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The Church, Warfare and Military Obligation in Norman Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

G. A. Loud
G. A. Loud*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

One of the most important intellectual problems which the Church faced in the Middle Ages was to reconcile warfare with the Christian message. But the presence of, and the necessity for, war affected not merely the intellectual attitudes and social message of medieval ecclesiastics. The institutional Church faced obvious practical problems when confronted with external warfare or civil disturbance. On the one hand the ruler might well, indeed usually did, require churches with extensive property and wealth to contribute to the burden of defending the community. On the other hand churches might well, especially if the ruler’s authority was weak, face the need to defend themselves against the aggression of their neighbours. Churches therefore needed a military potential, whether or not the state laid this obligation upon them. Even the Church’s attempts to control warfare, the Peace and Truce of God movements, tended to embroil it in military activity, since exhortation and spiritual sanction often needed the backing of force to convince a recalcitrant laity of the virtues of bridling its internal violence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 20: The Church and War , 1983 , pp. 31 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1983

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38 [F.] Ughelli, [Italia Sacra (2nd ed, 10 vols, Venice 1717-22)] 1 cols 1129-30.

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41 Cai Bar art 823.

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45 Cai Bar art 1221.

46 ibid arts 107, 386, 402, 408.

47 ibid art 87.

48 Cava, Arm. Mag. H. 15.

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50 Cat Bar art 402; Ughelli 1 cols 923-4.

51 Corneto (1096 & 1105), half of Asoli Satriano (1098), Orta (1101) and S. Giovanni in Fronte (1105), L.R. Ménager, ‘Les fondations monastiques de Robert Guiscard’, QFIAB 39 (1959) pp 95-101 nos 21, 23-4, 27-8; Cat Bar art 408.

52 White, Latin Monasticism p 57. Most of the supposed royal diplomas for Montecassino are thirteenth-century forgeries, C-R. Brühl, Urkunden und Kanzlei König Rogers U von Sizilien (Cologne 1978) pp 164-172.

53 For Abbot Egidius of Venosa’s influence, La Historia o Liba de Regno Sicilie di Ugo Falcando, ed. G. B. Siragusa (Fonti per la storia d’Italia 22, Rome 1897) p 138. For the tomb of Guiscard, William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ed. W. Stubbs (2 vols, RS 1887-9) 2 p 322.

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56 Jamison, ‘Additional work’ pp 23-56, especially 29, 46-7, & 58. This may be the case with La Cava, which was much favoured by the Norman kings, not least in that it supplied the monks tor William II’s cherished foundation of Monreale; White, Latin Monasticism pp 134-6. Certainly the royal justiciar William of S. Severino, in a charter of 1187, was very careful to distinguish between land of the monastery within his barony of Cilento and the fiefs of that barony; Cava, Arm. Mag. L. 21.

57 Guillaume, Essai pp xxxv-xxxvi appendix L.Jamison, ‘Molise II’ pp 10-11.

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62 Jamison, ‘Additional work’ pp 9-10.

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67 Cat Bur art 1440; Cava, Arm. Mag. H.10(1152), I. 11 (1174).

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