Christianity and Violence

Where does the historiography leave us? Thankfully, we do not need to measure violent acts in order to recognise that violence held significant meaning in medieval society and not all violent acts enjoyed equal value.

Europeans judged some forms of violence as not only necessary, but also laudable, even pious. Despite Christ's stirring model of absolute pacifism, medieval Christian society preferred to dwell on God's wrath. His was the archetype of principled violence wielded by a righteous authority for the greater good. God's vengeance for a sinful life manifested itself through well- deserved physical suffering: the sexual sinner tormented by leprosy, the usurer afflicted with bubonic plague. Building on Old Testament conceptions of divine justice, sermon stories regularly depicted a ruthless God striking down the sinner with cruel punishments: being thrown into a furnace or incinerated in a house fire. The saints also punished vindictively those who disrespected their eminent status. A lame boy who sought healing from St Thomas Becket but fell asleep atop the martyr's tomb was rebuked with a visitation from the saint himself, cursing him for his insolent behaviour and rejecting his appeal for intercession.^{^[631]} A man who laid hands on St Carthach was punished with a ruptured eyeball and ensuing madness.^{^[632]} ^{^[633]} Prayers for intercession also sometimes included requests for violent action. A knight from Gascony praying at the monastery of Sorde around 1100 begged God to help him catch his brother's murderer. His prayers were answered; the fugitive was not only arrested, his face was mutilated, and his hands and feet were cut off, as were his genitals. In thanks for God's assistance, the knight presented his enemy's armour and weapons to the monks of Sorde who accepted them as evidence of a miracle.11

Christianity's earthly representatives mirrored the violence of the divine realm.

Medieval monks fashioned an identity for themselves as soldiers of Christ engaged in spiritual warfare, fighting demons and the sins they incited. Crusaders were literally holy warriors, taking vows to slaughter the infidel in the name of Christ. Even the parish clergy participated in the violence of warfare when the need arose, as evidenced by the musters of clergy in northern England during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In compliance with the Fourth Lateran Council's ban on clerical participation in bloodshed, the clergy endeavoured to keep its hands clean. Yet prelates regularly ordered that sinners be whipped in procession around the parish church or marketplace, sentenced bigamous clerics to life in prison with little food or comfort, and sanctioned the torture and execution of recalcitrant heretics, even if the actual burnings at the stake were carried out by the state. The physical church itself was far from the peaceful refuge we might imagine it to be. Churches were prime locations for incarcerating the violent insane, chained in corners or near the tombs of saints in the hopes of a cure, or to await the return of lucidity. Churches also served as sanctuaries for felons who threw themselves upon the mercy of the church, keen to escape the lawful punishment their actions deserved. Indeed, permanent sanctuaries (such as St Martin Le Grand in London) were cities unto themselves, populated chiefly by confessed felons and their families. Given the violence sanctioned by the church, it is no surprise that the taboo against striking a priest, despite an automatic sentence of excommunication (latae sententiae), does not seem to have acted as much of a deterrent to angry parishioners.

Christian doctrine justified violence as both necessary and virtuous. The pains of hell and purgatory, celebrated widely in both popular art and literature as an incentive to Christians not to stray from the path, emphasised the cleansing value of violence.

Justice in the form of execution, shaming ritual or torture, when enacted by the church or the state, fell neatly in line with this purgative view of violence, removing sin from self and society before it infected others and before redemption was beyond hope. The religious ascetic who tormented the body in order to master the soul perhaps best exemplifies the critical function of violence in pursuit of the ideal Christian kingdom. Renowned German mystic and doctor of the church Henry Suso raised holy self-violence to the level of an art form. For twenty- two years he engaged in ascetic practices, ranging from the proverbial hairshirt to affixing a life-sized cross to his bare back, with nails hammered into the cross in such a way as to continuously prick his skin, transforming himself into a perpetual physical reminder of Christ's Passion, if somewhat bloodier. Church Fathers and theologians also adopted a militant Christianity. St Augustine composed a theory of just war, in which a legitimate authority, provoked by a just cause, and fighting with the right intent, might take solace that killing in war was righteous, not murder demanding atonement.^{^[634]} St Thomas Aquinas was even a staunch proponent of the death penalty, seeing the execution of a malefactor as an aid to communal tranquillity and as necessary for the Christian community as the amputation of a festering limb is to an ailing patient. The violence of the early church created a model that pervaded all ranks of society. If disobedience to God was best punished through shows of physical force, then what better way to correct other infractions of the medieval world's highly regimented social hierarchy?

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Source: Gordon Matthew, Kaeuper Richard, Zurndorfer Harriet (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: AD 500-AD 1500. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 696 p.. 2020

Christianity and Violence

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