The Peace of God appeared at the very moment when our sources increase markedly in both variety and number, so we are not poorly informed about the movement: we have conciliar decrees, chronicle accounts, hagiographical narratives, charters, and letters. Why, then, has the Peace of God been so difficult for historians to grasp? The most important reason is that different types of sources give us significantly different representations of the movement. And somewhat paradoxically, the fullest, most circumstantial accounts are among the most problematic, even though they are the ones most frequently relied upon by historians to describe the movement and its purposes.

Take, for example, the most famous of these accounts, that offered by Raoul Glaber in his Histories. He describes a series of troubling events at the approach of the millennium of Christ's Passion (that is, 1033): first the deaths of many important men, then three years of heavy rains that made it difficult to plant crops, and a famine so severe that people turned to cannibalism. It seemed clear that “the order of the seasons and the elements … had fallen into perpetual chaos, and with it had come the end of mankind.” But when the millennium of the Passion arrived, the weather cleared and the famine ended. And now Peace councils were summoned, first in Aquitaine, then in Provence, then in Burgundy, eventually reaching “the furthest corners of the French realm.” Everyone attended the councils when summoned, “great, middling, and poor … rejoicing and ready, one and all, to obey the commands of the clergy no less than if they had been given by a voice from heaven speaking to men on earth.” At these councils lists of prohibited actions were drawn up and oaths were sworn “for keeping an inviolable peace.” All men, no matter what their status, were free to go about without fear of armed attack. Seizure of the property of others was to be sanctioned by fines and harsh corporal punishment. Churches were to be held in honour, and the asylum offered by churches to fleeing criminals was to be respected, save for someone “who violated the pact of the peace.” Clerics, monks, and nuns were to be free from attack while travelling, as were those travelling with them. At these gatherings the sick were healed, the limbs of the lame and crippled were straightened.