Introduction

At the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo in 2002, John France's interpretation of a vast corpus of early saints' Lives showed that war in Christian western Europe was taken as a normal and acceptable activity in many circumstances, and that this acceptance stemmed from warfare's connection to common judicial procedures. Warrior saints – that is, the common sort of early medieval saint whose first career had been as a warrior, before a conversion experience and entry into the priesthood – often played judicial roles, justifying or forgiving offensive warfare versus other Christians and ameliorating the sinful effects of conducting war. And of course warfare versus pagans and infidels presented no problems whatsoever for a Christian view of the world. In short, Professor France showed that what the saints' Lives present is not pacifism but the evasion of criticism of war, motivated by the recognition of the necessity of war in maintaining order. And maintaining order was a political and judicial function requiring the exercise of force, or coercion.

The conception of warfare Professor France outlined, based on a judicial model and aimed at maintenance of order, derived from the same multiple roots that gave birth to most features of the medieval European world: Roman, Christian, and Germanic. Roman notions of law as the framework of the state and of the existence of a natural law superior to particular legal codes are part of the basic ideological framework behind this conception; in military terms in particular, the archaic Roman ius fetiale, the religious-military law governing the declaration of wars only for just causes, had created an intellectual tradition placing warfare in a legal context with cosmic underpinnings.