The majority of books and articles on the Peace and Truce of God are devoted to the period between 989 and ca. 1050—from the first clear appearance of the Peace at Charroux to the time when the articles of the Peace and Truce became fairly standardized. Beyond the mid-eleventh century historians rather lose interest in it. One reason may be a sense that the Peace of God was a failure; for not only did it not bring peace, in some ways it codified the right to violence. A German Peace of 1103 stated this paradox baldly:

If this is what the Peace of God became, it is hard to see it as any kind of turning point in European history. Then, too, the program itself changed, mutating into something recognizably the same yet different. In Bisson's words, it became not just an “instituted” Peace but an “institutionalized” Peace. And increasingly, secular leaders inserted themselves into its proclamation until by the twelfth century one is no longer dealing with a Peace of God at all. It is now the peace of the king, the peace of the prince, the peace of the territory, or the peace of the commune.

The changes did not happen overnight. From the beginning the Peace and Truce had tended to evolve in fits and starts. There was a great surge of Peace activity in the 990s followed by an apparent waning of interest until the development of the Truce in the late 1020s, when a new spate of councils defined the articles of the Peace and Truce more concretely, particularly with respect to enforcement. After the 1050s the movement seemed to ebb again, until a new round of declarations began in the last decade of the eleventh century. Bisson associates this new activity with Urban II's call for a crusade in 1095 at the Council of Clermont, where he promulgated the Truce of God in order to protect the lands of crusaders during their absence. In fact, Norman bishops did establish a Peace and Truce in 1096, spurred on by some of their colleagues who had brought back the decrees of Clermont.