Theoretical Approaches to Violence I

Before we turn to a discussion of our chosen texts, we need to outline the historical and political history of violence in the Middle Ages and to gain an understanding of the religious and philosophical discourse regarding violence in the premodern world.

des Gaerten^re Helmbrecht und Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring’, Futhark: Revista de Investigation y Cultura 1 (2006), 11-39. in order to gain the upper hand in conflict situations. The tensions between the religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) and between the main church and many different splinter groups commonly erupted into violence (pogroms, crusades, persecutions, inquisitorial trials, etc.), but all those belong to a different sort of violence which was often more or less officially sanctioned or carried out by the authorities.^[1142] Until today, war, especially in the case of a defence against a hostile attack from the outside, has been regarded as politically legitimate, and not as violence that needs to be suppressed as destructive for society at large.

While the early centuries witnessed many attacks by outside forces, such as the Huns, the Saracens (Arabs), the Magyars (Hungarians), the Vikings, and also the Mongols, from the high Middle Ages the Christian church called for crusades (from 1095), turning itself into a church militant. Moreover, medieval Europe witnessed countless military conflicts between the various kingdoms and smaller political units, a phenomenon that was sustained, of course, by the very fact that feudalism served the principal purpose of making possible the institution of knighthood. That, in turn, fulfilled the function of defending society from outside threats. Despite many pleas for peace and a peaceful solution of conflicts, medieval society experienced numerous wars and actually glorified military skills in a most explicit fashion.^[1143] Sadly, not much has changed in this regard even today, as we have constant warfare all over the globe while many different social groups are calling for peace and the reduction of the military-industrial complex.

Personal violence, however, is not simply the same as a military and hence also violent operation. We experience and witness violence on both a large and a small scale, both domestically and publicly, and thus it affects indivi­duals and society at large, in the Middle Ages and today. The debate whether

people are innately violent has never been fully decided, but there are good reasons to suggest that human life is almost always accompanied by some form of aggression, physical and psychological. Even though we often hear the myth of the Middle Ages as being a ‘dark age' in which violence and barbarity allegedly dominated all of life, we may question that notion and argue rather that we live in such an age today, in the light of the over­whelming evidence from the twentieth and now also the twenty-first cen­turies, with a dramatic increase in violence compared to previous centuries. Similarly, it would be wrong to assume that medieval individuals, groups or larger entities did not try to seek avenues towards peace, whether they were successful or not. Irrespective of the crusades, for instance, St Francis and his followers worked hard to establish peace and spread it over the world.^[1144] Representatives of other monastic orders were equally dedicated to the pursuit of peace and to the repression of violence in favour of love for God and one's fellow people.^[1145]