The Peace and Truce of God was a medieval European movement of the Catholic Church that applied spiritual sanctions to limit the violence of private war in feudal society. The movement constituted the first organized attempt to control civil society in medieval Europe through non-violent means. It began with very limited provisions in 989 AD and survived in some form until the thirteenth century.
Georges Duby summarized the widening social repercussions of Pax Dei:
The Peace and Truce of God, by attaching sacred significance to privacy, helped create a space in which communal gatherings could take place and thus encouraged the reconstitution of public space at the village level ... In the eleventh and twelfth centuries many a village grew up in the shadow of the church, in the zone of immunity where violence was prohibited under peace regulations.
Read more about Peace And Truce Of God: Classical and Pagan Precedents, Overview, Peace of God, Truce of God
Famous quotes containing the words peace and, peace, truce and/or god:
“Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.”
—Wendell Berry (b. 1934)
“Our whole life is startingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”
—Jewish proverb, quoted in Claud Cockburn, Cockburn Sums Up, epigraph (1981)