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
78 Robertson, op. cit. i. 55, 56, 338 sqq. Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, i. 207. Brussel, op. cit. i. 142.
79 Ibid. i. 343 sq. Prof. Freeman (Comparative Politics, p. 328 sq.) mentions as the last instance of private war in England one from the time of Edward IV.
80 Lawrence, Essays on some Disputed Questions in Modern International Law, p. 254 sq.
81 I do not understand how M. Gautier can say (op. cit. p. 6) that Chivalry was the most beautiful of those means by which the Church endeavoured to check war.
82 Mills, History of Chivalry, i. 147.
83 Laurent, op. cit. vii. 245.
84 Bonet, op. cit. iv. 54, p. 150.
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
85 Catechism of the Council of Trent, iii. 6. 5.
86 Adds and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, p. 944.
87 Gibb, loc. cit. p. 90.
88 Augsburg Confession, i. 16. Second Helvetic Confession, xxx. 4.
89 Farrer, Military Manners and Customs, p. 208.
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
90 Bacon, Letters and Life, i. (Works, viii.), 146.
91 Réal de Curban, La science