Guilt and Punitive War 2

Abstract

The early steps towards non-combatant immunity taken by the Peace of God movement occurred over five and a half centuries after Augustine’s death. Nevertheless, Augustine’s punitive model of war continued to dominate Western thought for many centuries. This chapter shows how theologians and canon lawyers of the medieval period continued to rely on and to promote Augustine’s model of a just war. Indeed, it will be seen that they presented the Bishop of Hippo’s characterization of war as punishment, with its implication of the guilt of combatants, even more clearly than did Augustine himself. Augustine’s just war doctrine was firmly re-established in the twelfth century by a Carmaldulensian monk and jurist of Bologna, called Franciscus Gratianus (known now as Gratian). Between 1139 and 1150, Gratian compiled a comprehensive collection of canon law known as the Decretum Gratiani (canon law is the administrative, civil, jurisdictional, procedural and penal law of the Catholic Church). Gratian’s work, which became the basic text for subsequent studies of canon law, was an important vehicle by which Augustine’s approach to war continued to dominate Church thinking.

It may seem puzzling that the Decretalists seldom even mentioned the most obvious consequence of war, death. It was as if they felt that wars could be fought without killing …

F. H. Russell¹