ii. 229 sq.
It was thus in perfect consistency with the general teachings of the Church that she regarded an exploit achieved against the infidels as a merit which might obliterate the guilt of the most atrocious crimes. Such a deed was the instrument of pardon to Henry II. for the murder of Becket,33 and was supposed to be the means of cure to St. Louis in a dangerous illness. Fighting against infidels took rank with fastings, penitential discipline, visits to shrines, and almsgivings, as meriting the divine mercy.34 He who fell in the battle could be confident that his soul was admitted directly into the joys of Paradise.35 And this held good not only of wars against Muhammedans. The massacres of Jews and heretics seemed no less meritorious than the slaughter of the more remote enemies of the Gospel. Nay, even a slight shade of difference from the liturgy of Rome became at last a legitimate cause of war.
33 Lyttelton, History of the Life of King Henry the Second, iii. 96.
34 Cf. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, iv. 209.
35 Cf. Laurent, Études sur l’histoire de l’humanité, vii. 257.
It is true that these views were not shared by all. At the Council of Lyons, in 1274, the opinion was pronounced, and of course eagerly attacked, that it was contrary to the examples of Christ and the Apostles to uphold religion with the sword and to shed the blood of unbelievers.36 In the following century, Bonet maintained that, according to Scriptures, a Saracen or any other disbeliever could not be compelled by force to accept the Christian faith.37 Franciscus a Victoria declared that “diversity of religion is not a cause of just war”;38 and a similar opinion was expressed by Soto,39 Covarruvias a Leyva,40 and Suarez.41 According to Balthazar Ayala, the most illustrious Spanish lawyer of the sixteenth century, it does not belong to the Church to punish infidels who have never received the Christian faith, whereas those who, having once received it, afterwards endeavour to prevent the propagation of the Gospel, may, like other heretics, be justly persecuted with the sword.42 But the majority of jurisconsults, as well as of canonists, were in favour of the orthodox view that unbelief is a legitimate reason for going to war.43 And this principle was, professedly, acted upon to an extent which made the history of Christianity for many centuries a perpetual crusade, and transformed the Christian Church into a military power even more formidable than Rome under Cæsar and Augustus. Very often religious zeal was a mere pretext for wars which in reality were caused by avarice or desire for power. The aim of the Church was to be the master of the earth rather than the servant of heaven. She preached crusades not only against infidels and heretics, but against any disobedient prince who opposed her boundless pretensions. And she encouraged war when rich spoils were to be expected from the victor, as a thankoffering to God for the victory He had granted, or as an atonement for the excesses which had been committed.
36 Bethune-Baker, op. cit. p. 73.
37 Bonet, L'arbre des batailles, iv. 2, p. 86: “Selon la sainte Escripture nous ne pouvons et si ne devons contredire ne efforcer ung mescreant à recepvoir ne le saint bapteme ne la sainte foy ainsi les devons laisser en leur franche volonté que Dieu leur a donnée.”
38 Franciscus a Victoria, Relectiones Theologicæ, vi. 10, p. 231: “Caussa iusti belli non est diuersitas religionis.” Yet infidels may be constrained to allow the Gospel to be preached (ibid. v. 3. 12, p. 214 sq.).
39 Soto, De justititia et jure, v. 3. 5, fol. 154.
40 Covariuvias a Leyva, Regulæ, Pecatum, ii. 10. 2 (Opera omnia, i. 496): “Infidelitas non priuat infideles dominio, quod habent iure humano, vel habuerunt ante legem Euangelicam in prouinciis et regnis, quae obtinent.”
41 Suarez, cited by Nys, Droit de la guerre et les précurseurs de Grotius, p. 98.
42 Ayala, De iure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari, i. 2. 29 sq.
43 Nys, op. cit. p. 89. Idem, in his Introduction to Bonet’s L’arbre des batailles, p. xxiv. According to Conradus Brunus (De legationibus, iii. 8, p. 115), for instance, any war waged by Christians against the enemies of the Christian faith is just, as being undertaken for the defence of religion and the glory of God in order to recover the possession of dominions unjustly held by infidels.
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