place was Aquitaine, in the year of Henry's accession; and nowhere was it more eagerly adopted than in Burgundy, where religious zeal burnt whitest and private feuds were most universal and devastating.
Now this "Truce of God" was an addition made to the original proclamation of a Peace of God (c. 980), which forbade private violence against non-combatants, by oath and for a fixed time, as contrary to Christian precept. Like most medieval legislation, both "Peace" and "Truce" were largely failures[1]. Henry's "Indulgence" struck at the root of the evil as they had not. The Indulgence, it is true, was not so sweeping as would have been the "Peace of God," because no provision was made for the protection of non-combatants, in case private war did arrive. The "Indulgence," being a pardon of actual enemies, could by its nature refer only to the present and the actual without a word as to the future, although Henry no doubt hoped that the one must entail the other.
Another distinction between the "Treuga Dei" and the "Indulgence" consists in the ecclesiastical character of the former. The "Truce" was conceived by the Church, proclaimed by the Church, its breach punished by heavy ecclesiastical penalties. The "Indulgence" was an example and exhortation from a Christian king to his subjects, compliance being in appearance voluntary, though royal displeasure might threaten him who refused it. But the distinction does not, as some have thought, imply any sort of opposition. Henry approved of the "Truce" as churchmen approved of the "Indulgence." One adversary of the Truce opposed it, indeed, on the ground that by it the Church usurped a royal function. But this was the ultra-royalist Gerard of Cambray, one of the few bishops who did not enjoy Henry's favour. On the other hand, the chief supporters of the Truce in Burgundy were the bishops, firm imperialists. Only a year before Henry's visit to Burgundy the Bishops and Archbishops of Arles, Avignon, Nice, Vienne and Besançon, had met Pope Benedict IX at Marseilles and had in all probability obtained his approval for the measure promulgated by the Burgundian synod at Montriond in 1041, extending the time of the Truce to the whole of Lent and Advent. Cluny, whose ideal the king revered as the highest ideal of all monasticism, had, through Abbot Odilo, appealed on behalf of the Treuga Dei to all France and Italy. Within the French part of the Empire, in the diocese of Verdun, Henry's friend the Abbot Richard of St Vannes was a promoter and zealous supporter of the Truce.
To sum up: Henry knew the working of the "Truce": its friends were his friends, its aim was his aim. In the same spirit and with the same object he took a different method, neither identical with, nor an-
- ↑ Cf. Lavisse (Luchaire), Histoire de France, II. 2, pp. 133 ff. and see also Chapter XVIII. infra, p. 465.
