2 78. FEUDS AND PRIVATE WARS. 339
finally abolished all over Europe and North America. Where the spirit of Christ is there is liberty.
NOTES.
In Europe serfdom continued till the eighteenth century, in Russia even till 1861, when it was abolished by the Czar Alexander II. In the United States, the freest country in the world, strange to say, negro slavery flourished ;md waxed fat under the powerful protection of the federal constitution, the fugitive slave-law, the Southern state-laws, and " King Cotton," until it went out in blood (1861-65) at a cost far exceeding the most liberal compensation which Congress might and ought to have made for a peaceful emancipation. But passion ruled over reason, self-interest over justice, and politics over morals and religion. Slavery still lingers in nominally Christian countries of South America, and is kept up with the accursed slave-trade under Mohammedan rule in Africa, but is doomed to disappear from the bounds of civilization.
§ 78. Feuds and Private Wars. TJie Truce of God.
A. KLUCKHOHX : Geschichte des Gottesfriedens. Leipzig 1857. HENRY C. LEA : Superstition and Force. Essays on the Wager of Law — the Wager of Battle— the Ordeal— Torture. Phila. I860 (407 pages).
Among all barbarians, individual injury is at once re venged on the person of the enemy ; and the family or tribe to which the parties belong identify themselves with the quarrel till the thirst for blood is satiated. Hence the feuds * and pri vate 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.2 The Synod of Poitiers, A. D. 1000, resolved that all controversies should hereafter be adjusted by law and not by force.3 The belligerent individuals
1 Saxon Fwhth, or Fccght, Danish feide, Dutch veede, German Fehdc, lowLatin faida or faidia. Compare the German Feind, the English fiend. Du Cange defines faida: " Gravis et apertn inimicitia ob ccedem oliquam suscepta, and refers to his dissertation De Priratis Bettis.
8 Hefele III. 340. » IV. 655, 689.
340 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
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 punish ment 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." l 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 (aferioe quartce vespera usque ad secundam feriam, incipiente luce] on pain of excommuni cation.2 In 1041 the archbishop Raimbald of Aries, 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
1 Treuga Dei, Gottesfriede. See Du Cange sub. " Treva, Treuga, seu Trevia Dei." The word occurs in several languages (treuga, tregoa, trauva, treva, treve). It comes from the same root as the German treu, Treue, and the English true, troth, truce, and signifies a pledge of faith, given for a time to an enemy for keeping peace.
2 Rodulf 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 Aquitaniaz partibus anno incarnati Christi millesimo tricesimo tertio" from whence it spread rapidly "per Arelatensem provinciam, atque Lugdunensem, sicque per universam Burgundiam, atque in ultimas Francice paries" (Migne, I. c. fol. 678). Comp. lib. V. 1 (fol. 693) : "primitus in partibus 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 Jubilcei." 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 ex horted to peace. The bishop of Cambray, however, dissented because he thought the resolution could not be carried out.