christianity’s original recognition of nations.103 “By a fortunate necessity,” a universal empire is impossible.104 Each nation is a centre by itself, and when questions of right and justice arise between these independent centres, they cannot be decided except by mutual agreement or force. The aim of the nation going to war is exactly the same as that of the individual in entering a court, and the Church, which has no authority to decide which is the right side, cannot but stand neutral and contemplate war forensically, as a mode of settling national questions, which is justified by the want of any other mode.105 A natural justice, Canon Mozley adds, is inherent not only in wars of self-defence; there is an instinctive reaching in nations and masses of people after alteration and readjustment, which has justice in it, and which arises from real needs. The arrangement does not suit as it stands, there is want of adaptation, there is confinement and pressure; there are people kept away from each other that are made to be together, and parts separated that were made to join. All this uneasiness in States naturally leads to war. Moreover, there are wars of progress which, so far as they are really necessary for the due advantage of mankind and growth of society, are approved of by Christianity, though they do not strictly belong to the head of wars undertaken in self-defence.106 A doctrine which thus, in the name of religion, allows the waging of wars for rectifying the political distribution of nationalities and races, and forwarding the so-called progress of the world, naturally lends itself to the justification of almost any war entered upon by a Christian State.107 As a matter of fact, it would be impossible to find a single instance of a war waged by a Protestant country, from any motive, to which the bulk of its clergy have not given their sanction and support. The opposition against war has generally come from other quarters.