Page 269 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV
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1570 berkshire encyclopedia of world history
There will be peace on earth when there is peace among
the world religions. • Hans Küng (b. 1928)
state religion of the Empire, forbidding the worship of being brutally slaughtered in the name of Christ. One
the Roman gods entirely. As Christians for the first time crusader reports, “Wonderful sights: piles of heads,
began to ascend to positions of political power, the reli- hands, and feet. It was a just and splendid judgment of
gion began to consider anew the question of bearing God that this place should be filled with the blood of
arms. Aurelius Augustine (354–430 CE), the Catholic unbelievers” (Baran 1998, 1).
bishop of the city of Hippo in North Africa who is later With the end of the Crusades, placed variously by
canonized as St. Augustine, produced one of the most scholars between the fourteenth and sixteenth cen-
influential works in the history of Christianity, City of turies, came the rise of the Christian just-war tradition.
God, in which he argued that the state was an instru- Over the course of several centuries, so-called Scholas-
ment provided by a loving God to help keep human sin- tic authors such as Francisco Suarez (1548–1617) and
fulness in check until Christ’s return. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) built upon the foundation
While a kingdom of true and eternal peace will ulti- established by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (1225–
mately be established by God, in the interim “the natu- 1274) to develop a set of moral principles which, while
ral order which seeks the peace of mankind ordains that allowing Christian warfare, attempted to place strict
the monarch should have the power of undertaking war limits on its conduct—limits which presumably would
if he thinks it advisable, and that the soldiers should prevent the barbaric excesses of the Crusades. These
perform their military duties in behalf of the peace and principles, which would eventually serve as an impor-
safety of the community” (Christopher 1994, 40). tant impetus for the founding of international law, con-
Augustine defines “just wars” as those which “avenge sist of the jus ad bellum—rules which establish the
injuries... punish wrongs...or restore what has been circumstances under which Christians may enter war—
unjustly taken” (Christopher 1994, 40). Augustine him- and the jus in bello—rules covering the ethical conduct
self would come to advocate Christians participating as of war once it has been initiated. Central to the jus in
both soldiers and military commanders in wars to fend bello, for instance, is the principle of discrimination,
off the attackers of the Roman Empire, even though he which holds that Christians may kill even noncombat-
acknowledged that grave injustices would inevitably be ants as long as the deaths are unintentional: “ The death
committed. of the innocent must not besought for its own sake, but
The notion of war as an instrument of the Christian it is an incidental consequence; hence it is not consid-
God would reach its logical, if bloody, conclusion in the ered as voluntarily inflicted but simply allowed...”
Crusades. The Crusades were a series of Christian mil- (Suarez 1944, 847–848).
itary expeditions prompted by papal declarations and In the twenty-first century, although Christians con-
aimed, at least initially, at the recovery of the Holy Land tinue to debate various historical attitudes toward war-
from Muslim control. Initiated by Pope Urban II fare, the just-war perspective has come to gain the
(c. 1035–1099) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 support of the vast majority of individual Christians and
and extending for several centuries, the Crusades prom- Christian institutions, with jus ad bellum criteria such as
ised participants the remission of their sins if they took “just cause” and “last resort” emerging as central aspects
up the cross and defended the faith. (The Latin word for of public debate on initiating war.
cross, crux, is the root of the word “crusade.”) Tens of
thousands of European Christians answered the call. Islam: War and Tolerance
Eventually this “defense” of the faith included attacks Islam is often depicted as a religion that not only allows
not only upon Muslims but upon all alleged enemies of for but embraces warfare. In reality, the history of the reli-
the church, including European Jews and Christian gion is complex and surprisingly pluralistic with regard
heretics, with perhaps hundreds of thousands of people to issues of violence.