The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 
European Irenism from Pax Dei to the Christian Humanists 
Tomaž Mastnak 
Europe is dead, and de mortuis nil nisi bonum. Yet should one refrain from speaking evil of the dead when the dead is still able to kill and destroy, 
and skilfully exercises this ability? There is more than one example of Euro-
pean policy of murder and destruction, not only in history but in the world in 
which we live today. What 1 particularly have in mind is the destruction of 
Bosnian state and the genocide of Bosnian Muslims - of those who have been 
styled »Muslims« in Bosnia. Here, indeed, le mort saisit le vif. And it is not the 
war which is the principal problem, but the peace: the peace which Europe has 
been imposing on Bosnia, the peace which has denied the Bosnian government 
the right of self-defence, which has sanctioned an aggressive war against an 
independent polity, sanctified genocide and annulled a number of basic prin-
ciples of international law. My claim is that European peace, one of the most 
unquestionable moments in the constitution of Europe, has been problematic, 
both in its idea and practice, and that today's peace making descends from a 
long tradition. In the text that follows I will try to outline part of this European 
tradition of peace.1 
/. 
In some histories of European peace plans, Pierre Dubois figures as the 
originator of the idea of a peaceful international order. At first glance, this is 
curious and confusing. It is curious because an advocate of war is styled a 
peacenik, and confusing because different issues and agendas are mingled with 
the pursuit of peace. However, confusion is what constitutes European peace 
thought, and what counts here is a declaration that peace is dear to one's heart, 
a declaration Dubois does not fail to make. If we realise that European irenism 
is, more than anything else, a kind of Gemiitergemeinschaft, any argument as 
to who may rightly be judged to belong to its tradition is futile. We should 
rather take what irenists say on trust and try to delineate the structure of their 
argument. Proceeding this way, we shall see that Dubois is not alien to, but 
typical of, the European community which talks of peace. 
1. This paper is a part of an longer essay dealing with European irenic discourse until the French 
Revolution. The research for this work was assisted by an award from the Social Science 
Fil. vest./Acta Phil., XIV (2/1993), 83-120. 
84 Tomaž Mastnak 
Dubois is renown as a »pacifist« for his proposal to establish an arbitration 
machinery for the prevention of wars between Christian powers.2 This device, 
however, is of subordinate importance: a means for the establishment of peace 
which is itself an instrument for higher ends. The »perpetual« and »universal« 
peace between powers inhabiting the geo-political space which, in the course 
of human events, would begin to call itself Europe, is a necessary preliminary 
to a successful crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land. Dubois first points 
out a very pragmatic reason for this being so: »In order that a sufficient number 
of people may be induced to journey thither and remain there, it will be 
necessary for Christian princes to live in harmony and avoid war with one 
another.« Otherwise these armed journeyers, hearing that their country is at 
war, would rush home to defend their possessions. »It is therefore necessary to 
establish peace among all Christians - at least those obedient to the Roman 
Church - on such a firm basis that they will form in effect a single common-
wealth so strongly united that it cannot be divided, because "every kingdom 
divided against itself shall be made desolate," as the Saviour says.«3 Yet there 
is a normative dimension to his argument. 
»Intercine wars among Catholics are greatly to be deplored, since in such wars 
many meet death under circumstances which make their status in the world to 
come very uncertain.«4 Dubois has been reproached for bad and unclear 
language,5 yet, here, at least, he is very precise. He is not deploring, or 
condemning, war. He would go so far as to agree with Aristotle (Eth. Nic. 
X.7.1177b 8-10) that to seek war for its own sake is the extreme of wicked-
ness, only to undermine this position by approving the righteous war, the war 
waged by the righteous. »[W]hen it is impossible to secure peace except by 
means of war, it is permissible for righteous men to seek and even to urge war 
in order that men may have leisure for acquiring virtue and knowledge after 
war is over and lasting peace has been established.«6 
Research Council of an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Peace and Security in 
a Changing World. 
2. De recuperatione terre sancte. Traité de politique générale par Pierre Dubois, avocat des 
causes ecclésiastiques au bailliage de Coutances sous Philippe le Bel, ed. Ch.-V. Langlois, 
Alphonse Picard Éditeur, Paris 1891, § 12. (I quote English transi.: Pierre Dubois, The 
Recovery of the Holy Land, ed. W. I. Brandt, Columbia University Press, New York 1956.) 
3. De recup. § 2. Derek Heater, The Idea of European Unity, Leicester University Press, 
Leicester/London 1992, p. 12, has characterized Dubois as a »true herald of a modern style 
of thinking about European unity.« 
4. De recup. § 2. 
5. Ernst Zeck, Der Publizist Pierre Dubois, seine Bedeutung im Rahmen der Politik Philipps IV. 
des Schönen und seine literarische Denk- und Arbeitsweise im Traktat »De recuperatione 
Terre Sancte«, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1911, p. 190. 
6. De recup. § 2. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 85 
The gist of Dubois' argument is that war among Catholics is inadmissible and 
has therefore to be diverted elsewhere. When universal peace and harmony 
among all Roman Catholics is established, »Catholics will be more virtuous, 
learned, rich and long-lived than hitherto, and more able to subjugate barbaric 
nations. They would no longer make war upon one another [...] [and] Catholic 
princes, mutually zealous, would at once join together against the infidels, or 
at all events send innumerable armies of warriors from all directions to remain 
as a permanent garrison in the lands to be acquired.« And (the argument is 
repetitious): »The whole commonwealth of Christian believers owning alle-
giance to the Roman Church must be joined together in the bonds of peace. 
United in this way, all Catholics will refrain from making war upon one 
another. [...] Let no Catholic rush to arms against Catholics; let none shed 
baptized blood. If anyone wishes to make war let him be zealous to make war 
upon the enemies of the Catholic faith, of the Holy Land, and of the places 
made sacred by the Lord.«7 
This is the matrix of European peace thought.8 The question, therefore, is not 
whether Dubois belongs to European irenic tradition but whether he had an 
impact on the logic of irenic discourse. With regard to Dubois' general outlook 
and his reform proposals, Strayer has argued that he is important »because he 
represented the views of the hundreds of officials who worked for the king 
throughout France,«9 as an articulate representative of milites legum, the 
emerging new class running the affairs of the nascent territorial state. His 
peace plan cannot claim much originality either. De recuperatione Terre 
Sancte, as well as some of Dubois' shorter writings, have a proper place in the 
literature which emerged in Latin Christendom after the capture of 'Akka by 
the Egyptians in 1291, in that »new branch of literature which, in volume and 
importance, occupied a notable place in the literature of the age« and was 
introduced by Thaddeo of Naples' Hystoria de desolacione et conculcacione 
civitatis Accomensis et tocius Terre Sancte}0 More specifically, it belongs to a 
later stage of the new literary genre of de recuperatione Terrae Sanctae 
7. De recup. §§ 70, 99. 
8. »Le principe de la paix est [...] la paix entre chrétiens et laguerre contre les infidèles, considéré 
comme un devoir suprême. La paix n'est qu'un moyen pour faire la guerre.« Chr. Lange, 
Histoire de la doctrine pacifique et deson influence sur le développement du droit interna-
tional, Académie de droit international, Recueil de cours 1926, Librairie Hachette, Paris 
1927, p. 209. 
9. Joseph R. Strayer, »France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King«, 
in Strayer, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History, Princeton University Press, 
Princeton, N.J., 1971, p. 310. 
10. Aziz Suryal Atiya, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, Methuen&Co. Ltd., London 1938, 
p. 45. On Dubois see ch. III. 
86 Tomaž Mastnak 
treatises, written under Clement V's pontificate, which are »far less original 
than it is commonly accepted, or than they appear when individual plans are 
discussed in isolation from the contemporary treatises on the same subject.« 
Dubois' contribution, in particular, is »hardly original«, and his practical 
opinions are plagiarized." What is important, however, is that, with him, the 
crusade »became a part of a general reform in all branches of society as well as 
its vehicle«. The irenist should be seen as one among »crusade theorists«.'2 
The de recuperatione Terrae Sanctae literature of the turn of the century stood 
in the framework of the crusading policy as it was redefined at the council of 
Lyons (1274). A common feature of the tracts of the period, and a determinant 
of the crusading policy, was the love for peace. Gregory X proclaimed a six 
years truce in Christendom, necessary for the recovery of the Holy Land, and 
the council ordered spiritual punishment for those who broke the peace. For 
authors of the memoirs submitted to the council, peace inside the Christian 
world was the »sine qua non of a successful crusade«, and the constant 
concern of the immediate successors of Gregory X to the See of St Peter was 
the maintenance of peace in »Europe« as the necessary condition of the 
crusading enterprise.13 Nicholas IV, the pope at the time of the so-called loss of 
the Holy Land, »strove hard to establish peace on a firm foundation in Europe 
in order to unite all the forces of Latin Christianity for the crusade«,14 and the 
popes who followed »made repeated attempts to restore peace to Europe as a 
preliminary to sending an expedition to the East«.15 In short, »peace in Europe 
and the unity of Christendom were always considered by the papacy to be the 
preliminary and essential conditions for the launching of a general crusade.«16 
The crusading propaganda outside curia echoed these concerns and, mobilising 
for war, generated a series of calls for peace. 
What the council of Lyons redefined was the military strategy of the crusade. 
The work for peace both in, and for, Christendom was neither questioned nor 
changed. This was inherited from the earlier crusading policy, as the indis-
pensable moment of the crusade from the outset. Indeed, the crusade was a 
peace movement, and it was born out of a peace movement. It was a holy peace 
as much as a holy war. 
11. Sylvia Schein, Fideles Cruris. The Papacy, the West, and the Recovery of the Holy Land 
1274-1314, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, p. 201, 208, 217. 
12. Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274-1580. From Lyons to Alcazar, Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1992, p. 54. 
13. Cf. Schein, op. cit., p. 41, 46, 51. 
14. Atiya, op. cit., p. 34. 
15. Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading 1095-12 74, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1985, p. 220. 
Cf. Schein, op. cit., p. 75, 135, 149. 
16. Schein, op. cit., p. 150. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 87 
At the beginning there was peace: pax Dei. Historians have shown how the 
attempts to promote the Peace of God emerged in Burgundy and Aquitaine at 
the end of the tenth century and how the Truce of God, treuga Dei, grew out of 
this movement in the first half of the eleventh century. The Peace of God was 
the response of bishops to the private warfare of barons resulting from the 
decomposition of public authority, and its aim was to protect the church 
property, the clergy and the poor from the irtvasiones and depraedationes. The 
Truce of God declared the cessation of violence and »wild justice« during days 
and seasons of special religious importance (initially between Saturday evening 
and Monday morning, »in order to enable every man to show proper respect 
for the Lord's Day«). »Whereas the Peace sought to protect certain classes and 
their goods at all times, the Truce was an attempt to stop all violence at certain 
times.«17 
Sanctions by which the Peace of God was backed were, at first, spiritual: peace 
councils held by bishops anathemized the perpetrators of violence. However, 
the peace movement was soon to call for armed support and it eventually 
declared war upon war. These developments are, on the one hand, intertwined 
with a major social restructuring which took place at the time, and, on the 
other, imply a profound shift in culture. Duby has pointed out how the fusion 
of two of the three principal orders of the »Carolingian sociological schemes« 
- the clerks and the monks - rigorously segregated this unified ecclesiastical 
corps from the body of the laics; and how the lay people were divided by a new 
fundamental opposition between milites and rustici. Of key importance for my 
argument here is the formation of the military order: »C'est dans les années 
980 que le mot miles prend une signification juridique et sociale.«18 This ordo 
was addressed by the peace movement: first, in the attempt to delimit its sphere 
of activity which in itself was perceived as licit; and then, to enlist them in the 
Peace of God efforts. Because the Peace of God emerged against the back-
ground of the dissolution of the secular authority and was promoted and led by 
bishops, because pax Dei replaced pax regis, the tendency at work in these 
developments was that of bringing milites under ecclesiastical authority.19 This 
17. H. E. J. Cowdrey, »The Peace and the Truce of God in the Eleventh Century«, Past & Present, 
No. 46(1970), p. 44. 
18. Georges Duby, »Les laïcs et la paix de Dieu«, in l laici nella »societas christiana« dei secoli 
XIe XII, Miscellanea del Centrodi studi medioevali, Società editrice Viteapensiero, Milano 
1968, p. 454. 
19. It is anachronistic to talk about »the state« in this context. However, Carl Erdmann, Die 
Entstehung des Kreuzungsgedankens, W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1955 (reprint of 
1935 edn.), p. 53, points to the central issue when he writes: »Die Kirche trat also ohne die 
Vermittlung des Staates in ein direktes Verhältnis zu den eigentlichen Vertretern des 
Kriegerhandwerk.« 
88 Tomaž Mastnak 
involved more than simply the recognition of the military profession by the 
Church: it gradually led to both the formation of a Christian military ethic and 
the Christianization of warfare; and to the militarization of the Church - the 
process described as the rise of Christian militarism.20 
It is important to understand that, in the Peace of God, »the search for peace 
took the form of a religious movement.« It was not just »un pact social«, it 
amounted to »un pact avec Dieu«.21 Because the lawlessness of the private 
warfare, along with natural disasters, famine and pestilence, was seen as God's 
wrath, the attainment of peace and justice required a moral reformation of the 
people, a religious renewal. Thus the peace movement, »at least in the minds 
of churchmen,« as Cowdrey argues, »came to embody something approaching 
their total view of Christianity. [...] Upon the basis of the need to provide for 
physical peace and security there was thus erected a superstructure of the 
preaching and liturgical commemoration of peace in an ideal sense as the 
planting upon earth of the order that God willed to prevail.«22 It was in this 
framework that the Church was increasingly willing to bless arms and sanction 
their use as something meritorious, thus moving away from its traditional 
hostility towards warfare and bridging the gap between militia spiritualis and 
militia saecularis. 
The notion of peace implied in this »total view of Christianity« was, as treuga 
Dei developed out of pax Dei, extended so that it comprised the totality of 
Christians. This new understanding of peace was articulated at the council of 
Narbonne, 1054, where the principle was declared that »no Christian should 
kill another Christian, for whoever kills a Christian undoubtedly sheds the 
blood of Christ.« The importance of the formulation of this view can hardly be 
exaggerated. »At least in theory, the Truce had brought the Peace movement to 
the point where it should logically require complete internal peace to be 
maintained in the whole Christian society.« And, after the peace movement 
had reached this point, it could »scarcely develop further unless a voice with 
sufficient authority complemented the precept of internal peace by finding an 
appropriate external outlet for those whose vocation was Christian warfare.«23 
This voice was to be heard very soon, and it was the voice of the highest 
authority in Latin Christendom, the voice of the popes of the great reform 
movement of the eleventh century. This did not come as a surprise, for the 
background of both the peace movement and the reform papacy, was monastic 
20. Duby, op. cit., p. 459; Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy. The Western Church from 1050 
to 1250, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, p. 143 sq. 
21. Cowdrey, op. cit., p. 50; Duby, op. cit., p. 457. 
22. Cowdrey, ibid. 
23. Ibid., p. 53. Cf. Duby, op. cit., p. 459-60. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 89 
reform. The promotion of the peace movement by churchmen and, as an 
integral part of these developments, the process of bringing the military order 
under the authority of the Church, were moments of the new ordering of 
society in the new Christian spirit; and the Peace and Truce of God, in turn, fed 
into Gregorian reforms. 
Leo IX proclaimed the pax Dei at the synod of Rheims, 1049, and has been, 
because of the way he conducted the military campaign against the Normans in 
Southern Italy in 1053, characterized as »der erste Papst, der grundsätzlich 
seine Kriege aus der Religion herleitete, sie mit den Geboten der Kirche in 
Einklang brachte und den kriegerischen Geist des Heeres mit kirchlichen Sinn 
durchdrang.«24 Stephen IX followed his steps. Nicholas II »gave a general 
papal sanction to the peace and truce of God« in the Lateran synod of 1059, 
and succeeded in bringing the Norman army into a vassal relationship to the 
pope.25 Alexander II supported the Spanish »crusade« of 1064 and granted the 
first papal commutatiton of penance to those who fought it, while Catalan 
bishops proclaimed the Peace of God in order that the Christians could go to 
war against the Muslims.26 The crucial role in breaking both with the tradi-
tional Christian attitude towards war and with the existing temporal loyalties 
and obligations of laymen to their secular lords, was played by Gregory VII. 
Robinson has summarized his views as follows: »The Church is the "Christian 
legion", within which the laity is the "order of fighters": laymen have no 
function save that of fighting; they exist solely to suppress the enemies of the 
Church and all elements which tend to subvert right Christian order. The word 
of St. Paul, "No man that warreth for God entangleth himself with the affairs of 
this world", has been turned upside down.«27 Although his plans from 1074 for 
a military expedition to Orient28 came to nothing, as a practical theoretician of 
the »Christian warfare«, he opened the way to the crusade. 
The crusade, preached by Urban II in the council of Clermont in 1095, »sans 
conteste porte l'exigence de la paix de Dieu ä son accomplissement«: the 
24. I. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073-1198. Continuity and Innovation, Cambridge University 
Press, 1990, p. 326; I. S. Robinson, »Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ«, History, 58 
(1973), p. 181; Erdmann, op. cit., p. 108. 
25. Robinson, The Papacy, p. 326; Erdmann, op. cit., p. 116 sq. 
26. Erdmann remarks that »hier schon ebenso wie 1095 in Clermont der Gottesfriede unter den 
Christen mit dem Kreuzzuge gegen die Heiden im Zusammenhang stand.« Op. cit., p, 125. 
27. Robinson, »Gregory VII«, p. 190. Cf. Erdmann, op. cit., ch. V. 
28. »Forthefirstt ime,theideaofcarryingaholywarintotheNearEastatthe instigation and under 
the command of the papacy had been broached.« James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law 
and the Crusader, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Milwaukee/London 1969, 
p. 27. Cf. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, The Athlone 
Press, London 1993, p. 8. 
90 Tomaž Mastnak 
council of Clermont »fut d'abord un concile de paix.«29 Urban II had already 
been an active promoter of the peace movement in the earlier years of his 
pontificate. The council of Clermont, however, »enacted peace legislation 
more sweeping than that of earlier councils: it was binding on the whole of 
western Christendom and it was to last for three years.«30 It »resumed the 
Peace movement where it was left by the canons of Narbonne« precisely in 
making »universal« peace among Christians and directing their arms against 
the heathen.31 All versions of Urban's speech in Clermont mention the pope's 
urging of the Christians to fight righteous wars instead of being engaged in 
iniquitous combats among themselves.32 
Urban's exhortations were written down retrospectively by chroniclers of the 
First Crusade, that is, with a knowledge of the events triggered by the council 
of Clermont. However, if the authenticity of pope's words in these chronicles 
can be questioned, these documents nevertheless authentically express the 
»spirit of the age«. Fulcher of Chartres, clearly situating Urban's crusading 
speech in the context ofpax/treuga Dei, reports him as saying (referring to the 
military successes of the Turks against the Greeks): »"Oh what a disgrace if a 
race so despicable, degenerate, and enslaved by demons should thus overcome 
a people endowed with faith in Almighty God and resplendent in the name of 
Christ! Oh what reproaches will be charged against you by the Lord Himself if 
you have not helped those who are counted like yourself of the Christian faith! 
Let those," he said, "who are accustomed to wantonly wage private war 
against the faithful march upon the infidels in a war which should be begun 
now and be finished in victory. Let those who have long been robbers now be 
soldiers of Christ. Let those who have once fought against brothers and 
relatives now rightfully fight against barbarians."«33 
Robert the Monk's Historia Iherosolymitana relates Urban II linking his sum-
mons of the chosen race of Franks to free the holy sepulchre of the Saviour 
29. Duby, op. cit., p. 460. 
30. Robinson, The Papacy, p. 326. The canons of Clermont »prescribe, for the first time in the 
history of the Peace of God, a perpetual peace within the whole of Christendom.« Cowdrey, 
»The Peace and the Truce of God«, p. 57. 
31. Cowdrey, »The Peace and the Truce of God«, p. 57. 
32. D. C. Munro, »The Speech of Pope Urban II. at Clermont, 1095«, The American Historical 
Review, IX (1905), 2, p. 239; cf. Robinson, The Papacy, p. 326-7; Riley-Smith, The First 
Crusade, ch. 1; Erdmann, op. cit., ch. X, and H. E. J. Cowdrey's critique: »Pope Urban II's 
Preaching of the First Crusade«, History, 55 (1970); and recently, Penny J. Cole, The 
Preaching of the Crusaders to the Holy Land, 1095-1270, The Medieval Academy of 
America, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, ch. I. 
33. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095-1127, ed. H. S. Fink, The 
University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville 1969, p. 66-7. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 91 
from »unclean nations«, to the scarcity of land and wealth in their own 
country: »[T]his land which you inhabit [...] is too narrow for your large 
population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough 
for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you 
wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore 
hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all 
dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepul-
chre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.«34 
Guibert of Nogent comprised these ideas into a concept. Very early in the 
twelfth century he wrote that, »[i]n our own time God has instituted a holy 
manner of warfare, so that knights and the common people who, after the 
ancient manner of paganism, were formerly immersed in internecine slaughter, 
have found a new way of winning salvation. They no longer need, as formerly 
they did, entirely to abandon the world by entering a monastery or by some 
other similar commitment. They can obtain God's grace in their accustomed 
manner and dress, and by their ordinary way of life.«35 He defined the crusade 
as prealium sanctum (compared to contemporary descriptions, such as 
peregrinatio, iter, via, this was indeed much more of a definition) and under-
stood holy war as a new phenomenon. 
There is no consensus among medievalists about how accurate was Nogent's 
understanding, that is, whether holy war was indeed »instituted« with the 
crusade. However, there seems to be a considerable body of literature which 
confirms that Nogent's claim is not without substance. It has been argued that, 
between about 1000 and 1300, there occurred a fundamental transformation in 
the way in which Christian writers treated the problem of war, and that, in this 
period, »emerged the concept of holy war, of war that was not merely justifi-
able but j ustifying and spiritually beneficial to those who participated in it.«36 
The transformation was imminent in the peace movement and the papal re-
forms. Moreover, the change of the official attitude to warfare (as a result of 
which, from being inherently sinful, it became, at least as a possibility, merito-
34. Western Awakening. Sources of Medieval History Volume It (c. 1000-1500), ed. C. T. Davis, 
Appelton-Century-Crofts, New York 1967, p. 148-9. 
35. Historia quae dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos, I. Cited in H. E. J. Cowdrey, »Cluny and the 
First Crusade«, Revue bénédictine, 83 (1973), p. 294. 
36. James A. Brundage, »Holy War and the Medieval Lawyers«, in The Holy War, ed. T. P. 
Murphy, Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1976, p. 99-100. In Brundage's view, 
Erdmann, op. cit., is »a basic point of departure for all subsequent studies of holy war in 
medieval Christian thought prior to the Crusades.« (Ibid., p. 126.) For an alternative view, that 
»le principe« of the holy war »fut admis par les théologiens et les juristes à travers tout le 
moyen âge«, see Michel Villey, La croisade. Essai sur la formation d'une théorie juridique, 
J. Vrin, Paris 1942, »Introduction«. 
92 Tomaž Mastnak 
rious to engage in warfare »and so to promote "right order" in human society 
by force of arms«) has been seen as the most significant aspect of the Church's 
reform of the eleventh century, of the reform which is »the greatest - from the 
spiritual point of view perhaps the only - turning point in the history of 
Catholic Christendom.«37 This change is most closely associated with Gregory 
VII, yet it was Urban II who completed it in launching the crusade. 
The crusade was holy war kat'exochen, it »embodied the holy war in its most 
characteristic medieval form.«38 From the formal point of view, holy war was a 
»subset of the just war«, just and justifying, »a war that confers positive 
spiritual merit on those who fight it«; and the crusade was »the Church's 
ultimate just war, sharing with other just wars the requirements of authority, 
necessity, just cause, right intention and defence of the patria.«39 One of the 
questions in debate is whether one is to look for the background of this 
institution in theology or in »popular culture« (as expressed by chansons de 
geste).40 Not less important for our understanding of the western holy war is to 
see it in the historical context of the beginnings of »European« expansion: »in 
intima correlazione con il passagio della Cristianita dalle posizione difensiva a 
quella offensiva verso i popoli pagani, anche la dottrina della guerra santa 
aveva subito una graduale profonda transformazione.«41 The key determining 
element of the crusade, however, is not simply that it was an expansionist, and 
therefore offensive, warfare but that it was war against Islam, and that Islam 
was not simply seen as a form of paganism but as the enemy of Christianity 42 
37. H. E. J. Cowdrey, »The Genesis o f the Crusades: The Springs of Western Ideas of Holy War«, 
in The Holy War, I.e., p. 19. The characterization o f t he Church reform, quoted by Cowdrey: 
Gerd Tellenbach, Church, State and the Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture 
Contest, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1940, p. 164. 
38. Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 105. Cf. Jonathan Riley-Smith, What were the Crusades?, 
Macmillan, London and Basingstoke 1977, p. 16. 
39. Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 116-7; Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, 
Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 38-9. For a succinct discussion on the just war theory 
see Jonathan Barnes, »The just war«, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philoso-
phy, eds. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny and J. Pinborg, Cambridge University Press, 1988. 
40. Russell, op. cit., p. 36; Cowdrey, »The Genesis«, p. 29; and Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 102-
3, all point out that the Augustinian just war was not the inspiration here. Cf. Franco Cardini, 
»La guerra santa nella cristianità«, in »Militia Christi« e Crociata nei secoli XI-XIII, 
Miscellanea del Centra di studi medioevali, Vita e pensiero, Milano 1992; and Paul 
Alphandéry, La Chrétienté et l'idée de croisade, ed. A. Dupront, 2 vols., Éditions Albin 
Michel, Paris 1954-59, who stresses the role of popular sentiments in the crusade. 
41. Giulio Vismara, »"Impium foedus". Le origini della "respublica Christiana"«, in Scritti di 
storia giuridica, Milano 1989, cited in Cardini, op. cit., p. 391-2. 
42. The western holy war was not a response to jihad: Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 103. Cardini, 
op. cit., p. 396. Erdmann, op. cit., p. 295, summarized Urban II's understanding of the crusade 
as »ein Stoß ins Herz der muhammedanischen Welt.« 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 93 
The institution of holy war is inseparable from the creation of the symbolic 
enemy of respublica Christiana and, subsequently, of Europe. Moreover, the 
Christian commonwealth was formed through the crusade, simultaneously 
with the construction of the enemy who had to be destroyed by war fought in 
the name of God; with the construction of the common enemy of the Christian 
community who had to be ruined by its united effort.43 What was new was not 
the awareness of the existence of Islam but the gradual articulation of the 
determination to annihilate Islam with systematic violence organized by the 
Vicar of Christ.44 It was not that an enemy was perceived as the other; it was 
that a particular other was now being construed as the universal enemy. 
The legal theory of holy war was formulated after the first armed pilgrimage to 
the Holy Land. It was in the mid-twelfth century that the general opinion 
crystallized, supported by the lawyers, that »Crusades were undoubtedly holy 
wars and as such were fully justified.«45 But it also took some fifty years to fix 
the meaning of the crusading experience in general, to arrive at a definition of 
the project, so that »between 1145 and 1149, between the launching and the 
failure of the Second Crusade, a variety of motives and conceptions of "cru-
sading", distinguished by lay, local, papal and other interests, converged into a 
single concerted effort "against Islam and paganism by one Christian 'pilgrim' 
army", with the chief formative influence to be credited to the bulls of Eugenius 
III and the meditation of St. Bernard. Here is the all-important act of transmis-
sion. Onward from here the continuous life of a coherently-formed "crusade 
idea" is clearly established: looking backwards in time is the deliberate effort 
to recreate the experience of the First Crusade as then understood.«46 
This final assertion may not be unproblematic. What Blake has done is a 
reconstruction of the »making sense« of the crusade; what he has not dealt with 
43. For an early perception of »la forza di tutto ¡1 mondo cristiano«, cf. Raoul Manselli, »La res 
publica cristiana e l'lslam«, in L'Occidente e 1'Islam nell'alto medioevo, Settimane di studio 
del centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, Presso lasede del centro, Spoleto 1965, p. 133, 
135-6. 
44. As in many other respects, it was Gregory VII who made considerable progress in both the 
conceptualizing of military action against the Muslims, and in articulating the idea of 
christianitas. However, the historical breakthrough was the crusade: »il momento storico in 
cui la respublica Christiana raggiunse la pif chiara eonsapevolezza della sua unita e della sua 
distinzione netta di fronte specialmente all'Islam.« Manselli, op. cit., p. 136.1 do not think it 
is really with irony that Strayer, »The First Western Union«, in Medieval Statecraft, p. 333-
4, calls the crusading enterprise »the first Western union«, and writes that »the creation of a 
crusading army marked a spectacular advance toward European peace and unity.« 
45. Brundage, ibid., p. 121. 
46. E. O. Blake, »The Formation of the "Crusade Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XXI 
(1970), 1, p. 30,28; the quote in quote is from Giles Constable, »The Second Crusade as seen 
by Contemporaries«, Traditio, IX (1953), p. 265. 
94 Tomaž Mastnak 
are the ideas, or rather the imaginary world, which made this »senseless« 
enterprise at all possible, which framed and triggered it, which brought into 
being this definitionless and nameless action. (It is well known that the 
crusade, for a century, did not have a proper name, and that the crusesignati for 
crusaders appeared in the late twelfth century, and the vernacular croiserie in 
the thirteenth century.) As important as clear definitions are for scholarship, 
their absence does not curtail the effectiveness of social action, as the First 
Crusade proves, and confused imagination does not exclude a concentrated 
effort. A comprehensive definition of the crusade is of secondary importance, 
compared to the magma of ideas, images and sentiments that erupted at 
Clermont and have spilled over lands and centuries, reaching the space and 
time in which we now live. The rationalization of the crusading experience 
provides us with the language of the crusade only in so far as we do not lose 
sight of the pensée sauvage which the rationalization attempted to tame. The 
crusading language - the political language par excellence of an era which 
was only coming to know politics47 - as any political language, is structured, 
and works, as the unconscious. 
What is important for my argument, is to state the deep formative impact the 
crusade has had on western ideas and institutions. Cowdrey has characterized 
the period under discussion here as »one of the most powerfully formative 
periods in our common culture, outlook, and institutions«, and Brundage has 
pointed out how »[b]y the end of the Middle Ages the holy war had become a 
model for expansionist campaigns by European Christians against non-Euro-
peans and non-Christians in all parts of the world.«48 Structurally the most 
consequential moment in this was, in my view, the formation of the western 
anti-Islamic attitude. And while forms of the collective identity of the Occi-
dental Asiatic peninsula49 have been changing, the Muslim Enemy has been 
the fixed reference point for almost a millennium. This seems to have been the 
only certainty in the history of Europe. 
Of particular significance for the history of European political thought is the 
centrality of the crusade in the processes of articulation and rearticulation of 
pivotal »political« structures (spiritual and temporal powers; empire, papacy 
47. Cf. Nicolai Rubinstein, »The history of the word politicus in early-modern Europe«, in The 
Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modem Europe, ed. A. Pagden, Cambridge Univer-
sity Press 1987; Maurizio Viroli, From Politics to Reason of State. The acquisition and 
transformation of the language of politics 1250-1600, Cambridge University Press 1992. 
48. Cowdrey, »The Genesis«, p. 27, cf. p. 11; Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 124. 
49. J. G. A. Pocock, »A discourse of sovereignty: observation on the work in progress«, in 
Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, eds. N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner, Cambridge 
University Press, 1993, p. 379, contends that »the time has come to see Europe not as a 
continent but as a sub-continent, a peninsula of the Eurasian land-mass comparable to India.« 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 95 
and regnum, and relations between them; finally the state and international 
system), as well as the language that was used in these processes. Riley-Smith 
has called attention to the prominence of the language of libertas in the 
crusading propaganda: »It is no exaggeration to say that "liberation" was the 
word most frequently used by him [Urban II] when justifying the need to 
crusade. [...] The eleventh-century sources are full of the words libertas and 
liberatioM50 Often, the language of necessitas was used. For example, Rufinus, 
a Decretist opposing the argument that clerics can take up arms, nevertheless 
admitted exceptions. He stated that a cleric might fight to defend himself when 
required by necessity, which knows no law.51 Finally, the crusade is embedded 
in the language of rights (the rights of the Church and imperium, and secular 
rulers in general; the »historical« right to Terra Sancta, the right to war, and in 
war; the natural rights of Christians in relation to the infidels), and might be 
seen as the institutional context in which one is to look for the »origins« of the 
language of rights.52 
These questions can only be indicated here: an indication of why the political 
languages that developed in the centuries following the heroic age of crusading 
warfare had little trouble in appropriating the crusading Gedankengut. This 
seems to have been their common heritage, a more or less submerged frame-
work which they have promiscuously shared. Here, I can only substantiate 
these claims in a most rudimentary form, by sketching something which 
cannot aspire to be more than a provisional florilegium. 
Dupront, in a postscript to his edition of Alphandéry's lectures on Christianity 
and the idea of crusade,53 has written that »Croisade et Chrétienté se sont fait 
ensemble, dans une création réciproque.« From this point of view, Dubois is 
50. The First Crusade, p. 17. In Viroli's apotheosis ofthe republican politics (op. cit. ), the crusade 
is not an issue (despite the all but minor role the Italian city republics played in the crusades). 
Neither it is in Quentin Skinner's The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge 
University Press, 1978, which has provided the conceptual framework for Viroli's study. And 
if Black's remark that, in the Foundations, there is the danger of a favoured theme - a story 
of civic liberty - »playing too great a role in interpretation«, is accurate, the absence of a 
treatment of the crusade in his work is still less justifiable. Cf. Anthony Black, Political 
Thought in Europe 1250-1450, Cambridge University Press, 1992 (quote p. 12-3). The 
Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350-c. 1450, ed. J. H. Burns, Cambridge 
University Press, 1988, also lacks any substantial treatment of the crusade. 
51. Cf. Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 112; Russell, op. cit., p. 106-7. 
52. Cf. Brian Tierney, »Tuck on Rights: Some Medieval Problems«, History of Political Thought, 
IV (1983), 3, p. 440-1; and »Origins of Natural Rights Language: Texts and Contexts, 1150-
1250, History of Political Thought, X (1989), 4, p. 625 sq. 
53. »La croisade après les croisades«, Alphandéry, op. cit., vol. II, p. 274. 
96 Tomaž Mastnak 
again a good starting point, to look at the subsequent developments. The 
political context of Dubois' argument, the conflict between the French monar-
chy and the Holy See, has been seen as a turning point in Occidental history. It 
marked the decline of the two universal powers, of monarchia ecclesiae and 
monarchia imperii, and thus the waning of the medieval »political« order, and 
the taking shape of territorial powers. These regna were not yet modern states, 
and it would take centuries before Hobbes could paint the papacy as »no other, 
than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the 
grave thereof.«54 What was disintegrating, was respublica Christiana, and what 
was emerging, was Europe as the new notion of unity, as the new collective 
identity, of the space populated by Latin Christians.55 
Dubois' project is symptomatic of the changing constellation of (from now on 
increasingly »political« and »European«) powers. What has often been seen as 
his incoherence - in the first place his pleading for a universal Catholic 
enterprise while promoting French royal interests; but also his breaking of the 
Church's temporal power while placing the pope at the head of his pacific 
council as the author and promoter of world peace; his expanding upon 
worldly prerequisits for the crusade and not ceasing to be concerned with the 
status of his warriors »in the world to come«56 - is actually his achievement. 
He succeeded in finding a place for the crusade in the new power configuration 
by linking it to the rising authority of the French king and by putting its 
organisation and leadership into royal hands. This was the opposite of Inno-
cent Ill's commanding the kings of England and France to head the military 
expedition;57 Alphandery styled the former crusades of princes »une entreprise 
royale« in opposition to »la Croisade populaire«, but they were ultimately 
papal wars. Dubois' crusade was royal in a different sense: he redefined the 
crusade as a national undertaking. St. Bernard's reproachful Vae principibus 
nostris! seems to have been obliterated, and if half a century ago, at least in a 
54. Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 480. 
55. Werner Fritzmeyer, Christenheit und Europa. Zur Geschichte des europäischen 
Gemeinschaftsgefühls von Dante bis Leibniz, Verlag von R. Oldenbourg, München/Berlin 
1931 ; Denys Hay, Europe. The Emergence of an Idea, 2nd edn., Edinburgh University Press, 
1968, ch. V; Heinz Gollwitzer, Europabild und Europagedanke. Beiträge zur deutschen 
Geistesgeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 2nd edn., C. H. Beck 'sche 
Verlagsbuchhandlung, München 1964, ch. II; Actes du colloque international sur la notion 
d'Europe, Travaux du Centre de recherches sur la civilisation de l'Europe moderne, Presses 
universitaires de France, Paris 1963, ch. I. For medieval Wortbedeutungen of »Europe«, see 
Jürgen Fischer, Oriens - Occidens - Europa. Begriff und Gedanke »Europa« in der späten 
Antike und im frühen Mittelalter, Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1957. 
56. De recup., §§ 40, 3. 
57. »La lettre Mediator Dei ne propose pas, mais impose aux deux rois la guerre sacrée.« 
Alphandéry, op. cit., vol. II, p. 43. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 97 
historical retrospection, the crusade appeared to be one of the first victims of 
»l'esprit laïque de nationalité«,58 it now found, in the nascent nationalism, its 
driving force. 
However, this was only one option available for to the crusading warfare. As I 
will try to show, the crusade was, from then on, alternately associated with 
single territorial powers and alliances between them; with the dwindling 
universal powers, the papacy and the empire, and with the new aspirant to 
universal rule, monorchia universalis; as well as with the ideal of an united 
Europe. And the »idea« of crusade found its expression in different political 
languages. 
Philippe de Mézières' ideas on peace are exemplarily expressed in his Epistre 
au Roi Richart, a letter comissioned by Charles VI and addressed to the 
English king in 1395. However, the same ideas are to be found in his other 
writings, especially in Le songe du vieilpelerin (1388), and one can see de 
Mézières, »une des plus belles figures de ce XIVe siècle«, as a monomaniac. 
»Dès son premier départ de Mézicres, son but était fixé pour toujours: il 
voulait recommencer les croisades et restaurer le royaume de Jérusalem.«59 
In Songe, de Mézières confides to the young king that his royal father, Charles 
V, thought out a plan to reunite and reform Christendom, and that the achieve-
ment of this ideal now falls to him, Charles VI. In the eyes of the Old Pilgrim, 
Charles VI was destined to make his dreams come true: to deliver the Holy 
Land. »Beau Filz,« so de Mézières lets la royne Verite speak to the young 
prince, »pour se que tu as plus receu des graces du doulz Jesus mon Pere que 
les autres roys crestiens, tu dois plus travaillier et premier commaincier la 
voulente de Dieu; c'est assavoir que paix et union soit entre les Crestiens. Et 
raisonnablement les autres roys ne refuseront pas la saincte requeste que tu 
leur presenteras, c'est assavoir d'amour et d'aimitie, de paix et repoz.« This 
peace plan envisaged the convocation of a general council, »grant conseil et 
parlement general«, in which the envoys of all the kingdoms and »autres 
seigneuries des Crestiens catholiques« would, firstly, reach the agreement on 
»la reformación, amour et unites des roys, des princes et des communes«, and 
58. Ibid., vol. I, p. 206; p. 186, 196 on St. Bernard's reprobation. 
59. N. Jorga, Philippe de Mézières 1327-1405 et la croisade au XlVe siècle, Librairie Emile 
Bouillon, Paris 1896, p. 512. Cf. de Mézières' late self-portrait in Épistre lamentable et 
consolatoire sur le fait de la desconfiture lacrimable du noble et vaillant roy de Honguerie 
par les Turcs devant la ville de Nicopoli etc., in Oeuvres de Froissart, ed. Kervyn de 
Lettenhove, Imprimerie et librairie Victor Devaux, Bruxelles 1872, vol. 16, p. 507. Atiya, op. 
cit., p. 129, sees Pierre de Thomas and Philippe de Mézières as »two men who, by their 
dominating personality and influence, contributed more to the promotion of crusades than 
probably any other of their contemporaries.« 
98 Tomaž Mastnak 
secondly, heal the schism of the Church by electing one sole pope. After this 
has been achieved and the Golden Age has come, the schismatics and infidels, 
Tartars, Turks, Jews and Saracens will be, by hook or by crook, brought into 
the true faith, and the Holy Land delivered.60 
Besides this general plan, de Mezieres worked out a more concrete and 
politically practicable peace and crusading project. He invested his hopes in 
Charles VI and Richard II, desiring them to conclude peace between France 
and England. Against the background of peace negotiations between the two 
countries, de Mezieres exposed this project in Songe and elaborated it in 
Epistre. In a language reminiscent of the later Erasmian irenic rhetoric, de 
Mezieres describes the evils of war and grieves over hostilities between 
Christian princes: not only because God abominates the effusion of Christian 
blood but also because this internecine warfare has led to the loss of the Holy 
Land and the subsequent failure to recover it.61 He also deplores, as an open 
wound in Christendom, the schism in the Holy Church.62 His peace formula, 
glossed in medical metaphors, is simple and clear: the peace of Christendom; 
the union of the Church; and the crusade (le saint passage d'oultremer). 
Aware of the rise of national powers,63 de Mezieres entrusts his project to two 
of them. For reasons of propaganda, England is honoured by being admitted to 
share with France the title of the elect Christian nation, and the two greatest 
Kings of Christendom are beseeched to end the long war, and conclude peace, 
between their countries. The »confederacion et aliance en Dieu perpetuele, la 
vraie paix et doulce amour fraternelle des ii. filz saint Loys« will bring about 
»la paix et unite de I'eglise et de toute la crestiente«.64 And so Charles VI and 
Richard II will kindle the light, »par laquele lumiere toutes les generacions des 
crestiens catholiques qui jusques a ores par les guerres et divisions se sont 
trouvez en tenebres, recognoistront la droite voie qui va en Jherusalem.«65 
Jesus made them leaders of his chosen people, of Western Christendom, to 
60. Philippe de Mézières, Le songe du vieil pelerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols, At the University 
Press, Cambridge 1969, II, p. 292, 293-5, 296. 
61. Philippe de Mézières, Letter to King Richard II. A plea made in 1395 for peace between 
England and France, ed. G. W. Coopland, Liverpool University Press 1975 (quoted as 
Epistre), p.85, 117, 100. Warfare between Christians is war against God {ibid., p. 119), and 
so de Mézières prays to the Sire Dieux to »dissipe et destruís tous ceulz qui veullent les 
batailles encontre leurs freres crestiens« (ibid., p. 124). He implies that there is no just war 
between Christians. Ibid., p. 126. 
62. Ibid., p. 93 sq. 
63. »Lombardie demourra as Lombars, Espaigne aus Espaigneux, France aus Francois, et 
Engleterre aux Anglois.« Ibid., p. 87. 
64. Epistre., p. 116. 
65. Ibid., p. 91. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 99 
take them into the Promised Land^and the Old Solitary has a vision of God's 
temple in Jerusalem once again shining with light and the holy sepulchre 
(presently befouled every day by the false followers of Mohammed, con-
demned in the sight of God) restored to the glory of the Catholic Faith.67 
For de Mézières, the Holy Land is »terre publique de la crestiente« which 
belongs, »quanta la foy et quant a 1'onnour«, to Christian peoples and to their 
kings and princes. Thus the conquest of Turkey, Egypt and Syria is a work 
done for the Christian res publico, for »la chose publique de la cresteinte«.68 
The fact that these countries »sont remplis de toutes maniérés de richesses et 
delices«, while the »royaumes d'occident« are cold and frozen, appears to be 
circumstantial. What really mattered in that world in which phantasmagorias 
were eager to materialize, was that »la gloire de la vénérable dame Sainte Foy 
soit de cy en-avant mieux gardée qu'elle ne fu à nostre lacrimable journée.«69 It 
was as a Catholic republican that de Mézières preached the crusade, made 
itineraries for the carrying out of the project and also engaged practically for 
the crusading warfare. His military order, Militia Passionis Jhesu Christi, 
never grew strong enough to accomplish the historic mission for which de 
Mézières conceived it, yet it is of interest as a semi-embodied idea. This 
virtuous, well ordered and disciplined chivalry was meant to recommence the 
holy war. De Mézières was as resolute in condemning armed conflicts between 
Christians as he was in urging Christians to wage war against the infidels: »il 
se fault efforcier et faire violence selon la doctrine de saint Pol I'apostre.«70 To 
fight »bonne et forte guerre« against the »Turcs ennemis de la foy férues et 
deshonnourées«, the »conversion ou confusion et destruction de la faulse secte 
de Mahomet et de toute ydolatrie«, is the will of God, a »chose Dieu nous 
veuille ottroier!«71 The aim of the Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ - of 
these »vaillans combatants et eslues de Dieu«, of this »sainte congrégation«, of 
this »nouviau peuple d'Israël« - however, was not only to engage in »la bataille 
de Dieu« which would open the gates of the »royaume du ciel«.72 It was also to 
settle in the Holy Land, and to establish the City of God in the reconquered 
territories.73 The military order is »la cité de Dieu«,74 and the new order was to 
66. » 0 vous Richart et Charles, freres, et filz des benois sains, il vous devrait souvenir souvent 
comment le doulz Jhesu vous a fais chevetaines ensamble de son peuple d'Israël, c'est assavoir 
de la crestiente d'occident, pour la mener en la terre de promission.« Ibid., p. 118. 
67. Ibid., p. 90-1; »la faulce generacion de Mahommet, devant Dieu reprouvee«, p. 101. 
68. Ibid., p. 99, 103. 
69. Ibid., p. 145; Epistre lamentable, p. 523. 
70. Epistre lamentable, p. 499. 
71. Ibid., p. 489, 467, 498. 
72. Ibid., p. 473, 490, 499. 
73. »[..•] le temps est venus de édiffier la cité de Dieu, selon Saint Augustin, « / ¿ y . , p. 500; cf. p. 
503. 
74. Ibid., p. 475. »Cette chevalerie sera la Cité portative de Dieu.« Ibid., p. 499. 
100 Tomaž Mastnak 
be a »monarchie militaire«, or as Jorga appropriately described it, a Christian 
Sparta.75 
IV. 
In the aftermath of the conflict between the conciliar movement and the papal 
monarchy in the first half of the fifteenth century, two opposing peace/crusad-
ing plans competed for the support of Christian princes. The initiative was in 
the hands of Pius II, and it was in response to the popes' repeal, in 1462, of the 
Compactata agreement, concluded between the Czech Hussite leaders and the 
council of Basle,76 that Jiri z Podëbrad, King George of Bohemia, conceived 
his tractatus pads. »Not content with repudiating the authority of Rome in his 
own country, Podëbrad threw himself into an elaborate scheme for undermin-
ing the position of the papacy in Europe. His agent was a certain Anton Marin i 
of Grenoble, who startled the world by his proposition that Christian princes 
and nations would never cease to cling to Rome as long as the Holy See alone 
took thought for the defence of Christendom against the Turk.«77 
King George's political calculus is easy to understand. The Utraquist prince 
wished to forestall Pius II's attempts to isolate him by seeking alliances with 
those European rulers who were themselves not well disposed towards the 
pope's policy. His plan to establish peace in Christendom and organize war 
against the Turks was meant to be the platform for diplomatic negotiations 
focused on France, Poland, Hungary, Burgundy and Venice; and because the 
75. Jorga, op. cit., p. 455, 458. 
76. On Pius II's Czech policy, see Cecilia M. Ady, Pius II (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini). The 
Humanist Pope, Methuen & Co., London 1913, p. 214; Georg Voigt, Enea Silvio de' 
PiccolominialsPapstPiusderZweite, undseinZeitalter, 3 vols., GeorgReimer, Berlin 1856-
63, vol. 3, ch. VII; Ludwig Pastor, The History of Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, 
vol. Ill, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London 1894, ch. V; for Pius' own view The 
Commentaries of Pius II, tr. and ed. L. C. Gabel and F. A. Gragg, Smith College Studies in 
History, vols. XXII, XXV, XXX, XXXV, XLIII, Northampton, Mass., 1936-57, especially 
VII, p. 512 J?., X, p. 621 sq. 
77. Ady, op. cit., p. 219; cf. Pastor, op. cit., p. 231 ; Voigt, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 487, who calls this 
response to the papal diplomatic offensive »drohendes Gegenspiel«. On Tractatus pads see 
Vaclav Vanecek, »The Historical Significance of the Peace Project of King George of 
Bohemia and the Research Problems Involved«, in The Universal Peace Organization of 
King George of Bohemia. A Fifteenth Century Plan for World Peace 1462/1464, Publishing 
House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague 1964, who argues that the role of 
Antonius Marini has been overemphasised (p. 3 7-45,64); Jacob ter Meulen, Der Gedanke der 
internationalen Organisation in seiner Entwicklung 1300-1800, Martinus Nijhoff, Haag 
1917; Vaclav Vanecek, »Deux projets tcheques des XVe et XVIIe siècles relatifs à 
l'organisation universelle de la paix: Projets du roi Georges de Podebrady et de J. A. 
Komensky«, in La paix, Receuils de la Société Jean Bodin XV, Editions de la librairie 
encyclopédique, Bruxelles 1961. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 101 
objectives of the plan coincided with the declared aims of papal policy he 
made it difficult for the pope to dispute them.78 However, the idea of an 
assembly of Christian princes in which neither the pope nor the emperor 
played a leading role, this »initiation of a secular crusade«,79 provoked a swift 
rebuttal by the Holy See, and king George's »foreign policy« was ultimately 
unsuccessful. 
King George's abandonment of the idea of universal empire headed by em-
peror and/or the pope was not such a radical innovation as has been argued.80 
By the time of his rule, the conciliar controversy had given a strong impetus to 
the formation of the international system in the strict sense of the word, and the 
papacy itself had developed »dalle terre di san Pietro al principato« and 
contributed much to the legitimation of the modern statal frazionamento^ 
What 1 also find problematic is the interpretation of his pacific union as an 
international organization of sovereign, equal and independent, states. The 
assembly, as it was conceived at the Czech court, was meant to be composed of 
representatives of European powers whose task would be to settle conflicts 
between those powers peacefully. It had jurisdictional, political and economic 
competencies that infringed upon »sovereignty«.821 do not dispute, however, 
that king George's peace plan is a significant and remarkable document of 
78. Pius II, indeed, invited Podiebrad, whose professed zeal for the war against the Turks 
contrasted sharply with indifference of other Christian princes, to the congress of Mantua as 
a »dear son«. Pastor, op. cit., p. 217, 219. 
79. Ady, op. cit., p. 219. Pastor, op. cit., p. 238, 232, speaks of this »anti-Papal, cosmopolitan 
Union« as a »wild project which aimed at revolutionising the whole political system of 
Europe.« The pope was only supposed to help with organizing the building of a naval force 
and collecting finances: Tractatus pads toti cristianitati fiendae, ed. J. Kejr, and English 
transl. by I. Dvorak, Treaty on the Establishment of Peace throughout Christendom, both in 
The Universal Peace Organization of King George of Bohemia, I.e., § 21. 
80. Vanecek, »The Hist. Significance«, p. 15 and elsewhere. 
81. Anthony Black, Monarchy and Community. Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Contro-
versy 1430-1450, At The University Press, Cambridge 1970, p. 132; Paolo Prodi, IIsovrano 
pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchiapapale nellaprima eta moderna, II Mulino, 
Bologna 1982, p. 40. 
82. VaneCek, »The Hist. Significance«, p. 11 sq., 45, 60. Tractatus pads, I.e., § 9 on the 
introduction of »new laws« in »the name of allofus«; §§ 13 and 14 that the assembly is to 
decide when to wage war; § § 13-15 on the imposition of financial obligations on the members, 
and § 18 on the enforcement of the payment of the determined money by military force if 
necessary; § 14 on common currency {communimoneta) and determination of»decentprices« 
of »victuals and billets in towns, villages and other suitable places« for the Christian army, 
and of »who should be given what, if something should be successfully acquired from the 
enemy«; § 16 on the jurisdiction over »all of us and our subjects«; and § 22 with the provision 
that, if a prince who is a member of the union died, »no heir or successor of his may be allowed 
to succeed him to the kingdom, principality or dominion« without the consent of the 
congregatio. 
102 Tomaž Mastnak 
European history. It sought to restore the unity of Christendom on the basis of 
plurality of territorial powers, and to create union and, consequently, establish 
peace, among them by organizing war against the Turks. 
The preamble to the Tractatus pads is a succinct declaration of the »European 
ideology«. It first invokes the image of the once flourishing Christianity, 
blessed with men and goods, that for a long time held a large part of pagandom 
including the Holy Sepulchre: »in those days there was no nation in the world 
which would have dared to challenge Christian rule.« But, writing a decade 
after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, the irenic manifesto points out 
how lacerated, broken, impoverished and deprived of all its former brilliance 
and splendour Christendom has become. »When almost the whole world was 
strong with the holiness of the Christian religion, the astute Mohammed first 
led astray the exiguous Arab nation. However, when the first attempts were not 
opposed, he gradually acquired so many of the lost people that he subjugated 
very large regions of Africa and Asia and incited them to commit a most 
detestable treachery. And then the utterly despicable Turks, who had most 
recently subjugated first the famous Greek Empire and then very many Chris-
tian lands and kingdoms, abducted an almost innumerable multitude of souls 
from the Christian parts, took away everything as bounty, destroyed and 
defiled many convents and large churches, and perpetrated very many other 
evils.«83 
As is to be expected, the invocation of a historical myth and the depiction of 
the present decline of the past glory, caused by a perfidious enemy, called for 
action. »Oh, golden land! Oh, Christianity, Thou jewel of all lands, how could 
all Thy glory disappear in such a way, how couldst Thou lost all Thy most 
magnificent brilliance? Where is the vigour of all Thy people, where is the 
reverence shown to Thee by all nations, where is Thy royal glory, Thy fame? 
What good were Thy many victories when so soon Thou werest to be led in a 
triumphal march? What good does it serve that Thou hast resisted the power of 
pagan leaders when now Thou art unable to resist the attacks of Thy 
neighbours?« All the necessary resources are provided and what is required to 
mobilize them is the amendment of what may be erroneous and the mollifica-
tion of God with pious acts, as His Divine Majesty apparently must be ired by 
some ill deed. And since God is just and merciful, and »those whom He loves 
he corrects, castigates and leads to virtue through many adversities, we hold, 
turning our hopes to our Lord whose cause is at stake, that we can do nothing 
more pious in our integrity [...] than to strive diligently for the establishment 
among Christians of true, pure and lasting peace, unity and love, and to defend 
the faith of Christ against the most vicious Turk.« The Christian princes have 
83. Tractatus, p. 69. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 103 
been given their power in order to glorify peace, to uphold the position of 
Christendom, to bring the wars against the infidel to a successful end, and to 
guard and extend the frontiers of the Christian republic.84 There is no doubt left 
that those who do not fight for the Lord are against Him: »if we do not want to 
be against Christ, we must fight for His faith and stand with Him. For the Holy 
Spirit damns those who do not fight on His side, who do not oppose the enemy, 
who do not stand like a wall to protect the House of Israel.« And in order to be 
able to war for God and against His enemies, Christians have to stop fighting 
each other and unite: »such wars, plunder, tumult, fires and murders which, 
alas, have engulfed Christendom almost on all sides [...] should end and be 
completely eradicated«, so that »such kingdoms and principalities may be 
brought through praiseworthy unity into a state of mutual charity and frater-
nity.«85 
The Caritas and fraternitas referred to are »our«, charity and fraternity and the 
dividing line between »us«, or »all of us«, and those outside the unitas. The 
cult of peace, it is asserted, is unthinkable without justice, yet iustitia is a name 
of exclusion and pads the prerequisite and instrument of war. Christians have 
to love each other in order to be able to effectively hate and in an organized 
way destroy their enemies. The Turks, and the Turkish prince as the symbol of 
their political existence, are construed as the »severest enemy of the Christian 
name«, and the European princes united in peace swear that »we shall not 
cease to pursue the enemy [...] until he is driven out of Christian territory.«86 
This is a theme which the heretic king shared with the head of Christian 
orthodoxy, his adversary Pius II. We shall see more clearly that Europe, as a 
self-conscious entity, was articulated through the imaginary practice of cleans-
ing itself of the Turk. »Ethnic cleansing« was integral to the concept of Europe 
from the start. 
Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the humanist pope Pius II, was, as befits the time, an 
uomo universale in politics as well. He argued for the empire and for the 
pontifical plenitudopotestatis, he was a conciliarist and a papal monarchist. Of 
interest, here, is his European policy, and in this he had a clear and permanent 
Leitmotiv, a crusade against the infidels. Pius II did not only use the majestic 
plural but also spoke of himself in the objective third person singular. This is 
how he wished to be seen by his contemporaries and the generations to come: 
84. Ibid., p. 69, 70. 
85. Ibid. Cf. § 21, that, in particular, those wars and discord between the princes of the Church 
have to end which might impede in some manner the conclusion ofthe wars against the Turks. 
86. »pacis cultus«, ibid., § 9. »[...] ad hostis insecucione non destituros, [...] quoadusque a 
cristianorum finibus fuerit effugatus.« Ibid., § 13. It has to be added that King George allowed 
the conclusion of peace with the enemy, yet only if this is no longer perceived as a threat to 
the security of Christians. 
104 Tomaž Mastnak 
»Among all the purposes he had at heart none was dearer than that of rousing 
Christians against the Turks and declaring war upon them.«87 This was not 
only »the central and dominant goal of his entire pontificate«,88 he strove for 
this through a great part of his life. 
The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 required a concentrated effort. 
From the imperial court, Piccolomini urged pope Nicholas V to rally the forces 
of Europe for a crusade. He helped the emperor to convene an »European 
congress« in Regenshurg (Spring 1454), followed by diets in Frankfurt (Octo-
ber-November 1454) and Neustadt (Februar-April 1455); he spoke on all these 
occasions; and he corresponded diligently. All the themes of crusading policy, 
to which he would return time and again, were articulated already in this 
period, and with regard to them there was little new under the sun. What 
Piccolomini, with the strong humanist sense of his own personality, added to 
the conventional stock was his vanity. As a politician and an ecclesiastic, 
Piccolomini saw Christianity disgraced and Europe threatened: what had to be 
done was to make peace between Christians as the necessary condition of 
uniting forces and declaring war on the enemies of the faith. 
As a humanist, Piccolomini contributed to the literary genre of Turcica. 
Nicholas ofCusa, an ecclesiastical dignitary and a fellow humanist with strong 
affinity to Greek culture, was a well chosen interlocutor. He could understand 
Piccolomini's lament that, with the fall of Constantinople to the lascivious 
Turks,89 Europe was cut off from the spring of learning and arts. Aeneas 
Silvius doubted not that the Turks, the enemies of the Greek and Latin 
literature, would burn all alien books (as Westerners had often done). He saw 
not only muses dying but also Homer, Pindar, Menander and other illustrious 
poets suffering their second death, and he predicted the ultimate annihilation 
of Greek philosophy. However, great as this loss might be, the blows to 
Christian religion were much greater. It once reigned over the whole world; 
now it had been destroyed in Asia and Libya, and it was not to be left in peace 
in Europe. »We have seen the defeat of the Greeks, now we are waiting for the 
ruin of the Latins. [...] The Turkish sword already hangs over our necks, while 
87. Commentaries of Pius II, II, p. 115. The epitaph in the Choir of S. Ciriaco immortalizes the 
pope as »moritur dum in Turcos bella parat.« Pastor, op. cit., p. 372. 
88. LeonaC. Gabel, »Introduction« to Commentaries, I.e., vol. XLIII, p. xxv. Already in the first 
days of his pontificate he showed himself »wholly engrossed by the one idea of war against 
the Turks«. Pastor, op. cit. p. 23. 
89. Piccolomini, who as Pius II vainly attempted to suppress his own erotic writings (Pastor, op. 
cit., p. 284), must have been qualified to write that the Turks »in libidinem provoluti sunt«. 
Letter to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, July 21, 1453, in Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Papst Pius 
II. Ausgewählte Texte aus seinen Schriften, ed. B. Widmer, Benno Schwabe & Co., Basel/ 
Stuttgart 1960, p. 446. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 105 
we are waging intestine war; we are persecuting brothers and allow the 
enemies of the Cross to proceed against us.«90 
The call to take measures, not only to defend the Christian possessions but also 
to attack and destroy the Turks in their own territory, had been heard before. 
So had been the claim that nothing prevented Christians from succeeding in 
this but their own negligence and dissensions - consequently, peace had to be 
made between them so that they could go to war.91 What was new was the more 
acute awareness of the governmental fragmentation of the West, and it was 
this which led Piccolomini to complain that Christendom had no head which 
all would obey; that the Pope and the Emperor had become fictious entities; 
that every town had a king; and that it was difficult to imagine how to lead to 
war so many heads.92 More important than this was a growing »European« 
consciousness. 
It has been observed that »the works of Pius II, both before and after his 
elevation to the papal throne, are full of the use of the word Europe.« This was 
in conformity with the general increase in the use, and the emotional content, 
of the term in the fourteenth and especially in the fifteenth centuries. What has 
been associated with Piccolomini is the loading of the notion with political 
significance: »der Begriff stellt sich als Träger des politischen Gesamt-
bewußtseins des Abendlandes ein.«93 It is not difficult to perceive that this 
occidental political consciousness was articulated in opposition to the »Turk-
ish peril«. For Piccolomini and his consortes, what was under threat was 
Europe. Yet in order to be able to formulate such a cognizance, clear concepts 
were needed (or at least clearer than those that had been inherited). Piccolomini, 
in his geographical work, defined the territories of Europe with an increased 
precision; his main achievement, however, appears to be that he both associ-
ated this definite geographical unit with Christendom and dissociated it from 
Christendom. In one sense, Europe was Christian Europe: Christianitas was 
identical with Europe. This identity emerged through a consciousness of 
territorial losses of Christendom in Asia Minor, and in this other sense 
90. Ibid., p. 446-8, 450. 
91. Ibid., p. 452. Cf. Commentaries, III, p. 213; XII, p. 819, and elsewhere. 
92. »Christianitas nullum habet caput, cui parere omnes velint; neque summo sacerdoti neque 
imperatori, que sua sunt, dantur. nulla reverentia, nulla obedientia est. tanquam fictanomina, 
picta capita sint, ita papam imperatoremque respicimus. suum queque civitas regem habet, tot 
sunt principes, quot domus. quomodo tot capitus, quot regunt Christianum orbem, arma 
sumere suadebis?« Letter to Leonardo dei Benvoglienti, Mai-October 1454, in Widmer, ed., 
p. 454-6. 
93. Hay, op. cit., p. 86-7; Fritzmeyer, op. cit., p. 28. Both Hay and Fritzmeyer credited 
Piccolomini with turning the word into an adjective, for inventing »Europeans«. For earlier 
usage of Europenses, cf. Fischer, op. cit., p. 50-1. 
106 Tomaž Mastnak 
Christianitas was not equivalent with Europe. It was a broader concept, an 
universality at the moment confined to culturally defined geographical space, 
but which in potentia gave the blueprint for European expansion. The actual 
situation, however, was one of Christian and European retreat. It was in this 
framework that Pius II could write: »All that we possessed in Asia, we have 
lost in unsightly manner; we fled and let Mahomet to gain victory.«94 This was 
a distinctively new language. This was not Innocent Ill's understanding of 
Palestine as »funciculus haereditatis Dominicae«; nor was it Innocent IV's 
claim that the pope had jurisdiction and power over all men, infidels in-
cluded.95 It was the question of Christian possessions outside Europe, and their 
fate had been, and was to be, decided by military strength. 
In principle, or at least for propaganda purposes, Piccolomini had no doubts 
about the military superiority of the Christianus populus, so that the urgency 
of the defence of the faith easily turned into a vision of the spread of Christian 
religion and a triumphant expansion beyond Turkish lands.96 In reality, he 
faced Turkish military advances. He repeatedly described them in exact geo-
graphical terms in order to make clear that European territories were occupied, 
or in danger of being occupied: that Europe was assailed. However, what was 
also assaulted, with the Turkish inroads into Europe, was Christian faith. 
From the political point of view, Pius was convinced that the Turkish sultan 
»began to aspire to the sovereignty of all Europe«. In his view, »it was 
absolutely certain that the Turks were aspiring to the empire of the West«; that 
»Mahomet after winning the east is aiming at the empire of the west.«97 From 
the ecclesiastical perspective, he was convinced that »the Turks are doing their 
utmost to destroy« the Catholic Faith; that they »are everywhere trying to rend 
in pieces« the religion; that they trample it under their foot; and that they had 
inflicted »great injuries [...] on the Christian religion«.98 He had no hindrances 
94. Letter to Cusa, I.e., p. 448. 
95. Cf. Alphandery, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 149; Brundage, »Holy War«, p. 121. 
96. Letter to Cusa, I.e., p. 452-4. »ac non solum de Turchis, si perseverantes erimus, sed de 
Saracenisquoqueceterisquebarbarisgentibusvictrici dexterasuatriumphum nobis elargietur.« 
Cf. Commentaries, 111, p. 226; and on the military superiority, ibid., p. 215. In one aspect, at 
least, Pius was openminded: he could easily imagine that God's anger with the »impious 
Turks« be extended to »the barbarian nations who dishonour Christ the Lord«; that not only 
»the faithless Turk may be crushed« but »all infidels may cease from troubling us«. 
Commentaries, VIII, p. 528-9. As a practical man, he offered his good offices to organize the 
»plunder of the East« in a way which would not rouse jealousies among Christian powers 
(<Commentaries, XII, p. 817), and in September 1463 (in order to quiet Florentine suspicions 
of the Venetians), he unfolded a plan for the partition of Turkey, »the first of many similar 
projects«. Pastor, op. cit., p. 324. 
97. Commentaries, II, p. 115; III, p. 214; XI, p. 741; cf XII, p. 801. 
98. Ibid., Ill, p. 192, 208; VIII, p. 540; XII, p. 809. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 107 
to declare that, »[a]s a nation the Turks are foes of the Trinity«, that they 
profess a »monstrous doctrine« which he compared to the »plague«. He avowed 
that »we hate the Turks as the foes of Christianity«, and warned that under »the 
rule of the Turks f...] the sacraments of the Church must finally be doomed and 
the gate to the other life be closed«.99 Consequently, in a shockingly honest 
spelling out of the new golden rule: Do not allow others to treat us in the way 
that we are treating others, he forewarned his fellow Europeans that »[u]nless 
we take arms and go to meet the enemy we think all is over with religion. We 
shall be among the Turks in the position in which we see the despised race of 
Jews among Christians.«100 
In his objective voice, Pius noted that »[h]e was ashamed that so vile a race 
should terrorize Christians, who had once inspired fear in the whole world«, 
and as nothing was so dear to him »as the defence of holy religion«, he 
»decided to take steps« to prevent the Mohammedan poison »worming its way 
further.«101 And because he had analytically separated Europe and Christendom, 
he could bring them together in a powerful political synthesis: »all Europe 
would be subdued, a calamity that must bring with it the destruction of our 
Faith«.102 To »take the offensive against the Turks« was the fulfilment of his 
»dearest desires«,103and the crusade he planned was of a double nature: it was a 
war for Europe and Christianity. The war for Europe was Christian war, and 
the war for Christianity was European war. The double-edged holy war had a 
single objective: to fight and crush the Turk.104 In this framework, the Euro-
pean congress Pius II convened in Mantua in order to discuss and protect »the 
common weal«,105 although it was abortive in that it failed to launch a crusade, 
nevertheless did succeed in formulating a political strategy. The formula was 
simple and clear: »to drive the Turk out of Europe«.106 This was European 
strategy not in the sense that Europe would carry out a political, military and 
99. Ibid., II, p. 116; VIII., p. 528; XII, p. 815. 
100.Ibid., XII, p. 823. 
101 .Ibid., Ill, p. 214; XII, p. 811; II, p. 116. 
\02.Ibid., II, p. 192. 
103.Ibid.,11, p. 118; XII, p. 822. 
104. »Holy Jesus will show that the vileness of Mahomet is so hateful to Him and fighting on our 
side will crush the enemy before our eyes.« Ibid., XII, p. 811. 
105.Ibid., II, p. 117; VIII, p. 515. Already at the diet in Frankfurt, Piccolomini linked Europe to 
another cherished republican concept, that ofpatria: »Turcorum grandis victoria, Grecorum 
extrema ruina, Latinorum summa infamia fuit... nunc vero in Europa, id est in patria, in domo 
propria, in sede nostrapercursi cesique sumus.« Cited in Widmer, »Biographische Einleitung«, 
I.e., p. 82. For a detailed report on the Mantua congress, see Pastor, op. cit., ch. II; Voigt, op. 
cit., vol. 3, ch. I; Commentaries, II, III. 
106. »in dieta Mantuana [...] decrevimus, ut Turchum de Europa divino adjutorio fugaremus.« 
Cited in Hay, op. cit., p. 85, who points out the difference between this program and the old 
crusading objective of recapturing the Holy Place. Cf. Commentaries, XII, p. 816: Turks were 
108 Tomaž Mastnak 
cultural program; but in the sense that Europe would only come into being 
through cleansing itself of the Turk. Holy war is the dynamic constitutional 
principle of Europe. 
Against this background, Pius II's showing of a conciliatory pacific face 
should be seen as insincere rather than enigmatic. In 1460 he wrote a letter to 
sultan Muhammad II, trying to persuade him to convert to Christianity.'07 The 
letter is most often interpreted as a measure taken in a desperate situation: 
because the prospects of raising a Christian army were bleak, the pope decided 
to take issue with the Turks by means of rational argument. As he could not 
overpower the Turk by the force of arms, he thought he could be victorious 
with »a little water«. In contrast to his own military weakness, he argued with 
confidence that Muhammad could never hope to overcome the powerful na-
tions of Europe by waging war against them, but that he could easily become 
the greatest, most powerful and most famous man of his time if he would only 
let himself be baptized. If the sultan would do this, the pope would invest him 
with the empire of the East.108 
Whether the investiture with the Eastern Empire offered to the Turkish sultan 
should be seen as a pathetic invocation of the days of the fullness of papal 
power (as pathetic was Pius' promise that »all Christians« will reverence the 
converted sultan and make him their judge, while he, the pope himself had 
failed to make them respond to his summons), or as a political manoeuvring 
intended to alarm Christian princes, is not at issue here. It would be more 
instructive to look at Pius II's Epistola in the context of contemporary concilia-
tory approaches to Islam.109 From the doctrinal point of view, Pius II belongs to 
those authors who »felt they should contribute to a subject to which they had 
to be »compelled to move out of Europe«; Mahomet was to be »conquered and utterly driven 
out of Europe«. 
107. Pió II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini), Lettera a Maometto II (Epistola ad Mahumetem), ed. G. 
Toffanin,R. Pironti&figli.Napoli 1953; Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Epistola Ad Mahomatem 
II(Epistle To MuhammedII), ed. A.R. Baca, Peter Lang, New York-Bern-Frankfurt/M-Paris 
1990. For Toffanin, »Introduzione«, p. x, »storicamente la lettera resta un enigma«; R. W. 
Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 
Mass., 1962, p. 99, with all his admiration for Pius II's magnificent composition, splendid 
language, skilful argument and worldly wisdom, comments that the one thing the Epistola 
lacks »is any depth of sincerity. He wrote rather as a lawyer with a brief than as a man speaking 
from the heart.« The argument is summarized by Southern, ibid., p. 99-102. 
108.Epístola, I, II. 
109. Epistola, II; Pastor, op. cit., p. 256. Southern, Western Views, p. 86, speaks about the 
application of the »habit of conciliation«, learned in the conciliar movement, to the solution 
of the problem of Islam, and James E. Biechler, The Religious Language of Nicholas ofCusa, 
American Academy of Religion and Scholars Press, Missoula, Montana, 1975, p. 45, of an 
interfaith dialogue as »a new application for the via concilii.« 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 109 
little to add«, and who reiterated the »themes of hostile medieval misinterpre-
tation of Islam«.110 With regard to the potential political effect of theEpistola, 
it has been argued that, even if Muhammed received the letter, »it is doubtful 
that he would have been swayed by it, and it is certainly improbable that he 
would not have been offended by the invective and by the patronizing attitude 
Pius everywhere displays.«111 
In order to address the question of the status of rational dialogue in the 
confrontation between Christianity and Islam, between Occidens and Orlens, 
one would have to look at works of the authors who are said to have directly 
influenced Pius II's Epistola. Prominent among them was Juan de Segovia, yet 
closest to Pius was Nicholas of Cusa. Pius made use of Cribratio Alchorani, 
which the cardinal dedicated to the pope; Cusa's most daring enterprise in this 
respect, however, was the elaboration of the universal religion theme in his De 
pace fidei. Because he saw the war between Christians and the Turks as rooted 
in religious differences he believed that the overcoming of those differences 
would create harmony and peace.112 He believed that it was possible to get all 
people to know how there is not but one religion within a variety of religious 
forms, and that all diversity of religions could, by the common consent of all 
men, peacefully be reduced to one single religion.113 In the final analysis 
however it was the non-Christians who had to abandon those aspects of their 
faith that differed from Christianity in order that religious differences should 
be overcome. The common religion that should be established was Christian 
faith as the one religion, the religion common to all. Pius II's letter to Muhammad 
could be seen as both less naive and less sophisticated than Cusa's imagined 
heavenly council in De pace fidei, or Segovias' contraferentia. He was as one 
with Segovia and Cusa in »regarding Christian doctrine as synonymous with 
the one Truth and therefore both accessible to all men who were willing to 
open their minds as well as utterly convincing in its rational simplicity. The 
important point is that all three therefore held the conviction that religious 
peace was a matter of common acceptance of the Christian faith under a kind 
of rational imperative.«"4 Any rational dialogue which failed to result in the 
110. Norman Daniels, Islam and the West. The Making of an Image, revised edn., One World, 
Oxford 1993, p. 307. 
111. Albert R. Baca, »Introduction« to Epistola, I.e., p. 7. 
112.Cusanus was not in principle opposed to military action against the Turks. On his position on 
the crusade, see Biechler, op. cit., p. 41,42; Erich Meuthen, Die letzten Jahre des Nicholaus 
yon Kues. Biographische Untersuchungen nach neuen Quellen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 
Köln/Opladen 1958, p. 19, 47, 49, 52 sq., 97, 104, 213, 220; for his notion of Europe, 
Fritzmeyer, op. cit., p. 14. 
113. »Et cognoscent omnes quomodo non est nisi religio una in rituum varietate. [...] una sit religio 
et unus latriae cultus.« For an exposition of the thesis, see Biechler, op. cit., p. 46-63. 
114.Biechler, op. cit., p. 65. 
110 Tomaž Mastnak 
adversary's embracing of Christianity would only prove that this adversary 
was non-rational,115 and at that very moment reason became a mighty sword: a 
material sword, obliterating the traditional two swords theory. 
V. 
Pius the humanist interpellated the humanity of Christians in order to move 
them to war against the Turks. When he preached crusade in Ancona he 
wished to soften their stony hearts: » 0 stony-heartened and thankless Chris-
tians! who can hear all these things, and yet not wish to die for Him Who died 
for you. Think of your helpless brethren groaning in captivity among the 
Turks, or living in daily dread of it. As you are men, let humanity prompt you 
to help those who have to endure every sort of humiliation.«116 Yet half a 
century later European humanists would not urge that ploughshares must be 
beaten into swords, as Pius II's zealot assistant cardinal Bessarion had in-
sisted."7 Instead, the Gospel of peace was exhorted and, blended with stoic 
rhetoric, it developed the peace idea so much that, as has recently been argued, 
this »gave birth to a new language«, to a »peace discourse«.118 However, the 
evaluation that the peace idea was »significantly transformed by humanists 
who considered it such a valuable concept in all of its manifestations that they 
fashioned it into an ethic applicable to all Christians«,119 points to the limits of 
what was allegedly new in the work of these humanists: Erasmus and his 
»coterie of pacifists«. 
Erasmus' apparently fundamentalist rejection of war has met with the enthusi-
astic approval of pacifists who praise him as their hero. His works, especially 
Querela pads, the adage Dulce bellum inexpertis and Institutio principis 
Christiani, are a gold mine for those who look for handy quotations to con-
demn war. More thoughtful readers of his opus have criticised him for making 
115. Pius' argument, addressed to the sultan, provides a good example: Muhammad the Prophet 
forbade the discussion of »your law« because he knew that his position could not be defended 
by reason; because »law is reason in action« (ratione praecipitur), what is against reason is 
against law (Quicquid igitur rationi adversum est, legis nomine caret); and because »your 
legislator« forbids reasoning, what he says can either be reasonable, or law. Epistola, ch. XVI. 
116. Cited in Pastor, op. cit., p. 332. 
117.Commentaries, VIII, p. 539. 
118. Ben Lowe, »Peace discourse and mid-Tudor foreign policy«, in Political Thought and the 
Tudor Commonwealth. Deep structure, discourse and disguise, eds. P. A. Fideler and T. F. 
Mayer, Routledge, London/New York 1992, p. 130. 
1 \9.1bid.,p. 133 (my italics). Cf. Klaus Garber, »L'humanisme européen et l'utopie pacifiste: essai 
de reconstitution historique«, Érasme. Actes du colloque international (Tours 1986), eds. J. 
Chomarat, A. Godin and J.-C. Margolin, Librairie Droz, Genève 1990; Otto Herding, 
»Erasmus - Frieden und Krieg«, in Erasmus und Europa, ed. A. Buck, Otto Harrassowitz, 
Wiesbaden 1988, p. 13. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 111 
a purely moralistic denunciation of war and for his inability to come to grips 
with the institutional reality of his age, most of all with the emerging »modern 
state«.120 One of his biographers portrayed him as a »wholly non-political 
mind«.121 Consequently, Erasmian pacifism was politically uninfluential.122 
There are, however, aspects of Erasmus' irenism which are neither fundamen-
tally opposed to war nor alien to, or alienated from, the contemporary political 
reality. Herding has not only shown that Erasmus found aesthetic pleasure in 
military scenes, but also, more importantly, that the censure of the Paris 
Faculty of Theology, accusing Erasmus of enervating every kind of polity 
(.omnem politiam enervat) and contradicting the natural and divine law, was 
unjustified.123 In response to this, Erasmus himself repeatedly stressed that he 
did not intend to generally abolish war as a right pertaining to legitimate 
authority. He only insisted on very strict conditions under which alone it was 
permissible - and just - to resort to arms.124 Most telling, in this context, is 
Erasmus' attitude towards the war against the Turks. The problem figures 
prominently in his writing, yet he dedicated to this subject only one treatise, 
published in 1530.125 Huizinga dealt with this work in few lines and described 
it as very »vague« because it left the reader with the troubling question 
whether the author approved of war or not. And although the treatise repre-
sented Erasmus' meddling with the affairs of the day, Huizinga did not see it in 
real contrast to his picture of an ageing and fatigued man who was »remote 
from the great happenings of his time«.126 It seems to me, however, that, in his 
thoughts on the bello Turcis, Erasmus was at the very heart of his time. 
120. Cf. Kurt von Raumer, Ewiger Friede. Friedensrufe und Friedenspläne seit der Renaissance, 
Karl Alber, Freiburg/München 1953, p. 1; Pierre Brachin, »Vox clamantis in deserto. 
Réflexions sur le pacifisme d'Erasme«, Colloqvia Erasmiana Tvronensia, vol. I, University 
of Toronto Press, Toronto/Buffalo 1972, p. 259; Otto Herding, »Einleitung« to his edn. of 
Institvtio principis christiani, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, IV-1, North-
Holland, Amsterdam 1974, p. 122. 
121.J. Huizinga, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Phaidon Press, London 1952, p. 153. 
122 .Cf . Brachin, op. cit., p. 256, 257, 264; on the influence in our century, Otto Herding, 
»Einleitung« to his edn. of Qverelapads, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, IV-
2, North-PIolland, Amsterdam-Oxford 1977; p. 30-1. 
123. Herding, »Erasmus«, p. 18, 19, 25; J. A. Fernândez-Santamaria, The State, War and Peace. 
Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance 1516-1559, Cambridge University Press, 1977, 
p. 143. 
124. Herding, »Erasmus«, p. 19-25; on Christian humanists' »conditional bellicism«, J. A. 
Fernândez-Santamaria, op. cit., p. 150 sq. 
125. Vtilissima consvltatio de bello Tvrcis inferendo, et obiter ennaratvs Psalmvs XXVIII, ed. A. 
G. Weiler, Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, V-3, North-Holland, Amsterdam-
New York-Oxford-Tokyo 1986. 
126. Huizinga, op. cit., p. 180. For Ortbestimmung of Consultatio, see Weiler, »Einleitung« to his 
edn. in Opera omnia V-3, p. 3-4; and A. G. Weiler, »La Consultatio de Bello Turcis inferendo: 
112 Tomaž Mastnak 
It has been pointed out that Erasmus feared the Turks, and in the face of 
Turkish military successes his fears were not completely unreasonable. He was 
conventional in reiterating the formula of strife among Christians playing into 
the hands of the Turks. The theme keeps reappearing in his work. He deplored 
warfare between Christians as »a thing most cruel of all«,127 as a »parricidal« 
war.128 He was convinced that conflicts between European princes paved the 
road for the Turks.129 And he allowed a military expedition against Turkish 
inroads to Europe.130 He conceded a conditional right to war outside the orbis 
christianus,131 This right was conditional because, for Erasmus, it seemed »not 
so allowable, that we should so oft make war upon the Turks«. War against the 
Turks, too, had to be undertaken only as the last resort, and it had to be fought 
in a »Christian way«. Erasmus' ideal was that the Turks would be subdued and 
brought to Christ, he preferred winning them over to the Christian faith to 
killing them. »For be the Turks never so wicked, yet they are men, for whose 
salvation Christ suffered death. And killing Turks we offer to the devil most 
une oeuvre de piété politique«, Erasme. Actes du colloque, I.e., p. 108. Weiler, »Einleitung«, 
p. 24, summarizes the view of a number of authors that Consultatio »das gemâssigste Traktat 
sei, das Erasmus dem Problem von Krieg und Frieden gewidmet habe.« 
127. Dulce bellum inexpertis. I use J. W. Mackail's edn. : Erasmus against War, The Merrymount 
Press, Boston 1907, p. 24. 
128. »Yet from whence commeth it into our minds, that one Christian man should draw his weapon 
to bathe it in another Christian man's blood? It is called parricide, if the one brother slay the 
other.« Ibid., p. 33. In Institutio, Erasmus compared war between Christians to Plato's seditio, 
as if Christendom was a respublica. The notion of respublica Christaniorum informed his 
argument against war, so that a war, if it could not be avoided, was to be fought »at the lowest 
cost in Christian blood«. I.e., p. 214. 
129. »Turcas non suapietate, non sua virtute, sed nostra socordia potissimum hue vsque creuisse.« 
Consultatio, p. 38. The formulation which Erasmus used in a letter to king Sigismund I of 
Poland (Mai 1527): »Nunc haec monarcharum inter ipsos conflictatio Turcae viam aperuit« 
(Ep. 1819, quoted in Weiler, »Einleitung«, p. 10), echoes Pius II's lament, as quoted in 
Toftanin, »Introduzione«, p. xii: »Siamo trafitti dalla nostra e dall'altrui spada; tutti siamo 
procuratori dei Turchi e spianiamo la via a Maometto.« 
130. »This is not to say that 1 absolutely oppose war against the Turks if they attack us.« Dulce 
bellum inexpertis (omitted in Erasmus against War, p. 57, and quoted in Robert P. Adams, 
The Better Part of Valor. More, Erasmus, Co let and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace, 
1496-1535, University of Washington Press, Seattle 1962, p.209). Cf. Herding, »Erasmus«, 
p. 25. There was, for Erasmus, also an anthropological ground for contemplating war against 
the Turks: »But perhaps it is the fatal malady of human nature to be quite unable to carry on 
without wars. If so, why is this evil passion not let loose upon the Turks? [...] But if war [...] 
is not wholly avoidable, that kind would be a lesser evil than the present unholy conflicts and 
clashes between Christians.« Querela pads, I.e., p. 90. Transi.: A Complaint of Peace 
Spurned and Rejected by the Whole World. Querela pacis undique gentium ejectae 
profligataeque, ed. B. Radice, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 27, University of Toronto 
Press, Toronto/Buffalo/London 1986, p.314. 
131.Herding, »Einleitung« to Institutio, I.e., p. 109. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 113 
pleasant sacrifice, and with that one deed we please our enemy, the devil, 
twice: first because a man is slain, and again, because a Christian man slew 
him.«132 
Yet even if the Turks were homines and even semichristianos, they were 
barbarians.133 And what is most specific in Erasmus, is that he needed these 
barbarians in order to create an understanding of Europe. In our time, it is not 
uncommon to see Erasmus being praised as an European, as if this was the 
ultimate compliment one could give or get. Erasmus perceived himself as an 
European only in opposition to the Turks.134 The distinguishing quality of 
Erasmus' thought was, however, that he constructed the gaze that saw the evil 
in the Christian/European world. That evil gaze, seeing the evil, was the 
Turkish gaze. »What do we imagine the Turks and Saracens say about us, 
when they see that for hundred of years the Christian princes have been utterly 
unable to agree among themselves?«135 »[A]nd what can be a more pleasant 
sight to the Turks, than to behold us daily each slaying other?« »Oh, there has 
been more than enough shedding of blood - and not just human blood but 
Christian blood - enough frenzy ending in mutual destruction, enough sacri-
fices by now even to hell and the Furies - there has long been enough to 
gladden the eyes of the Turks.«136 
Erasmus not only invented the evil Turkish gaze which took pleasure in what 
was most wrong in Christian Europe, but complemented it with his own 
political cardioscopy. He discovered the Turk in the heart of Europeans. That 
Christian Europeans were, in their hearts, like Turks was obviously the hardest 
thing the Christian humanist could imagine to say. At their innermost, Europe-
ans were not themselves. Because of their unchristian way of life, they carried 
132.Erasmus against War, p. 55-6. 
\33. Consultatif), p. 52. Erasmus called the Turks monstrous beasts, enemies of the Church, a 
people contaminated with all kinds of crime and ignominies. Ep. 2285. Opvs epistolarvm Des. 
Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen and H. M. Allen, vol. VIII, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1934, 
p. 384. A. Renaudet, Études érasmiennes (1521-1529), Librairie E. Droz, Paris 1939, put it 
nicely: »Erasme n'aimait point l'Islam. [...] Les musulmans ne reconnaissent dans le Christ 
qu'un prophcte parmi les autres; ils lui égalent Mahomet, un criminel.« 
134. »L'Europe? Erasme ne s'en préoccupe guère. 11 parle plutôt de chrétienté. Toutefois, devant 
le péril turc qui se précise, il se sent européen et il le laisse clairement entendre.« L.-E. Halkin, 
»Erasme et l'Europe«, in Commémoration nationale d'Erasme. Actes, Bruxelles 1970, p. 99 
(quoted in Weiler, »Einleitung«, p. 17). The reference is to Consultatio. I.e., p. 52-8. 
135 .Institutio, p. 217. Transi.: The Education of a Christian Prince. Institutio principis christiani, 
ed. N. M. Cheshire and M. J. Heath, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 27, University of 
Toronto Press, Toronto/Buffalo/London 1986, p. 286. 
136. Querela pads, I.e., p. 98. Transi.: A Complaint of Peace, I.e., p. 320. »Then they curse the 
Turks for being godless and unchristian, as if they could be Christains themselves while 
committing these crimes or as if there could be anything more agreeable for the Turks than 
the sight of Christians putting each other to the sword.« Ibid., p. 84/310. 
114 Tomaž Mastnak 
the unchristian other in their breast. And where the enemy is the closest, it has 
to be fought against hardest. For Erasmus, war against the Turks was first and 
foremost the war against the Turk »in our hearts«. This »Turk« had to be 
driven out first.137 If Christian Europeans were not to amend their lives, to 
reform their morals, to cleanse their hearts of the Turk, they stood no chances 
of overcoming the Turks. They would fight the Turks like Turks.138 They 
would kill men, not the Turks,139 and more likely degenerate into Turks 
themselves than make the Turks into Christians.'40 
In as much as the moral reformation, which was necessarily religious renova-
tion, was understood by Erasmus as the precondition of any successful war 
against the Turks, his Consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo, the treatise in 
which he summed up his views on the Turkish question, could rightly be seen 
as an »oeuvre de piété politique«.141 And in as much as war against the Turks 
required a struggle with the Christian European self, it could be said that 
Erasmus argued for the greater jihad.142 He was the most sublime thinker of the 
European holy war. And yet the European's struggle with his own self was 
bound not to be a struggle with his own evil self. His own evil was perceived as 
the other: it was evil because it was not really of his own making. And so the 
struggle with the self could easily lapse into a struggle against the other. In 
fact, if that self had not been construed in a way which necessitated its purging 
of the other, comprehended as a thorn in its cardiac flesh; if that self had not 
been so well suited to strangle in its symbolic net a real people; one would be 
tempted to think that some Oriental wisdom visited Occident. 
137. »Si nobis succedere cupimus, vt Turcas a nostris ceruicibus depellamus« etc. Consultatio, p. 
62. Cf. Erasmus letter to Peter Gilles, 28 January 1530: »imminet Turca ceruicibus nostris«. 
Ep. 2260, Opvs epistolarvm, p. 332. 
138. »Turcae pugnamus cum Turcis«. Consultatio, p. 52. »Now oftentimes we, being ill, fight with 
the evil. [...] if we set aside the title and sign of the Cross, we fight Turks against the Turks.« 
Erasmus against War, p. 55-6. 
139. The opposite of Erasmus' maxim: »kill the Turk, nottheman.« The Handbook ofthe Christian 
Soldier. Enhiridion militis christiani, ed. C. Fantazzi, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 66, 
University of Toronto Press, Toronto/Buffalo/London 1988, p. 94. 
140. »Quin vt nunc sunt fere, per quos huisimodi bella geruntur, citius fiat, vt nos degeneremus in 
Turcas, quam illi per nos reddantur Christiani.« Institutio, p. 218 .Cf. Enhiridion, I.e., p. 11: 
Without a moral/religious reform, that is, »[i]f we cannot put our hearts into something of the 
sort, we shall degenerate into Turks long before we convert the Turks to our way of thinking.« 
Hl .Weiler , »LaConsultation, p. 108. 
142. W. Montgomery Watt, »Islamic Conceptions ofthe Holy War«, in Murphy, ed., p. 155, quotes 
sufi Sufyan ibn-'Uyayna(d. 814) who »is reported to have said that the jihad in the way of God 
consists of ten parts, of which only one is fighting against the enemy while other nine are 
fighting against the self. The same thought was expressed in another way by Sahl at-Tustari 
(d. 896) when he remarked, "We have returned from the lesser Jihad to the greater Jihad," and 
then on being questioned added, "The greater Jihad is the struggle against the self."« 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 115 
Of Erasmus' fellow pacifists, members of the humanist international, I will 
mention only two. They both put an offensive edge on European peace thought 
which it lacked in Erasmus. Thomas More's A Dialogue of Comfort against 
Tribulation, »the final summing up«143 which he wrote in the London Tower 
while he was waiting for execution, bears some resemblance with Erasmus' 
concerns. For More as well, the Turkish danger is a double one. The threat on 
the level of Realpolitik is doubled with the symbolic threat: »Turks« stand for 
the false Christians. On the first level, one of the personae of the dialogue 
which is taking place in Hungary (the bulwark of Christendom) on the eve of 
Turkish invasion, expresses an obsession with Turkish advances, characteris-
tic of that time: »And now, sith the tidings have come hither so breme of the 
great Turk's enterprise into these parties here, we can almost neither talk nor 
think of any other thing else than of his might and our mischief. There falleth 
so continually before the eyen of our heart, a fearful imagination of this 
terrible thing: his mighty strength and power, his high malice and hatred, and 
his incomparable cruelty.«144 What follows is a vivid description of this cru-
elty. The Turks are a »shameful, superstitious sect«, the »abominable sect of 
his [Christ's] mortal enemies«, »his open, professed enemies«, they represent 
forces of darkness and Belial.145 However, the false Christians, »evil Christian 
people«, are no better than the Turks. What is mainly before the eyes of More's 
heart, are Protestants. »Throughout his polemical works, More equates Protes-
tant and Turk, heretic and infidel.« For him, »the enemy within is identical 
with the enemy without.«146 What they have in common is that they strike 
blows against »the whole corps of Christendom«, against »all the corps of 
Christendom«.147 
The difference between them is that heretics generate disunity among Chris-
tians which prevents them from defending Christendom and efficiently con-
fronting the infidel. »Howbeit if the princes of Christendom everywhere about 
the world, where as need was, have set to their hands in time, the Turk had 
never taken any one place of all these places. But partly dissensions fallen 
143. Frank Manley, »Introduction« to his edn. of St. Thomas More, A Dialogue ofComfort against 
Tribulation, The Yale Edition of Selected Works, Yale University Press, New Haven and 
London 1977, p. xxviii. 
144./1 Dialogue, I.e., p. 6. 
\45.Ibid., p. 196, 197, 198, 236. 
146. Manley, »Introduction«, p. xvii, xviii. On the exchangeability of Turks and Protestant in 
More's historical context, see Franklin L. Baumer, »England, the Turk, and the Common 
Corps of Christendom«, The American Historical Review, L (1944), 1; and for diplomatic 
manoeuvring between Protestants, Catholics and Ottomans, Dorothy M. Vaughan, Europe 
and the Turk. A Pattern of Alliances 1350-1700, At the University Press, Liverpool 1954, ch. 
III. 
147./) Dialogue, p. 8, 40. 
116 Tomaž Mastnak 
among ourselves, partly that no man careth what harm other folk feel, but each 
part suffer other to shift for itself, the Turk is in few years wonderfully 
increased, and Christendom on the other side very sore decayed. And all this 
worketh our unkindness, with which God is not content.« The solution to this 
is peace and harmony among Christians: if »God hath caused them to agree 
together in the defence of his name« (which would also »graciously bring them 
to agree together in the truth of his faith«), this would make »a common power 
in defence of Christendom against our common enemy«.148 
What More contributed to the peace discourse, at least in comparison to 
Erasmus, was not his perception of the Turkish threat as something that »try 
men's hearts«,149 but his anticipation of colonial wars. To be sure, More's 
Utopians »despise war as an activity fit only for beasts«, and »they go to war 
only for good reasons«.150 The fundamental reason for going to war is to 
protect the »good life«.151 This applies to both defending the »good life« of 
their own citizens, and to extending the »good life« abroad. It is obvious that in 
the latter case, in the case of humanist military interventionism, of this cosmo-
politan brotherly help bringing liberty with a well trained and equipped army, 
the military action was taking place on a foreign territory; but so too their wars 
of defence. »If a foreign prince takes up arms and prepares to invade their land, 
they immediately attack him full force outside their own borders. For they 
don't like to wage war on their own soil.«152 As a sympathetic commentator has 
formulated, »the conduct of these wars expresses consistently the cosmopoli-
tan and humanitarian Utopian view that all men belong to one human family 
and that potentially all belong to one "society of nature". In these wars the 
Utopians sacrifice treasure and blood, not in their national interest merely, but 
for the welfare of all humanity.«153 
The colonial wars, interestingly enough, are not discussed under the heading 
of »warfare«. They belong to »social and business relations«. Needless to say, 
they are founded in the idea of the »good life«. The »good life« requires a right 
number of citizens and rational spatial distribution of population. And because 
peace that reigns in Utopia brings with it welfare and prosperity, it is likely that 
UZ.Ibid., p. 8, 40. 
149. Ibid., p. 244. On the Turks as playing a role in providential scheme, cf. ibid., Bk. Ill, especially 
chs. 13, 14, 17; and for the ideological background, C. A. Patrides, »"The Bloody and Cruell 
Turke": the Background of a Renaissance Commonplace«, Studies in the Renaissance, 
X(1963). 
150. Thomas More, Utopia, eds. G. M. Logan and R. M. Adams, Cambridge University Press, 
1989), p. 87. 
151.This is repeatedly stressed in Adams, op. cit., ch. 9. 
152. Utopia, p. 95. 
153. Adams, op. cit., p. 151. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 117 
the population would increase. If that happens, »if the population throughout 
the entire island exceeds the quota«, the Utopians enrol citizens and »plant a 
colony under their own laws on the mainland near them, wherever the natives 
have plenty of unoccupied and uncultivated land. Those natives who want to 
live with the Utopians are taken in. [...] But those who refuse to live under their 
laws the Utopians drive out of the land they claim for themselves; and on those 
who resist them, they declare war.« Morus let his peace-loving people declare 
that »it's perfectly justifiable to make war on people who leave their land idle 
and waste yet forbid the use and possession of it to others who, by the law of 
nature, ought to be supported from it.«'54 In the ideal commonwealth, pacifism 
itself is pregnant with what, in the aftermath of World War II, was called the 
Dämonie der Macht.155 
Vives, the youngest among these Christian humanists, has been exalted as 
»incontestablement l'un des plus grands doctrinaires pacifistes que compte 
l'humanité«, and his work described as »une véritable somme de la pensée 
pacifiste«. He is regarded as »a man of peace and compromise in a time of 
religious fanaticism and destructive nationalism. Few people have spoken 
more eloquently than Juan Luis Vives against the tremendous absurdity of war 
as a means of solving human problems.«156 The problem of war and promotion 
of peace were, indeed, his main concern. The claim, however, that his pacifism 
was »integral« and that he argued for an »universal agape«,157 is open to 
debate. The doctrinal foundations of Vives' pacifism, systematically worked 
out in his De concordia et discordia in humano genere, have been discussed 
elsewhere;158 here, I will summarily point out some aspects of the political 
application of this doctrine. In principle, this application was, for Vives as for 
his humanist friends, »an attempt to extend into the realm of praxis the 
message of the philosophia Christi«.'59 As a cosmopolitan, what his heart beat 
for, was the whole world. Yet he was a cosmopolitan because he was a 
154. Utopia, p. 56. 
155.C/ Brachin, op. cit., p. 261. This »demoniality of power« is not totally absent from Erasmus' 
thought. His idea that princes who are beasts, not men, monsters polluted with human blood, 
should be banished to islands at the far corners of the world, »in extremas insulas deportandas« 
('Querela pads, I.e., p. 425; transi. I.e., p. 306), actually boils down to the same. What is 
worked out in both authors is the expansion of European civilisation. For both of them, the 
outer world is at disposal of Europe. 
156. Alain Guy, Vivèsou l'Humanisme engagé, Editions Seghers, Paris 1972, p. 98 (»véritable 
somme« is a quote from Victor Sanz's Vigencia actual de Luis Vives)-, Carlos G. Norena, Juan 
Luis Vives, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1970, p. 227. 
157. Guy, op. cit., p. 120-2. 
158.C/ Fernândez-Santamaria, op. cit.; Norena, op. cit.; Adams, op. cit.', Guy, op. cit. 
159.Fernândez-Santamaria, op. cit., p. 122. 
118 Tomaž Mastnak 
Christian, and his world was correspondingly parochial: »but Christendom«.160 
For Vives, »the integrity of the respublica Christiana [was] not beyond hope 
of recovery«,161 yet his awareness of Europe was much more acute than in 
More and Erasmus. 
The opinions on whether Vives thought that Europe could be unified by 
imperial power or by natural tolerance, mutual respect and enlightened self-
interest, differ,162 yet his vision was »the vision of a unified Europe«.163 He saw 
Europe suffering terrible damages because of incessant wars, so that what was 
needed - in order to survive - was no less than an universal reconstruction.164 
The essential condition for this was that European princes stopped fighting 
each other: concord which, for Vives, is synonymous with peace. If wars, in 
general, are something that only idiots, hominis imbecillitas, want, wars in 
Europe, wars between Christians, are emphatically called madness, not wars: 
insania, non bella,165 It has been noted that »Vives' moral indignation against 
the internal wars of European nations was inspired not only by his sincere 
pacifism, but also by his passionate concern with the Moslem expansion in the 
Eastern Mediterranean.«166 The sincerity of his irenism is not to be doubted, it 
should be clear, however, that peace he had in mind was not universal, but 
solely European peace. 
The absurdity of dissensions among Europeans, most vividly presented in 
Vives' dialogue De Europae dissidiis, is exhibited with the help of recurrent 
reference to the Turk. The alarming question which cuts into the discussion on 
endless European strife, is: »What is the Turk doing in the meantime? Does he 
sleep, or not?« The enemy is clearly not sleeping, he is taking advantage of the 
160. Fernândez-Santamaria, op. cit., p. 120. Cosmopolitanism, as a rule, is a superiority-ridden 
parochialism. 
\(>\.lbid., p 149. 
162.Norena, ibid., p. 223, 227; Adams, op. cit., ch. 17; Fernândez-Santamaria, op. cit., p. 52-7. 
163.Norena, op. cit., p. 223. Adams, op. cit., p. 264, speaks (with reference to Vives' De Europae 
dissidiis) ofthe underlaying»commonwealth-of-Europe idea«. Vives himself used the image 
of fascio, »un liö inextricabile« (De la insolidaridadde Europayde laguerra contra el Turco 
(De Europae dissidiis et bello turcico), in Juan Luis Vives, Obras complétas, ed. L. Riber, 
vol. LI, M. Aguilar, Madrid 1948, p. 48), the symbol under which what seems to be the first 
conference on Europe took place in Rome, in 1932. Two volumes of proceedings were 
published in Rome in 1933; interesting reports are to be read in Nazionalsozialistische 
Monatshefte, 3 (1932), 33: A[!fred] Rjosenberg], »Europa in Rom«; Rudolf von Maltzahn, 
»Sinn und Bedeutung des Europa-Kongresses in Rom«; and »Bezeichnende Vorträge auf 
dem Europa-Kongreß in Rom vom 14.-20. November 1932«. 
164. Concordia y doscordia en el linaje humano (De concordia et discordia in humano genere), 
in Obras complétas, I.e., p. 75. 
165. De la insolidaridad de Europa, p. 48; Rafael Gibert, »Lulio y Vives sobre la paz«, Recueils 
de la Société Jean Bodin, I.e., p. 159. 
166.Norena, op. cit., p. 225. 
The Birth of War out of the Spirit of Peace 119 
discord among Christians, and the dialogue is a reveille for Europe to »unite 
against him and rush with arms at the ready to destroy him«.167 For Vives, the 
war he desired, was clearly not a defensive war. In De Europae dissidiis it was 
argued, that the European »solidarity«, brought about »under the imminent 
threat of the enemy without«,168 would make possible not only the recovery of 
occupied territories (the liberation of European people from the Turkish servi-
tude) but also the occupation of Asian lands. That Europeans are a superior 
race, was beyond doubt,169 and instead of fighting among themselves for the 
handful of land which they could grab from each other in Europe, they should 
as one Christian army break the Turkish power, appropriate for themselves the 
richesse of Asia and, following the shining example of the Greeks in their 
heroic age, plant colonies there. 
Even a favourably disposed account of Vives' thought had to point out that 
»probably because of his strong feeling against a Moslem state, Vives could 
not see the necessity of a policy of accommodation and appeasement with the 
Ottoman Empire. Instead he became one of the idealistic crusaders and alarm-
ist prophets who constantly demanded a European alliance against »the invad-
ing hordes from Asia.««170 For him, the Turks were untrustworthy and he saw 
no legal ground on which one could make treaties with the professed enemies 
of Christ's religion.171 His pamphlet De conditione vitae Christianorum sub 
Turca has been characterized as a »violent denunciation of any "detente"«.172 
One aspect of this was that Vives was very hard on those Christians who, 
despairing of the oppression that they suffered under Christian rule, hoped that 
they might do better under the Turks.173 For him, this was stupid fantasizing 
\61.De la insolidaridad de Europa, p. 46, 50. (Something that did not happen when the Turks 
invaded Hungary, a couple of months before Vives wrote this piece.) 
168. De la insolidaridad de Europa, p. 51. (What is »called Europe« is pictured here as a »ciudad 
amenazada«.) The Turk is also presented as the »enemigo común«. Ibid., p. 52. 
169. The authority of wise Aristotle had to back the assertion that »la raza más fuerte y más animosa 
y acerada es la que puebla Europa; que los Asiáticos son medrosos y no aptos para la guerra, 
más parecidos a las mujeres que a los varones. Por manera que la Europa no solamente 
produce hombres que se aventajan a los otros en ánimo y fuerzas, sino fieras también. Los 
leones que nacen en Europa tienen más coraje que los púnicos; y lo mismo acontece con los 
perros, con los lobos y los otros animales, aun cuando los africanos aparenten fiereza mayor.« 
Ibid., p. 58. 
170. »He exaggerated the Turkish threat and failed to evaluate the accomplishment of Moslem 
civilization. His crusading spirit was old-fashioned and dangerous.« Noreña, op. cit., p. 225, 
226. 
171. »Si el cristiano no observa lo que juró al cristiano, 'observá el Turco lo que al cristiano 
prometió?« De la insolidaridad de Europa, p. 52. »Cum Turca non est idem iuris.« Gibert, 
op. cit., p. 159. 
172. Noreña, op. cit. p. 225. 
173. In this respect, »[e]l Turco, gran peligro exterior de Europa, es mirado igualmente por Vives 
como un peligro interior.« Gibert, op. cit., p. 160. 
120 Tomaž Mastnak 
about liberty;174 it meant forfeiting the eternal happiness (to which there was 
only one path, that of the »true religion«) for earthly well-being;175 and, as a 
submission to the enemy, it was not only entering the »extreme slavery« but 
also a treacherous desertion of »our Christian society«.176 
* * * 
Steven Runciman, in his history of the crusades, has argued forcefully that, 
»[ujnlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam 
unashamedly came with a sword.«177 This is true, yet it is a perverted truth. 
Europeans never achieved peace because, unlike Islam, they did not make war 
in order to achieve peace but made peace in order to wage war. However, all 
the wars they have made prove that their peace efforts have been successful. 
Bosnians are the latest victims of European peace. 
174.De la condition de los cristianos bajo el Turco (De conditione vitae Christianorum sub 
Turca), in Obras complelas, I.e., p. 65. Clearly, the libertas for which Vives himself opted 
was the one which reached its apogee in the polities of Athens, Sparta and Rome. Ibid. 
175. Ibid., p. 64. 
\16.Cf. ibid., p. 70, 73. Choosing to direct his criticism against the despaired subjects, Vives 
differed from Erasmus who censured Christian princes for aiming to impose a »Turkish 
tyranny« on their own people. Consultatio, I.e., p. 72. 
177. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 1, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1991, 
p. 15. Runciman has also argued that »it was the Christians of the East who were the most 
unwilling and most unhappy victims« of the crusades. »Byzantium and the Crusades«, in The 
Meeting of Two Worlds. Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the 
Crusades, eds. V. P. Goss and Ch. Verzar Bornstein, Medieval Institute Publications, 
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo 1986, p. 22.1 am sure that Sir Steven did not mean 
to say that the muslims were happy and willing victims ofthe crusade. Yet ideas have currency 
in the West that might lead one to assume that the muslims cannot be victims. If they 
nevertheless happen to be victims, this is always as a result of retaliation for some kind of 
intolerable crime they have committed. Gibbon's warning to Europe, considered »as one great 
republic«, that it can never feel secure, should be incorporated in the preamble of the new 
European constitution: »Yet this apparent security should not tempt us to forget that new 
enemies, and unknown dangers, may possibly arise from some obscure people, scarcely 
visible in the map of the world. The Arabs and the Saracens, who spread their conquests from 
India to Spain, had languished in poverty and contempt, till Mahomet breathed into those 
savage bodies the soul of enthusiasm.« Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire, ch. XXXVIII, »General Observations«.