Peace and Truce of God

The Peace and Truce of God (Latin: Pax et treuga Dei; German: Gottesfrieden; French: Paix de Dieu; Español: Paz y tregua de Dios.) was a movement in the Middle Ages led by the Catholic Church that applied spiritual sanctions to limit the violence of feuding. It began with very limited provisions in 989 due to the political and territorial upheaval in France caused by the Frankish nobility and the movement 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.

The eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon, interpreting Tacitus, Germania §40, detected a parallel among the pagan German tribes who worshipped a goddess of the earth (identified by modern scholars with Nerthus) who in Gibbon's interpretation resided at the island of Rügen, who annually travelled to visit the tribes.

During her progress the sound of war was hushed, quarrels were suspended, arms laid aside, and the restless Germans had an opportunity of tasting the blessings of peace and harmony. The truce of God, so often and so ineffectually proclaimed by the clergy of the eleventh century, was an obvious imitation of this ancient custom.

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