The Truce of G.o.d.

by George Henry Miles.

INTRODUCTION

"The Truce of G.o.d" by our American novelist and dramatist, George Henry Miles, is not only a romantic and interesting story, it recalls one of the most striking achievements of the Middle Ages.

After the tide of barbarian invasion, Goths and Vandals, Heruli, Burgundians and Franks had swept away the edifice of Roman civilization, had it not been for the regenerating influence of Christianity, another empire as cruel would have risen on the ruins of Rome. No other power would then have ruled but the sword. The sword was king, and received the worship of thousands. Now and then a ruler appeared like Theodoric, Charlemagne, the Lombard Luitprand, who used the sword on the whole for just and beneficent ends. And because these warrior kings, even in the midst of their conquests, brought some of the blessings of peace to their subject peoples, these peoples welcomed their sway. Peace was, then as now, one of the world's needs.

Although the eighth, ninth and succeeding century were not without their brighter sides and were not those totally Dark Ages they have been represented by the enemies of the Church, nevertheless, seeds of evil pa.s.sions, which in spite of her endeavors the Church had been unable completely to stifle, lingered in the hearts of those strong-limbed, strong-pa.s.sioned Teutonic races which had succeeded to the tasks and responsibilities of pagan Rome. Those races did not have Rome's organizing power. By force, it is true, in a great measure, but force intelligently applied, but also by patience, by an instinct for justice and for order, Rome had welded her vast empire into a coherent whole.

Rome really, and effectively ruled. She had authority, she had prestige, she was respected and feared, until the fatal day when, for her vices and tyranny, she began to be hated. That day her fate was sealed.

The Teutonic races lacked the power of organization. They were strong and comparatively free from the vices of Rome; they had a rude sense of justice. But that very sense and instinct for that one essential of ordered life drove the individual to take the execution of the law and of justice into his own hands and to claim his rights at the point of the sword. The result can be easily imagined. The sword was never for a long time thrust back into the scabbard. Incessant wars, not at the bidding of the ruler, nor sanctioned by the voice of public authority or for the public welfare, but for private ends, for revenge, for greed and booty, were waged throughout the length and breadth of Europe.

The civil government, or the empty simulacrum that went under the name, seemed powerless, for the simple reason that the strong arm of either a Charlemagne or a Charles Martel too seldom appeared to check the culprits, or because the civil government itself only added fuel to the flame, by the encouragement it gave to license and violence by its own evil example.

But society had to protect itself. Conscious of its danger, and that it was doomed to destruction, if some remedy were not found, it evolved in the tenth and the following century, not an absolutely efficacious remedy, but one which enabled it to pa.s.s in comparative safety that dangerous period and carried European civilization to the full glories of the age of Dante, St. Louis and the Angel of the Schools. The remedy was feudalism.

That inst.i.tution has been misunderstood. It was called forth by special needs, and when the conditions which it met in an almost providential manner changed, it quietly pa.s.sed away. But it rendered an important and never-to-be forgotten service to war-torn Europe. Feudalism can scarcely be called a complete and rounded system. For it was constantly undergoing modification. It was not the same north as south of the Loire. It was one thing on the west, and quite another on the east of the Rhine. In general it was, as Stubbs described it ("Const.i.tutional History." Vol. 1, pp. 255, 256), "a regulated and fairly well graduated method of jurisdiction, based on land tenure, in which every lord, king, duke, earl or baron protected, judged, ruled, taxed the cla.s.s next below him; ... in which private war, private coinage and private prisons took the place of the imperial inst.i.tutions of power." Land, "the sacramental tie" then, "of all relations," and not money, was the chief wealth of those ages. For services rendered, therefore, fiefs or landed estates were the reward. Feudalism thus rested on a contract entered into by the nation represented by the king, which let out its lands to individuals who paid the rent not only by doing military service, but by rendering such services to the king as the king's courts might require. The bond was frequently extremely loose, and it was hard then to say which of the two was in reality the stronger, the feudal lord or the technically lower, but sometimes in reality stronger, va.s.sal.

The feudal lord was bound to support his va.s.sal, and in return, had a right to expect his help in the hour of danger. The feudal lord owed his va.s.sals justice, protection, shelter and refuge. If certain privileges, claimed by the feudal lord, were onerous, the va.s.sal was not without some guarantee that he would be shown fair play; for it was evident that unless in some way rights and obligations were fairly well balanced, and there was a fair return for service rendered, the whole system would soon crumble to pieces.

The "system," if it can be called one, was, as we have said, by no means perfect, but it bridged the historic gap which stretches between the fall of the Carolingian power and the full dawn of the Middle Ages. It saved Europe from anarchy. Its blessings cannot be denied. It helped to foster the love of independence, of self-government, of local inst.i.tutions, of communal and munic.i.p.al freedom. The va.s.sal that lived under the shadows of the strong towers of a feudal lord did not look much further beyond, to the king in his palace or in his courts of justice, for protection. He found it closer at home. The va.s.sal, moreover, began to think of his own rights and privileges, to value them and to ask that they be enforced. The idea of right and law, one of the most deeply engraved in the Christian conscience in the Middle Ages, grew and developed. The barons were the first to claim these rights; gradually the whole nation imitated them. Even when they claimed them, primarily for themselves, the whole nation partic.i.p.ated sooner or later in their blessings. The Barons of Runnymede were fighting the battles of every ploughboy in England when they wrenched _Magna Charta_ from King John.

Although many a feudal lord was a proud and hard-driving master, yet the va.s.sal and the serf knew that there were limits which his lord dared not transgress; that the very spirit of his "caste", for such to a certain extent was the social rank to which the feudal lord belonged, would not tolerate any too flagrant a violation of his privileges. A bond of united interests was found between feudal n.o.ble and his va.s.sal. They were found side by side in war; their larger interests were the same in peace. Loyalty, honor, fidelity took deep root in the society which they represented.

As the aristocracy of feudalism was founded, not on wealth or money, but on land tenure, one of the most stable t.i.tles to prestige and authority found in history, there was in the underlying concept of society in those days a feeling of stability and permanency, which for a time made feudalism, in spite of its flaws, a bulwark of order. It fostered even a strong family spirit. Baron, count or earl, behind the thick ramparts of his castle, lived a patriarchal life. He was, with his retainers and men-at-arms, his chaplains, to watch over his spiritual needs, his wife and children and va.s.sals, dependent upon him for protection and safety, impelled by every sense of honor, duty and chivalry to make them feel that he was their sword and buckler. They were closely knit to him.

There was a patriarchal bond between them. Family spirit grew strong and, under the teaching of the Church, it became pure.

Feudalism had its flaws. It was strictly an aristocratic inst.i.tution. It fostered the spirit of pride and bore harshly at times upon the serf and the man of low degree. But its harsher features were softened by the teachings of the Church. When it was at its height, voices of Popes like Alexander III and of Doctors like St. Thomas Aquinas, were lifted to proclaim the equality of all men in the sight of G.o.d. At the altar, serf and master, count or cottier, knelt side by side. In the monasteries and convents, the poor man's son might wear the Abbot's ring and in the a.s.semblies and councils of the realm, the poor clerk of former days, might speak with all the authority of a Bishop to sway the destinies of both Church and State.

One of the greatest evils of feudalism was that it fostered to excess the warlike spirit. Of its very nature, the system was a complex one. It gave rise to countless misunderstandings between the various grades of its involved hierarchy. The opportunities and plausible pretexts for misunderstandings, quarrels and war were many. A petty quarrel in Burgundy, in Champagne, in the Berry in France, involved not only the duke and count of these territories but almost every va.s.sal or feudal lord in the province. The same might be said of the German n.o.bles in Suabia, Thuringia and Franconia. Private wars were frequent, and though the barbarism of the past ages had almost completely disappeared under the teaching of the Gospel, these contests, as might be expected, were both sanguinary and wasteful.

The Church fought manfully against these private wars. It took every possible means to prevent them entirely. When in the nature of things, it found it impossible to do away with them altogether, it tried to mitigate their horrors, to limit their field of operation, to diminish their savagery. If the kingly authority was flouted, save perhaps when a st.u.r.dy ruler like William the Conqueror in England, or Hugh Capet in France, showed that there was a man at the helm, who meant to rule and was not afraid to quell rebellious earls and make them obey, there was one power these mail-clad warriors respected. They respected the Apostles Peter and Paul, they respected My Lord the Pope, and the Bishops of France and Normandy and England who shared in their authority. They flouted a king's edict, but none but hardened criminals among them laughed at an episcopal or a Papal excommunication.

These rude men, and it places their rude age high in the scale of civilization, respected religion. They lowered the sword before the Cross. The Church had for the disobedient and the refractory one terrible weapon, which she was loath to use, but which she occasionally used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication. Many a modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and in mild contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her children, much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale of ogre or hobgoblin before them. Yet the student of history might profitably study the use which the Church has made of such an instrument, and find in it one of the most effective causes of social regeneration in the Middle Ages.

The Church, in order to fight the military and armed excesses of feudalism, employed many means. It is to her that we owe what is known as the "Truce of G.o.d," or the enforced temporary suspension of hostilities usually, from the sunset of each Wednesday to Monday morning. Under pain of excommunication, during that interval, which at several times was further extended so as to comprise the seasons of Advent and Lent, and some of the major feasts, the sword might not be drawn in private quarrel. From a decree of the Council of Elne, in the South of France, we find that the "Truce of G.o.d," the "_Treuga Dei_" as it was technically called, was in full honor and had reached the height of its beneficent power in 1207. But long before, in the days when Gregory VII was Pope, and William of Normandy had just won his English crown, and Henry III ruled in Germany and Henry I in France, in the days when feudalism was making its first attempts to bring order out of chaos, several councils of the Church in France and in Normandy had traced out the plan and the outlines of the "Truce of G.o.d." Earlier even, at the Councils of Charroux (989), Narbonne (990), Le Puy and Anse (990), severe penalties were p.r.o.nounced against those who wantonly in time of war destroyed the poor man's cattle or harried his fields, or carried off his beasts of burden. "Leagues of Peace" were formed to diminish the horrors of war, to protect the helpless, to enforce order.

The Council of Poitiers, where there is one of the earliest mentions of these "Leagues of Peace," was held 1223 years ago. The Council of Bourges in 1031 created a species of national militia to police the rural districts and prevent war. Our ancestors believed in leagues with "teeth in them." From France where the movement had its origin and culminated at Elne (1207) in the full organization of the "Truce of G.o.d," it spread eastward into Germany and Thuringia. The German duchies and the Austrian marches submitted soon after to its humanitarian and Christian code. In 1030, the Pope, the French and German princes united their efforts for the development of the forerunners of the "Truce of G.o.d," the conventions known as the "Peace of G.o.d." The Peace, the earlier inst.i.tution of the two, exempted from the evils of war, churches, monasteries, clerics, children, pilgrims, husbandmen; the cattle, the fields, the vineyards of the toiler; his instruments of labor, his barns, his bakehouse, his milch cows, his goats and his fowl.

The Truce forbade war at certain "closed seasons." It gave angry pa.s.sions time to subside, and endeavored to discredit war by making peace more desirable and its blessings more prolonged. It is probable that the Council of Charroux already mentioned laid the germs of the Truce. At the Council of Elne we see it fully organized. In 1139 the Tenth General Council, the Second Lateran, gave in its eleventh Canon its official approbation to what must be considered one of the most beautiful inst.i.tutions of the Middle Ages.

Under the guidance of our American author, George Henry Miles, we are led back to the days of the eleventh century. He is an accurate and picturesque chronicler of that iron, yet chivalrous age. If on the one hand, we see the sinister figure of Henry IV of Germany, on the other we find the austere but n.o.ble monk Hildebrand, who became Pope St. Gregory VII. We hear the clash of swords drawn in private brawl and vendetta, but see them put back into the scabbard at the sound of the church bells that announce the beginning of the "Truce of G.o.d." The tale opens beneath the arches of a Suabian forest, with Gilbert de Hers and Henry de Stramen facing each other's swords as mortal foes; it closes with Gilbert and Henry, now reconciled, kneeling at the tomb of the fair and lovely Lady Margaret, their hates forgotten before the grave of innocence and maidenly devotion, and learning from the hallowed memory of the dead, the lesson of that forgiveness that makes us divine.

The American novelist, like the Italian Manzoni, teaches the lesson inculcated in "The Betrothed" ("_I Promessi Sposi_"). It is a lesson of forgiveness. It is n.o.blest to forgive. Forgiveness is divine. Forgive seventy times seventy times, again and again. In Manzoni's story, the saintly Frederick Borromeo preaches and acts that sublime lesson in his scene with the _Innominato_ with compelling eloquence. In "The Truce of G.o.d," the Lady Margaret, the monk Omehr, the very woes of the Houses of Hers and Stramen, the tragic madness of the unfortunate Bertha, the blood shed in a senseless and pa.s.sionate quarrel, the bells of the sanctuary bidding the warring factions sheathe the sword, incessantly proclaim the same duty. In writing his story, George Henry Miles was not only painting for us a picture aglow with the life of olden times, but pointing out in a masterly way, the historic role of the Church in molding the manners of an entire generation.

The reader of "The Truce of G.o.d," in spite of the fact that the romance seems to be sketched only in its broadest outlines, gets a distinct knowledge of its chief actors. They live before his eyes. De Hers and Stramen are not mere abstractions. They have the rugged, clear-cut character, the sudden pa.s.sions, the quick and at times dangerous and savage impulses of the men of the eleventh century. In them the barbarian has not yet been completely tamed. But neither has he been given full rein. Somewhere in these hearts, there lurks a sentiment of honor, of knighthood, which the Church of Christ has enn.o.bled, and to which the helpless and the innocent do not appeal in vain.

The American has caught this sentiment and plays upon it skillfully. His setting is in keeping with his story. The wandering minstrel, the turreted castle, the festive board, the high-vaulted hall with its oaken rafters, the chase, the wide reaches of the forests of Franconia, the beetling ramparts of old feudal castles by the Rhine or the lovely sh.o.r.es of the Lake of Constance, the vineyards on the slopes of sunny hills, the bannered squadrons, the din of battle, the crash of helm and spear, are brought before us with dramatic power. Historic figures appear on the scene. Close to the princ.i.p.al actors in the story, we see the gallant Rodolph of Arles, G.o.defroi de Bouillon, Berchtold of Carinthia, Hohenstaufen and Welf, acting their life drama at the council board or on the field of battle. We see a woman and an old man, Mathilda of Tuscany and Pope St. Gregory VII, slowly but surely building on the foundations of a half-molded civilization the ramparts of the City of G.o.d. "The Truce of G.o.d" is true to the requirements of the historical romance. It summons before us a forgotten past, and makes it live. We forget in the vitality and artistic grouping of the picture, in the n.o.bility of the author's purpose and the lasting moral effect of the story, the occasional stiffness of the style. It is the style of the refined scholar, perhaps also of the bookman and the too conscious critic. Occasionally it lacks spontaneity, directness and naturalness.

It might unbend more and forget ceremony. But it is picturesque, forcible, clear, and bears us along with its swing and dramatic movement.

American Catholics must not forget the excellent work done by George Henry Miles for the cause of Catholic literature, the more so as his name is not infrequently omitted from many popular histories of American literature. Yet the author of "The Truce of G.o.d" had mastered the story teller's and the dramatist's art. "If there was ever a born _litterateur_," writes Eugene L. Didier, in _The Catholic World_ for May, 1881, "that man was George Henry Miles. His taste was pure, exquisite and refined, his imagination was rich, vivid, and almost oriental in its warmth." Moreover, he consecrated his life and his talents to the cause of Catholic education, identifying himself for many years with Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, with whose annals so much of the early history of the Catholic Church in the United States, is closely linked.

The author of "The Truce of G.o.d" was born in Baltimore, July 31, 1824; he died at Emmitsburg, July 23, 1872. In his twelfth year the lad entered Mount St. Mary's College. Here he became a Catholic and had afterwards the happiness of seeing his family follow him into the Church. The studies at the "Mountain" in those days were still under the magic and salutary spell of the venerable founder, Bishop Dubois, and his followers. They were old fashioned, but they were solid, with the cla.s.sics of Greece and Rome, mathematics, philosophy and religion as their foundation. They were eminently calculated to mold thinkers, scholars and cultured Catholic gentlemen. They left a deep impression on the young Marylander. After his graduation at the end of the scholastic year, 1843, the law for a short while lured him away, to its digests, its quiddits and quillets, abstracts and briefs. But it was putting Pegasus in pound. Miles at a lawyer's task was as much out of place as Edgar Allan Poe was when mounting guard as a cadet at West Point, or Charles Lamb with a quill behind his ear balancing his ledger in India House. The Mountain and the Muses lured him back to Emmitsburg, where a short distance from the college gate, in the quiet retreat of Thornbrook, he settled to his books and a professor's tasks at the Mount. Close by were the lovely haunts of La Salette, Hillside, Loretto, Tanglewood, Andorra, Mt. Carmel, every little cottage and garden, eloquent, it has been said, of the faith and piety of the builders of the Mount, who breathed the spirit that thus baptized them ("The Story of the Mountain. Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland." By the Rev. E. McSweeny. Vol. II, p. 102). For its historic a.s.sociations, its panorama of hills, wooded slopes and fields, the spot could scarcely be matched within the wide amphitheater of the hills of Maryland.

To Emmitsburg, to his "boys", the young professor of English literature gave his enthusiasm, his idealism, his love of all that was fair in art and the world of books. His enthusiasm inspired them with a love of artistic excellence, which, neither in his own work, nor in that of his pupils would tolerate anything commonplace. Before coming to Thornbrook, he had written "The Truce of G.o.d," first published as a serial in the _United States Catholic Magazine_, established by John Murphy of Baltimore, and which under the editorship of Bishop Martin John Spalding and the Rev. Charles I. White achieved a national reputation. Two other tales, "Loretto," and the "Governess," had also been published and were extremely popular. Like "The Truce of G.o.d," they were of the purest moral tone, elegant in diction, the work of a thorough literary craftsman. In 1850, the American actor, Edwin Forrest, offered a prize of $1,000.00 for the best drama written by an American. Miles easily carried off the reward with his play "Mohammed." Rich with all the colors of the East, glowing with the warmth and poetry of Arabian romance and story, "Mohammed" was rather the work of a thinker and a poet than of a master dramatist. It was never acted, Forrest himself judging that it had not that ebb and flow of pa.s.sion, nor that strong presentation of character which of all things are so necessary for the stage. Yet in other plays, notably in "_Senor Valiente_" and especially in "_De Soto_," and "Mary's Birthday," Miles showed that in him the dramatic note was not lacking, and in both he scored remarkable successes.

From Baltimore, after he had left the pursuit of the law, and from Thornbrook, close to the academic halls in which from 1859 he pa.s.sed his entire life, Miles seldom emerged into public notice. Twice he visited Europe, his impressions of the second journey (1864) being recorded in "Glimpses of Tuscany." In 1851 President Fillmore sent him on a confidential mission to Madrid. That same year, John Howard Payne, the loved singer of "Home, Sweet Home," was reinstated in his consulship of Tunis. Like Miles, that wandering bard was a convert to the Catholic Faith. But unlike Miles, he did not enter the Church until the very end of his life, practically on his death bed. Catholics will be glad to know that the song, "Home, Sweet Home," whose underlying melody Payne caught from the lips of an Italian peasant girl, was written by one who, after many strange wanderings, found "Home" at last in that Church which is the mistress and inspirer of art. Like Payne, Miles captured the fancy of his countrymen with one song, "Said the Rose," which at one time was the most popular song in the United States. It has not the depth and the melting tenderness of "Home, Sweet Home," but its quaint fancy and melodious verse struck a responsive chord. In his "Inkerman,"

a stirring ballad, which every American boy of a former age knew by heart, there was an echo of the "Lays of Ancient Rome," of the "Lays" of Scott and Aytoun, while in the more ambitious "Christine" (1866), there was the accent of the genuine poet, something that recalled the "Christabel" of Coleridge. Miles had projected a series of studies on the characters and plays of Shakespeare. Judging from two remaining fragments, "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," the latter a mere outline, we regret that the writer was not able to finish the task. To beauty of language his study of "Hamlet" adds keen a.n.a.lytical powers and original views.

("An American Catholic Poet," _The Catholic World_. Vol. x.x.xIII, p. 145 ff.)

In the quiet churchyard on the slope of his beloved Mountain, in a simple grave, over which the green hills of Maryland keep guard, not far from the cla.s.s-rooms and the chapel he loved, rest the mortal remains of the author of "The Truce of G.o.d." It is not necessary to describe him.

Those who read this simple but romantic and stirring tale of the eleventh century which he wrote three-quarters of a century ago, cannot fail to catch the main features of the man. They will conclude that in George Henry Miles, religion and art, the purest ideals of the Catholic faith and the highest standards of culture and letters, are blended in rare proportion.

JOHN C. REVILLE, S.J., _Editor-in-chief_.

THE TRUCE OF G.o.d

CHAPTER I

Of ancient deeds so long forgot; Of feuds whose memory was not; Of forests now laid waste and bare; Of towers which harbor now the hare; Of manners long since changed and gone; Of chiefs who under their gray stone So long had slept, that fickle fame Hath blotted from her rolls their name.

SCOTT.

Reader! if your mind, hara.s.sed with the cares of a utilitarian age, require an hour of recreation; if a legend of a far different and far distant day have aught that can claim your sympathy or awaken your attention; if the "Dark Ages" be to you Ages of Faith, or even lit with the gray morning-light of civilization, come wander back with me beyond the experimental revolution of the sixteenth century, to the time when the Gothic temples of the living G.o.d were new.

It was the eleventh century: the sun shone as brightly then as now; ay, and virtue too, though sympathy for a l.u.s.tful tyrant has stamped the age with infamy. Through an extensive forest in Suabia, as the old chronicle from which I copy relates, a gallant youth was urging on, with voice and rein, a steed that seemed as bold and fiery as his rider. The youth's flashing eye, and the spear in his hand, told clearly enough that the boar was before him. On he went, as if the forest were his element, now bending low beneath the knotted bough, now swerving aside from the stern old trunk which st.u.r.dily opposed his progress, and seemed to mock him as he pa.s.sed. On he went, as if danger were behind and safety before him; as if he galloped to save his own life, not to risk it in taking a boar's. An angry bark and a fearful howl rang in the distance, and the hunter's bugle sounded a merry blast. On he went, faster than before, and now as if he sought his mortal foe. The boar was at bay; monarch of the wood, he had turned to defend his realm, and his white tusks were soon red with the blood of the n.o.ble hounds who fearlessly disputed his right. The youth leaped from his horse with the speed of thought. Bred to the chase, the well-trained animal stood firm while his master cautiously, but with the calmness of the victor of a hundred frays, advanced against the bristling monster. Quitting the dogs for this new a.s.sailant, the boar came madly on; the huntsman sank upon one knee, and so true was his eye, and so firm his hand, that the heart of the savage was cloven by the spear. The youth rose to his feet, dizzy from the shock, and, springing nimbly upon the grim body of his prostrate victim, his fine form swelling with the rapture of his recent triumph, brought his horn to his lips, and again its notes went ringing merrily through the woods.

Echoes, like fading memories, growing fainter and fainter as they receded, gave the only response.

"Where can they be?" said the youth, "their steeds were fleet. Out of sight and out of hearing! How completely I have beaten them."

He laughed triumphantly as he said this, and, sitting down upon the long gra.s.s, began to caress an enormous hound that panted at his feet, as unconcernedly as though the forest now contained nothing more formidable than doves or lambs. His horse, thoroughly domesticated, strayed a little from the dead boar, feeding as it went.

The youth took off his plumed bonnet, and, flinging back his long black hair, fell into one of those light, smiling day-dreams which belong only to the young and innocent. He built fifteen air-castles in as many minutes. But at last he grew impatient; he sounded blast after blast; still no answer came. The trees kept up their sleepy sigh, and the sapless branches creaked, but no human voice, no human foot save his own, broke the silence.

"Thou hast given me a goodly chase," exclaimed the youth, springing up and addressing the boar, "and I shall wear this in remembrance of thee."

He drew his hunting-knife, and soon uprooted one of the monster's tusks.

Depositing the precious relic in a hunting pouch he wore at his side, he mounted his horse, rather puzzled where to go.

"It is easier to get in this oaken field than to get out of it," said our hunter, "but if the forest have an end, I'll find it. Now, my dear loitering friends, we hunt each other."