The Idea of Peace during the European “Middle Ages”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter will examine the trajectory of peace discourse throughout the European Middle Ages, beginning with the classical and Christian heritage through to the mid-fifteenth century, when wars had become endemic among some emerging European nation-states. Pacifism has usually been associated conceptually with modern political activism and social movements, but peace ideas were clearly having an impact much earlier. Initially mediated through the church, peace was originally understood more in spiritual terms or as an objective attainable only in heaven. The proliferation of just-war theories and various laws of war and arms in the central Middle Ages, intended to mitigate large-scale violence, paved the way for more practical arguments in the later Middle Ages when an incipient military revolution exacerbated the harmful effects of war on civilians and economies. Several late medieval religious movements offered a prophetic voice recalling early church and biblical imperatives enjoining Christians to work toward peace on earth, believing for the first time that this might be achievable.