Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay
It was its fighting spirit and not a love of peace that made
Christianity a state religion under Constantine. Nor was Augustine
the first of the Church Fathers to regard military service as
permissible. To come to a later time, this change of attitude has
been ascribed partly to the rise of Mahometan power and the wave of
fanaticism which broke over Europe. To destroy these unbelievers with
fire and sword was regarded as a deed of piety pleasing to God. Hence
the wars of the Crusades against the infidel were holy wars, and
appear as a new element in the history of civilisation. The nations
of ancient times had known only civil and foreign war.[14] They had
rebelled at home, and they had fought mainly for material interests
abroad. In the Middle Ages there were, besides, religious wars and,
with the rise of Feudalism, private war:[15] among all the powers
of the Dark Ages and for centuries later, none was more aggressive
than the Catholic Church, nor a more active and untiring defender of
its rights and claims, spiritual or temporal. It was in some respects
a more warlike institution than the states of Greece and Rome. It
struggled through centuries with the Emperor:[16] it pronounced its
ban against disobedient states and disloyal cities: it pursued with
its vengeance each heretical or rebellious prince: unmindful of its
early traditions about peace, it showed in every crisis a fiercely
military spirit.[17]
[14] There were so-called “Sacred Wars” in Greece, but these were
due mainly to disputes caused by the Amphictyonic League. They
were not religious, in the sense in which we apply the epithet to
the Thirty Years’ war.
[15] “The administration of justice among rude illiterate people,
was not so accurate, or decisive, or uniform, as to induce men
to submit implicitly to its determinations. Every offended baron
buckled on his armour, and sought redress at the head of his
vassals. His adversary met him in like hostile array. Neither
of them appealed to impotent laws which could afford them no
protection. Neither of them would submit points, in which their
honour and their passions were warmly interested, to the slow
determination of a judicial inquiry. Both trusted to their swords
for the decision of the contest.” Robertson’s _History of Charles
V._, (_Works_, vol. V.) Sect. I., p. 38.
[16] Erasmus in the “Ἰχθυοφαγία” (_Colloquies_, Bailey’s ed.,
Vol. II., pp. 55, 56) puts forward the suggestion that a general
peace might be obtained in the Christian world, if the Emperor
would remit something of his right and the Pope some part of his.
[17] Cf. Robertson, _op. cit._, Sect. III., p. 106, _seq._
For more than a thousand years the Church counted fighting
clergy[18] among its most active supporters. This strange anomaly
was, it must be said, at first rather suffered in deference to public
opinion than encouraged by ecclesiastical canons and councils, but it
gave rise to great discontent at the time of the Reformation.[19] The
whole question of the lawfulness of military service for Christians
was then raised again. “If there be anything in the affairs of
mortals,” wrote Erasmus at this time (_Opera_, II., _Prov._, 951
C) “which it becomes us deliberately to attack, which we ought
indeed to shun by every possible means, to avert and to abolish,
it is certainly war, than which there is nothing more wicked, more
mischievous or more widely destructive in its effects, nothing harder
to be rid of, or more horrible and, in a word, more unworthy of a
man, not to say of a Christian.”[20] The mediæval Church indeed
succeeded, by the establishment of such institutions as the Truce
of God, in setting some limits to the fury of the soldier: but its
endeavours (and it made several to promote peace)[21] were only to
a trifling extent successful. Perhaps custom and public opinion in
feudal Europe were too strong, perhaps the Church showed a certain
apathy in denouncing the evils of a military society: no doubt the
theoretical tenets of its doctrine did less to hinder war than its
own strongly military tendency, its lust for power and the force of
its example did to encourage it.
[18] Robertson (_op. cit._, Note XXI., p. 483) quotes the
following statement: “flamma, ferro, caede, possessiones
ecclesiarum praelati defendebant.” (Guido Abbas ap. Du Cange, p.
179.)
[19] J. A. Farrar, in a pamphlet, (reprinted from the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, vol. 257, 1884) on _War and
Christianity_, quotes the following passage from Wycliffe in
which he protests against this blot upon the Church and Christian
professions.—“Friars now say that bishops can fight best of all
men, and that it falleth most properly to them, since they are
lords of all this world. They say Christ bade His disciples sell
their coats, and buy them swords; but whereto, if not to fight?
Thus friars make a great array, and stir up many men to fight.
But Christ taught not His apostles to fight with a sword of iron,
but with the sword of God’s Word, and which standeth in meekness
of heart and in the prudence of man’s tongue.... If man-slaying
in others be odious to God, much more in priests, who should be
vicars of Christ.” See also the passage where Erasmus points
out that King David was not permitted to build a temple to God,
because he was a man of blood. “Nolo clericos ullo sanguine
contaminari. Gravis impietas!” (_Opera_, IX., 370 B.)
This question had already been considered by Thomas Aquinas, who
decided that the clergy ought not to be allowed to fight, because
the practices of warfare, although right and meritorious in
themselves, were not in accordance with a holy calling. (_Summa_,
II. 2: Qu. 40.)
Aquinas held that war—excluding private war—is justifiable in a
just cause. So too did Luther, (cf. his pamphlet: _Ob Kriegsleute
auch in seligem Stande sein können?_) Calvin and Zwingli, the
last of whom died sword in hand.
With regard to the question of a fighting clergy, the passage
quoted from Origen (pp. 14, 15, above) has considerable interest,
Origen looks upon the active participation of priests in warfare
as something which everyone would admit to be impossible.
[20] See also the _Querela Pacis_, 630 B., (_Opera_,
IV.):—“Whosoever preaches Christ, preaches peace.” Erasmus even
goes the length of saying that the most iniquitous peace is
better than the most just war (_op. cit._, 636 C).
[21] Cf. Robertson, _op. cit._, Note XXI. p. 483 and Sect. I., p.
39.
Hence, in spite of Christianity and its early vision of a brotherhood
of men, the history of the Middle Ages came nearer to a realization
of the idea of perpetual war than was possible in ancient times.
The tendency of the growth of Roman supremacy was to diminish the
number of wars, along with the number of possible causes of racial
friction. It united many nations in one great whole, and gave them,
to a certain extent, a common culture and common interests; even,
when this seemed prudent, a common right of citizenship. The fewer
the number of boundaries, the less the likelihood of war. The
establishment of great empires is of necessity a force, and a great
and permanent force working on the side of peace. With the fall of
Rome this guarantee was removed.
_The Development of the New Science of International Law._
Out of the ruins of the old feudal system arose the modern state
as a free independent unity. Private war between individuals or
classes of society was now branded as a breach of the peace: it
became the exclusive right of kings to appeal to force. War, wrote
Gentilis[22] towards the end of sixteenth century, is the just or
unjust conflict between states. Peace was now regarded as the normal
condition of society. As a result of these great developments in
which the name “state” acquired new meaning, jurisprudence freed
itself from the trammelling conditions of mediæval Scholasticism. Men
began to consider the problem of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of
war, to question even the possibility of a war on rightful grounds.
Out of theses new ideas—partly too as one of the fruits of the
Reformation,[23]—arose the first consciously formulated principles of
the science of international law, whose fuller, but not yet complete,
development belongs to modern times.
[22] It is uncertain in what year the _De Jure Belli_ of Gentilis
was published—a work to which Grotius acknowledges considerable
indebtedness. Whewell, in the preface to his translation of
Grotius, gives the date 1598, but some writers suppose it to have
been ten years earlier.
[23] This came about in two ways. The Church of Rome discouraged
the growth of national sentiment. At the Reformation the
independence and unity of the different nations were for the
first time recognised. That is to say, the Reformation laid the
foundation for a science of international law. But, from another
point of view, it not only made such a code of rules possible,
it made it necessary. The effect of the Reformation was not to
diminish the number of wars in which religious belief could play
a part. Moreover, it displaced the Pope from his former position
as arbiter in Europe without setting up any judicial tribunal in
his stead.
From the beginning of history every age, every people has something
to show here, be it only a rudimentary sense of justice in their
dealings with one another. We may instance the Amphictyonic League
in Greece which, while it had a merely Hellenic basis and was
mainly a religious survival, shows the germ of some attempt at
arbitration between Greek states. Among the Romans we have the _jus
feciale_[24] and the _jus gentium_, as distinguished from the civil
law of Rome, and certain military regulations about the taking of
booty in war. Ambassadors were held inviolate in both countries;
the formal declaration of war was never omitted. Many Roman writers
held the necessity of a just cause for war. But nowhere do these
considerations form the subject matter of a special science.
[24] Cf. Cicero: _De Officiis_, I. xi. “Belli quidem aequitas
sanctissime feciali populi Romani jure perscripta est.” (See the
reference to Lawrence’s comments on this subject, p. 9 above.)
“Wars,” says Cicero, “are to be undertaken for this end,
that we may live in peace without being injured; but when we
obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved
without cruelty or inhumanity during the war: for example,
our forefathers received, even as members of their state, the
Tuscans, the Æqui, the Volscians, the Sabines and the Hernici,
but utterly destroyed Carthage and Numantia.... And, while
we are bound to exercise consideration toward those whom we
have conquered by force, so those should be received into
our protection who throw themselves upon the honour of our
general, and lay down their arms,” (_op. cit._, I. xi., Bohn’s
Translation).... “In engaging in war we ought to make it appear
that we have no other view but peace.” (_op. cit._, I. xxiii.)
In fulfilling a treaty we must not sacrifice the spirit to the
letter (_De Officiis_, I. x). “There are also rights of war, and
the faith of an oath is often to be kept with an enemy.” (_op.
cit._, III. xxix.)
This is the first statement by a classical writer in which the
idea of justice being due to an enemy appears. Cicero goes
further. Particular states, he says, (_De Legibus_, I. i.) are
only members of a whole governed by reason.
In the Middle Ages the development of these ideas received little
encouragement. All laws are silent in the time of war,[25] and this
was a period of war, both bloody and constant. There was no time