of the Council of Elne, in the South of France, we find that the “Truce of God,” the “Treuga Dei” as it was technically called, was in full honor and had reached the height of its beneficent power in 1207.  But long before, in the days when Gregory VII was Pope, and William of Normandy had just won his English crown, and Henry III ruled in Germany and Henry I in France, in the days when feudalism was making its first attempts to bring order out of chaos, several councils of the Church in France and in Normandy had traced out the plan and the outlines of the “Truce of God.”  Earlier even, at the Councils of Charroux (989), Narbonne (990), Le Puy and Anse (990), severe penalties were pronounced against those who wantonly in time of war destroyed the poor man’s cattle or harried his fields, or carried off his beasts of burden.  “Leagues of Peace” were formed to diminish the horrors of war, to protect the helpless, to enforce order.  The Council of Poitiers, where there is one of the earliest mentions of these “Leagues of Peace,” was held 1223 years ago.  The Council of Bourges in 1031 created a species of national militia to police the rural districts and prevent war.  Our ancestors believed in leagues with “teeth in them.”  From France where the movement had its origin and culminated at Elne (1207) in the full organization of the “Truce of God,” it spread eastward into Germany and Thuringia.  The German duchies and the Austrian marches submitted soon after to its humanitarian and Christian code.  In 1030, the Pope, the French and German princes united their efforts for the development of the forerunners of the “Truce of God,” the conventions known as the “Peace of God.”  The Peace, the earlier institution of the two, exempted from the evils of war, churches, monasteries, clerics, children, pilgrims, husbandmen; the cattle, the fields, the vineyards of the toiler; his instruments of labor, his barns, his bakehouse, his milch cows, his goats and his fowl.  The Truce forbade war at certain “closed seasons.”  It gave angry passions time to subside, and endeavored to discredit war by making peace more desirable and its blessings more prolonged.  It is probable that the Council of Charroux already mentioned laid the germs of the Truce.  At the Council of Elne we see it fully organized.  In 1139 the Tenth General Council, the Second Lateran, gave in its eleventh Canon its official approbation to what must be considered one of the most beautiful institutions of the Middle Ages.

Under the guidance of our American author, George Henry Miles, we are led back to the days of the eleventh century.  He is an accurate and picturesque chronicler of that iron, yet chivalrous age.  If on the one hand, we see the sinister figure of Henry IV of Germany, on the other we find the austere but noble monk Hildebrand, who became Pope St. Gregory VII.  We hear the clash of swords drawn in private brawl and vendetta, but see them put back into the scabbard at the sound