Elusive Peace? — A Glimmer of Hope from a Medieval Perspective with an Emphasis on Saint Francis of Assisi and Christine de Pizan
Who would not want to enjoy peace as the essential framework for human existence? Most people who are unmotivated by military, economic, and political profits from war strongly embrace peace as the major component for an enjoyable, productive, and meaningful life. Nevertheless, most of human history has been determined by war more than peace. Since the end of the Second World War, more wars have emerged, and the number of war related deaths have skyrocketed. Civil, terrorist, large-scale wars pitting the US against countries or militant groups, piracy, kidnapping, rape, and many other types of violence are tragedies filling the media.
Where has peace gone? Did we ever have it? Why do we need peace, if war is the catalyst for economic and technological developments? The western world oddly operates in a relatively peaceful environment, as if unaffected by global war. Yet, gun possession and murder rates in the US are astronomical compared to other countries. We cannot say whether there is a direct link between gun possession and violence, but both elements portray a percentage of life in the United States, and increasingly in Europe as well, not to mention catastrophic events in other parts of the globe.1
Human life requires peace, on small and large scales. Despite chaotic historical records, our charge as human individuals must be to promote peace as the universal modus operandi in order to validate us as human. Most of us, however, have no influence on the larger political and economic conditions and depend on government structures to promote peaceful environments. However, individuals can learn the meaning of peace and practice it daily. There is no purpose in promoting peace in a verbose and hollow manner, when our preaching is not predicated on practical, peaceful mind-sets. How can attitudes and mindsets be steered toward peace henceforth? Education is an important strategy to shape young people and thus galvanize society at large.2
As much as peace currently escapes our grips in today’s highly militarized world, we must ask the ancient question, “how did people in the past viewed peace?” They too were survivors who witnessed crime and massive slaughter, and yet escaped massacres, otherwise descendants today would not exist. Yet disaster always looms, and so each generation must continually question, the meaning of peace, its establishment and maintenance in earlier times, and learn from past strategies in that regard? A medieval approach is both crucial and productive in laying future societal foundations
Being a medievalist, this might pose an odd dilemma since the Middle Ages were deeply influenced by knighthood, crusades, lawlessness, lack of legal authorities, and weaponry. The early Middle Ages, for instance, witnessed the brutal battering of the Atlantic and Baltic shore lines and most of the embankments of major rivers by marauding, pillaging, and raiding Vikings. The attacks by the Huns in the fifth century left deep scars, and the dangers posed by the Muslim Arabs on the Iberian Peninsula were tangible.
Most of early medieval heroism focuses on individual protagonist efforts to defend themselves by any military means, with peace not being a prominent objective. They looked rather for honor and power at any costs, i.e. Beowulf (ca. 750–800), Chanson de Roland(ca. 1150), Old Norse sagas (e.g., Njal’s Saga, thirteenth century), and Old Spanish El Poema de Mío Cid (ca. 1100 or 1200). The central ideology of revenge which permeates the Middle High German Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) leads to utter Armageddon, with only three survivors. However, we would misread those texts if we naively regarded them as literary efforts to glorify war and manly prowess.
While the heroes fighting skills are magnified, many aim to establish peace, as the case of Beowulf and Njal. The former kills Grendel and his monstrous mother in order to overcome chaos and establish law and order. He dies in his ultimate struggle against the dragon, but he kills the opponent with the help of his liege man Wiclaf, and again peace rules at the price paid by the protagonist himself.
Njal strives for peaceful settlements and works tirelessly to reach out to hostile parties in order to overcome blood feud. Tragically, however, him and his family die by fire at the end of the poem, but his memory as a peace-maker is highlighted. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, also known as Mío Cid, constantly fights until he has regained the king’s favor and is allowed to settle in Valencia, which he had conquered himself. When his two sons-in-law, the Carrión brothers, try to dishonor him by beating their wives virtually to death, El Cid does not fall into the trap of seeking revenge. Instead, he seeks the king’s help and rather than him, lets his friends fight in deadly duels against the Carrión brothers and their family members.
The Nibelungenlied leaves us deeply frustrated, considering the enormous bloodshed. No one cares for peace. Instead, they arrogantly succumb to misguided heroism. However, a follow-up lament, Diu Klage (The Lament), recounts heroic deeds, the dead warriors, and news that is carried to surviving family members in the West. There is a glimmer of hope, when the son of the deceased King Gunther is crowned and placed on the throne, signaling a new beginning, perhaps without the traditional military mentality.
And indeed, ca. 1250 “Kudran” an anonymous poem, perhaps even composed by a woman signals that a major change in political and military terms could establish peace. The basic narrative pattern consists of brutal bridal quests, but when Kudrun is kidnapped, she refuses to submit and thus suffers for ten years until liberated by family and warriors. Kudrun then brings an end to the bloodshed and calls for peaceful marriages and resolves the hatred between two dynasties.
In other words, human culture has always been determined by military thinking, revenge, and hatred, but the literary discourse in the Middle Ages outlined powerful strategies as to how conflicts between individuals or kingdoms could be overcome and thus counterbalance military perspective. Communication surfaces as a significant strategy to stop consistent violence and help people gain reason in order to perceive the other side’s rationale.3 Love and friendship do not simply replace war and violence, but good council, readiness to compromise, respect for the elders/authorities, and pursuit of honor without weapons prove to be significant mechanisms to promote peaceful cohabitation.4 Many medieval texts reflect on these fundamental human issues, such as how to overcome war and achieve peace.
St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) exerted profound influence on his society during the Middle Ages through his religious teachings and example as the founder of the entire Franciscan monastic movement. He reflected identified peace as heavenly, but then, as peace in the human heart which subsequently brings about social peace.5 He identifies earthly peacemakers as blessed children of God and emphasizes that those of good will and faithfulness would be able to enjoy peace here on earth.6
The ‘Prayer of Saint Francis’ serves as a powerful illustration of how Franciscan spirituality has transcended to our own time and continues to challenge us to pursue peace in the purest sense: “Blessed is he who loves and does not therefore desire to be loved; blessed is he who fears and does not therefore desire to be feared; blessed is he who serves and does not therefore desire to be served; blessed is he who behaves well toward others and does not desire that others behave well toward him; and because these are great things, the foolish do not rise to them.7
Francis himself did not leave us an elaborate discussion of what peace really meant, but he practiced it throughout his entire life, whether he engaged with his fellow people or with the birds and beasts. After all, he was looking for perfect joy and found it, shockingly, in the greatest suffering, as dramatically reflected in the eighth chapter of “The Little Flowers,” where he and his fellow brother Leo are mistreated by a gate keeper who prevents them from entering despite adverse weather during a cold night: “the highest gift and grace of the Holy Spirit that Christ concedes to His friends is to conquer oneself and, out of love of Christ, to endure willingly sufferings, injuries, insults, and discomfort.”8 Worldly and material possessions blind the individual, whereas “the cross of tribulation and affliction” (63) provides the true glory, that is, ultimately, peace.
Christine de Pizan (1364–1430), an important fifteenth-century woman writer, composed a treatise on peace, Le Livre de la paix (1413),9 in which she pursues a mostly didactic-religious perspective, addressing princes primarily, who should work diligently toward peace. Reflecting on the effects of the Hundred Years’ War (1437–1453), she emphasizes, “Every kingdom divided in itself will be destroyed” (3), which she also applies to individuals. Dissension, as the result of intolerance, creates aggression, which evolves into violence. A prince is supposed to put aside hatred, and subscribe to love, benevolence, and unity (64). Peace heavily depends on a lord’s virtuosity, which includes prudence, justice, magnanimity, fortitude, clemency, liberality, and truth (65). In essence, she equates peace with wisdom, since no wise ruler would voluntarily replace peace with war. Christine states, “The wisdom of a wise king can only be manifest in good actions” (73).
For Christine, peace can be maintained if princes listen to wise counselors, appoints trustworthy officials, avoids cruelty (book II), exerts justice, pays attention to authority, and avoids unilateral decisions. “There is nothing more agreeable to see than a prince who is wise, restrained, of a beautiful eloquence of manner and discreet speech, doing his duty toward God and his service, attentive at his council to the opinions of this wise councilors, gracious to foreigners, receiving in lordly manner and with good welcome each according to his degree, . . .” (113). She advocated for peace from a political-ethical standpoint, and thus contributed in a highly pragmatic fashion to the further development of the discourse on peace in the pre-modern era, a time certainly deeply shaken by extensive and long-term wars and other military conflicts.
Both Christine and St. Francis are deeply insightful, timeless, spiritual, and illuminating philosophers on peace and its universal meaning. We need only little translation to make both their teachings relevant today. The goals and ideas have not changed, but only the material and political framework. The discourse on peace goes on, and by studying St. Francis and Christine de Pizan we can influence a peaceful future.
Notes
1. See, for instance, the contributions to A Natural History of Peace, ed. Thomas Gregor (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996).
2. See the Handbook on Peace Education, ed. Gavriel Salomon and Edward Cairns (New York: Psychology Press, 2010).
3. Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung. Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, 1 (Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2002).
4. I have discussed many of these texts and their critical messages in the volume Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook, ed. Albrecht Classen. Routledge Medieval Casebooks (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), and Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Mental-Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses, ed. Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 11 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). See also my study “The Bloody Battle Poem as Negative Examples: The Argument against Blood Feud and Images of Peaceful Political Negotiations in German Heroic Poetry,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 53 (2000): 123–143.
5. Krijn Pansters, Franciscan Virtue: Spiritual Growth and the Virtues in Franciscan Literature and Instruction of the Thirteenth Century. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 161 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 161–64.
6. Pansters, Franciscan Virtues (164).
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_of_Saint_Francis (last accessed on Feb. 3, 2016).
8. The Little Flowers of St. Francis and Other Franciscan Writings, newly trans. and with an intro. by Serge Hughes (New York: Mentor-Omega Book, 1964), 63.
9. Christine de Pizan, The Book of Peace, ed., trans., and with an intro. and commentary by Karen Green, Constant J. Mews, et al. Penn State Romance Studies (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008).
