Historians have often separated their treatments of war and of other forms of violence. They have done so mainly on two related criteria, the status of the leading participants and the scale of the violent activities; wars are large scale and the parties are obedient to opposing rulers or certainly leaders of high status. People in the tenth to twelfth centuries, however, used words such as ‘guerra’ both of conflicts between rulers and between parties of much lower status. At the same time, they, too, made distinctions, not only as to scale but also, for instance, as to legitimacy. Although churchmen made efforts to lay down strict canons of legitimacy, in practice judgment was very much in the eye of the beholder; the use of force by others might be seen as improper, and in turn require a forceful response. Thus Jordan Fantosme has Henry II of England state: