When the Apostle Paul wrote that “the peace of God … surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7), he did not have in mind the historical movement known as the “Peace of God.” But he might as well have, for few subjects in medieval history have received so many contradictory interpretations. Many have believed that it was a response to a surge of violence among the aristocracy; just as many deny there was any surge of violence at all. Some think it was fundamentally a millenarian movement that marked the first appearance of “the common people” on the political stage; others think it was neither millenarian nor popular. It has been seen as a movement in which bishops wrested responsibility for maintaining social order from secular political leaders; as a movement used by secular political leaders to reassert their responsibility for social order; as a movement spearheaded by monks for the reform of society and the church. It has been thought one of the most transformative events of the Middle Ages. It has been thought a sideshow.

Given such disagreements, it is hard even to define exactly what the Peace of God was, since any definition requires one to take a stand on the above debates, at least implicitly. So for the moment one must keep to a very open definition. The Peace of God was a program originating in the last years of the tenth century that protected certain specified categories of persons and places from certain kinds of actions. Broadly speaking, the places protected were churches and their environs; the persons protected were the unarmed. Speaking even more broadly, the actions prohibited were the kinds that historians have tended to classify as “violence” of the sort habitually perpetrated by a warrior aristocracy. The movement began in southern France (specifically, in Aquitaine), soon took root in Burgundy, and from there spread widely: to Provence, Catalonia, Languedoc, and Septimania; to Normandy, Flanders, and the royal domain. Ultimately it even entered Germany, where it soon evolved into a slightly different institution known as the “territorial peace” or Landfriede. As it spread, its stipulations became more precise and new limitations were established.