The Online Library of Liberty

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Medieval Monks on War and Peace

Thomas Renna

• Saginaw Valley State College

“Monastic Attitudes Toward War, 850–1150.” Michigan Academician 12(Spring 1980):417–421.

Monks comprised the most visible group in medieval society which opposed war. Nonetheless, no single monastic view of war existed during the Middle Ages. Several traditions flourished, often side by side, down to the thirteenth century. Scholars such as R. Bainton, however, have tended somewhat simplistically to stress monastic pacifism, thus ignoring prominent nonpacifist strains in ascetic thought.

During the period extending from 850 to 1150, changes in ascetic notions of pax (peace) reflected changes within monasticism itself. During this period, monks gradually removed most of the just war ideas which surrounded their own heritage of spiritual peace. The Gregorian papacy and the Crusades forced monks to clarify their own attitudes toward war and peace. By the early twelfth century, monks no longer had to define their pax in the context of war, as they had to in previous war-torn centuries. By 1150, the monk as the “spouse of Christ” finally replaced the monk as the miles Christi or soldier of Christ.

In the three centuries after Constantine, (died 337), the attitude of Western monasticism toward war grew out of the struggle to reconcile the antiwar stance of the early Church with the crucial necessity of repelling the barbarian invaders. Monks harmonized these apparent contradictions by relegating all wars (just or unjust) as worldly and unfit for anapausis or rest in God. According to this view, monks were the true militia Christi in contrast to secular armies.

By the ninth century, disruptions of monastic life caused by avaricious invaders, nobles, and bishops forced monks to distinguish more clearly between good and bad wars. Good wars were those directed against lawbreakers,infidel marauders, and exploiters like the nobles and bishops.

With the outbreak of “holy wars” against the Muslims in Spain and the Orient and against the supporters of Henry IV (1050–1106) in Germany, the monastic attitude toward war became increasingly ambiguous. The same monds who stanchly supported aggressions against Muslims and rebellious nobles also acted as arbiters to end disputes. Many monastic writers preferred to ignore the question of war and, instead, to exalt the peace engendered by the ascetic way of life.

By the twelfth century, as order was being reestablished in Europe, new monastic orders, such as the Cistercians, sought less social involvement and a return to literal detachment. Actually, the ever more powerful secular authorities did their best to discourage involvement by the monastic orders in public affairs. Thus, while monkish writers would occasionally “lead the charge” against vices and demons, even such military metaphors appear less frequently in their works. Instead, they dwell on the quies which dwells in the monk's heart.

A Cistercian writer such as Bernard of Clairvaux clearly established separate war standards for laymen and monastics. The lay aristocracy, he advised, should adopt the new holy war as the norm for all their aggression. The Knights Templar evolved as an outgrowth of this attitude. The new monks, on the other hand, should not do anything (even intercede for the world); they simply are. For such a monk, the essence of the monastic life is the experience of otium or tranquility.

At the same time, Bernard applies active military images to his model bishops, such as Malachy. While prelates should not wage war, they, unlike monks, must forcefully act to quell the Church's enemies with the weapons of admonition and anathema.

Bernard's defining of the varying postures toward war that must exist within the Christian community is but one aspect of his complex ecclesiology. He also believed that the spiritualities of laymen, prelates, and monks had become intolerably blurred during previous centuries. He viewed his task as one of defining the function of each group within the total ecclesia. Defining licit attitudes toward war, thus, contributed to Bernard's goal of maintaining a distinct separation among the three basic groupings that comprised the Christian community.