The Warfare Ideology of Ordeal: Another Form of Just War Thinking? Theory and Practice from the Early Middle Ages

ABSTRACT

Studying the military thinking and military history of the Middle Ages, one can observe several forms of warfare ideologies. Three of these ideologies are the holy war ideology, the ideology of ordeal (or iudicium Dei), and the traditional just war theory. Every such ideology has the common characteristic of a stronger or weaker link to concepts of a Christian God, religion, or church. Beyond this common characteristic, the ideologies differ from each other in some key respects. The holy war ideology applies first and foremost the concept of God, traditional just war theory applies the concept of justice, and the ideology of ordeal relies on both the concepts of God and justice. This article presents the ideology of ordeal as a form of just war thinking, and describes its features through historical examples, through its essence, and in contrast to other ideologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Ordeal
• just war
• holy war
• Isidore of Seville

Introduction

It is hardly debatable that every theory attributing a key role to a concept of justice in justifying wars is a form of just war thinking, even if the theory applies other concepts than what we associate with just war. In the history of warfare and military thinking before the second half of the twentieth century, justice-related reasonings were never purely ethical; they typically made reference to other religious, legal, or scientific concepts, as well. Studying this long period of history can help us uncover interesting variants of just war thinking. One portion, only sparingly studied until now, is the Early Middle Ages, when a special form of just war thinking can be observed: the “ideology of ordeal”.

In this article, I first outline the basic medieval ideologies of warfare, before turning to the historical evidence for the ideology of ordeal. I describe the basic elements of this ideology based on historical evidence, with the aim of reconstructing it as a normative theoretical framework for warfare. Finally, I compare the ideology of ordeal with other forms of warfare ideologies.

Basic ideologies of warfare

One arguably meets at least three basic forms of medieval and early modern warfare ideologies in studies related to this period. These are holy war ideology, traditional just war theory, and, within early modernity, regular war theory. I will briefly describe these, before moving on to a fourth category: the ideology of ordeal.

Holy war ideology

Christopher Tyerman, writing on the history of crusade, made a crucial distinction between a holy war and a just war:

While holy war depended on God’s will, constituted a religious act, was directed by clergy, or divinely sanctioned lay rulers, and offered a spiritual reward, just war formed a legal category justified by secular necessity, conduct and aim, attracting temporal benefits. (Tyerman 2007, 35)

Similarly, James Turner Johnson claimed that a holy war was originally a war fought by God’s command in ancient Israel. Beyond this sense, however, Johnson observed some other forms of holy war: it was fought on God’s behalf or by God Himself; it was fought for or to defend religion or to propagate the “right” religion; and finally, that it was fought by “holy” participants (Johnson 2005, 37–39). Abridging these definitions into what I take to be the most important element, I define holy war as a war commanded or intended by God before the war has begun.

The holy war ideology is almost as old as written human civilization. It appeared already in Sumerian written sources in the Middle East. There was a three-generation-long armed conflict between the two city-states of Lagash and Umma in the middle of the third millennium BC. At the beginning of this conflict, Lagash conquered some territories of Umma, and then the king of Lagash (Ur-Nanse) described the war without giving any justification for it in a royal inscription. In the second phase, Umma seized back the territories, but in the third one, Lagash conquered them again. What was new in the third phase is the new king’s (E-anatum’s) royal inscription where he justified his war by referring to God’s (Ningirsu’s) order (Sazanov 2016, 25–26).

Order, command, and intention of the gods are dependent only on the gods’ own prospective plans. This means holy war ideology can justify war before the fight, when the intention is figured, and the command is issued. Contrary to this, the ideology of ordeal, which we will come back to below, justifies the war only after the fight. This difference is a consequence of the natures of the two ideologies because while holy war ideology is wholly (or mostly) religious in character, a concept of justice has a significant role in the ideology of ordeal.

One Christian form of holy war ideology is Saint Augustine’s idea that in holy war Christians in punishing their enemies – by divine charity (good intention) – strive to help them by redeeming their enemies’ souls. As Augustine says in his letter to Marcellinus speaking on precepts of God such as “Recompense to no man evil for evil”:

These precepts concerning patience ought to be always retained in the habitual discipline of the heart, and the benevolence which prevents the recompensing of evil with evil must be always fully cherished in the disposition. At the same time, many things must be done in correcting with a certain benevolent severity, even against their own wishes, men whose welfare rather than their wishes it is our duty to consult. (Augustine 1886, 485)

In this passage, correction is a form of justice (punishment of sin), but it is also a means of attaining the welfare of the sinner, that is the peace (redemption) of their soul, which is the intention of God, and which has to be intended by Christian officers. Hence, the most important element in the Augustinian form of holy war ideology is God’s intention to redeem human souls. Justice and punishment are only the means of this intention.

In holy war ideologies, one finds claims like God’s command to go to war for liberating territories, spreading civilization, punishing people, etc. These claims are religious in nature because the concept of God’s command has a logical priority over the moral content of the command. Further, these claims have a greater role than the moral content because the purpose of most works by Augustine, such as The City of God, is of religious character – to show how redemption is possible – and not of a moral nature. The moral content only follows from or as a “dressing of” the religious content (cf. Weithman 2001, 235–237, 242).

Traditional just war theory

According to Tyerman (2007, 35), “just war formed a legal category justified by secular necessity, conduct and aim, attracting temporal benefits”. In my opinion, this definition is sound when applied to the early modern and modern forms of the theory. However, in the Middle Ages, the theory was linked to some religious content beyond legal matters. The roots of the theory (or what we may more broadly call the just war tradition) go back to Saint Augustine, arguably even further; but it attained a systematic form only in the eleventh to twelfth centuries, in the works of Anselm of Lucca and Gratian, before obtaining its medieval canonical form in the thinking of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century (cf. Erdmann 1977, 244; Johnson 1981, 121–123). While the theory in its medieval development lost some of its religious character, it did not become a purely secular idea.

Even in Aquinas, the idea of just war had religious implications. Aquinas defined just war through three – at first sight – secular terms, that is, legitimate authority (princes who do not have a superior), just cause (committed fault which deserves armed response), and right intention (advancement of good) (Saint Thomas Aquinas 2013, 177). However, he dealt also with more or less secondary religious matters in the text in question in Summa Theologiae II-II, qu. 40 ff. (Waters 1973, 585–586), and even more importantly, he placed his discussion into the broader context of Christian peace, particularly into the context of the sins against Christian peace. Christian peace, as the result of divine charity in us, has four kinds: the purely religious form (the perfect peace of the blessed in heaven), and the imperfect peace, which is the result of the harmonizing effect of charity in a single person and among the people. This later form of charity-laden peace has two forms: when charity is expressed by natural friendship among people in a single polity, and when it is expressed by natural friendship among independent polities. War is a sin contrary to this latest form of imperfect peace. Just war, in turn, is how this form of peace can be maintained (Reichberg 2018, 17–24, 38). Hence, the purpose of just war is a result of charity: maintaining peace among polities.

Hence, one can argue that traditional just war thinking, as we find it in Aquinas, is not only a concept of justice, but a religious concept attached to the Christian virtue of charity, and arguably, the religious concept has logical priority over the concept of justice. At the same time, however, the moral concept of justice has great practical importance, even beyond the religious content. This can be seen from the applied secular concept of natural friendship, which Aquinas developed from Aristotle and used to mediate the Christian concept of peace in analyzing the peace among polities (Reichberg 2018, 22–27).

Regular war theory

Regular war theory is a concept that covers a secular and legally based form of the “ideology of ordeal” (which I will analyze below) in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. According to regular war theory, war is a regulated form of legal contest between states, which is settled by the war itself (Reichberg 2008, 200).

One of the famous early representatives of the theory is Alberico Gentili, who demanded that

war on both sides must be public and official and there must be sovereigns on both sides to direct the war. … The sovereign has no earthly judge, for one over whom another holds a superior position is not a sovereign … . Therefore it … [is] inevitable that the decision between sovereigns should be made by arms. (Gentili 1933, 15)

Debating this theory, Gregory M. Reichberg holds that the first representative of the theory was Raphaël Fulgosius (1367–1427) (Reichberg 2008, 201).

Warfare ideology of ordeal

After describing these three warfare ideologies – holy war, just war, and regular war – I now turn to the ideology of ordeal, to its manifestations and theoretical elements. It constitutes a fourth category overall and a third justification of warfare as far as what we normally categorize as the Middle Ages is concerned.

Some examples of the ideology from the Early Middle Ages

There are several examples of the ideology of ordeal as described by historians (Evans 2017, 2–3) in the Early Middle Ages. We find one such example in the History of the Church of the Rufinus of Aquileia (from present-day Italy) from thefourth to fifth centuries. Rufinus narrates the events of the battle of the Frigidus (394) in which the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great fought against the pagan usurper Eugenius. Rufinus reports that when the emperor saw his forces retreating, he prayed to God:

Almighty God … you know that it was in the name of Christ your Son that I undertook this war in order to exact what I consider just retribution. If this is not so, then punish me, but if I have come here in a just cause and in confidence in you, then stretch out your right hand to those who are yours … (Rufinus of Aquileia 2016, 481)

We become aware of another example in Nithard’s Histories. (Nithard was from the ninth century Frankish Kingdom, present-day France.) Here, Nithard deals with the details of the civil war between the three sons of Louis the Pious. In the exceedingly bloody battle of Fontenoy (841), Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeated Lothar I of Italy. According to the Histories, after the battle, the victorious kings asked the bishops what they would have to do. The bishops came together to hold a council, which found that:

Louis and Charles had fought for justice and equity alone, as God’s judgement had made clear. For this reason, every one of them, he who commanded as well as he who obeyed, was to consider himself in this conflict an instrument of God, free from responsibility. But whoever knew that he had either counseled or committed anything on this campaign from wrath or hatred or vainglory or any passion, was to confess secretly his secret sin and be judged according to the measure of his guilt. To honor and praise God’s display of justice, a three-day fast was arranged and celebrated gladly and solemnly. This was for the remission of the sins of their deceased brothers (for they knew they were not faultless and had committed many sins, willingly and unwillingly), so that with God’s help they might be freed from them; and finally, so that the Lord, Who up to that moment had been their succor and protector in a just cause, would forever remain so. (Nithard 2000, 156)

Again, the Annales Altahenses Maiores, a German chronicle from the eleventh century, reports a conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III and the Hungarian King Samuel Aba in 1044, which led to the battle of Ménfő. According to the Annales, Aba was a usurper and oath-breaker, but Aba’s most serious sin was surely that he had not shown proper respect to the German emperor as the King of Kings (who received his authority from God directly). To settle the conflict, the emperor came to Hungary where he met with Aba. In the meeting, “they were not able or did not want to make peace and agreed that they would fight by arms in three days, by which [the] judgement of God would [be] display[ed]” (Annales Altahenses Maiores 1891, 85). The two armies finally clashed in the battle of Ménfő on the third day, which was won by the emperor.

Finally, an example of this ideology may be observed in the Chronicle of the Deeds of the Hungarians from the Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Codex, written in Hungary between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries (the part discussed here supposedly was written at the end of the twelfth century), where the Codex narrates the eleventh-century civil war between the enthroned Hungarian King Solomon and his opposition, duke Ladislas and his brother duke Géza. After the battle of Kemej (1074), where Solomon unjustly defeated Géza (because some of the retainers of Géza betrayed the duke and went over to the King), Ladislas encouraged his brother by saying that “he should not weep but rather implore the mercy of almighty God” so that He might subject the victor to the vanquished, “as is the way of wars” (Illuminated Codex 2018, 219). In my opinion, the last clause of the text refers back to the passage about “imploring the mercy of almighty God”, and states that the regular way of warfighting is to ask God for help.

These examples show the place and logic of God’s judgement in case of victory. (Géza and Ladislas won the next decisive battle at Mogyoród against Solomon.)

Let us now look at an example where the opposite occurred, that is, when the side of the historian was defeated. This brings us to the moral explanation of Christian peoples for their lost wars, the theme of the “scourge of God”. In the seventh century, the Spanish writer Isidore of Seville (560–636) picked up the theme in his History of the Kings of Goths as he presented the events of the fifth century. According to Isidore, the Huns

are used to discipline[ing] the faithful, just like the people of the Persian nation. … For they are the scourge of God’s fury, and as often as his indignation goes forth against the faithful, the latter are scourged by them in order that, corrected by their blows, they may restrain themselves from worldly desires and from sin …  (Isidore of Seville 1966, 15)

We should well understand this example as a moral explanation given after the defeat. The situation certainly was that Christians joined the battle with the Huns, and after the defeat they likely gave an explanation along the following lines: The defeat expresses God’s judgement that their way of life was not suited to the demands of Christianity, and the Huns were used by God as an instrument (scourge) to perform His judgement, that is, to punish and correct them.

These examples stretch in time from Late Antiquity to the end of the Early Middle Ages, and geographically we find them from Western Europe to Eastern Europe. We may draw from them that justification of war in the Early Middle Ages encompassed the demand that, because of supposedly committed sin, the enemy had to be avenged and corrected. The supposedly committed sin gave rise to a likely just cause. However, whether the sin was committed or not, and so whether the cause was just or not, depended on God’s judgement. This judgement became obvious by the end of the battle, that is, whether the outcome of the battle was a victory or a defeat. Victory made clear that God had judged the cause as just and the victory was the reward; while defeat showed the cause as unjust, and it was a punishment. God’s judgement was not only a contingent part of this way of thinking, so it was not only the marker of the just or unjust character of the cause. God’s judgement was the essential part that made causes just or unjust and turned one side of the conflict into an instrument of the materialization of His judgement. For this reason, just war in this sense is just exactly because God – as the almighty governor of the universe – judged it as so. This is the hallmark of this particular way of thinking: the ideology of ordeal.

Theory of the ideology of ordeal: Isidore of Seville and Saint Stephen I

I have now given some historical examples of the ideology of ordeal taken from many parts of Europe. Now I turn to both a Western and an Eastern European example of the theory of the ideology, taken from the works of Isidore of Seville and the Hungarian king Saint Stephen I.

The authors writing about the war did not write extensive theoretical works in the Early Middle Ages. They used their writings for political or theological purposes instead. One outstanding representative of such authors is Isidore of Seville, who wrote books on historical matters (History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevis), books for political and theological purposes (Sententiae), and an “encyclopedia” of his age, incorporating significant knowledge of Antiquity (The Etymologies). Although Isidore did not create a complete theory of the ideology of ordeal, he dealt with the elements of this ideology in all his works. I will consider his definition of just war first, and then the related elements of his political ideology and theology.

Isidore defines just war in his Etymologies, where he says that “A just war is that which is waged in accordance with a formal declaration and is waged for the sake of recovering property seized or of driving off the enemy” (Isidore of Seville 2006, 359). After this sentence, the text continues with the definition of unjust war. Both are based on ideas from Cicero’s Republic. In the twelfth century, Gratian’s Decretum carried forward to a later generation Isidore’s definition; indeed, it is almost the same as the one found in The Etymologies: “That war is just which is waged by an edict in order to regain what has been stolen or to repel the attack of enemies”. The continuation, however, is different: “A judge is called such because he pronounces justice to people, or because he adjudicates justly. To adjudicate justly is to judge justly. For he is no judge who has no justice within himself” (Gratian 2013, 113). We can find this second part of Gratian’s definition in The Etymologies as well, some pages after the definition of just war. In this part of the work, Isidore speaks on the legal procedure of lawsuits, and he emphasizes that

A lawsuit consists either of argumentation or of evidence. Argumentation never arrives at a proof by means of witnesses or written documents, but it discovers (invenire) the truth by investigation alone. Hence it is called argumentation (argumentum), that is, a ‘clear discovery’ (argumentum inventum). Evidence (probatio), however, involves witnesses and the authority of documents. (Isidore of Seville 2006, 365)

After this, Isidore mentions that six persons are necessary for a lawsuit; one of them is the judge.

To see the complete picture, we should delineate Isidore’s political and theological theory in the Sententiae, which gives a central role to judges, and among them to God as the supreme judge. According to Isidore, Christ is the eternal king and priest at the same time, and His material body is His earthly empire, the Church. The Church includes not only the institutions of the Church but Christian society as well (including individual Christians). This kingdom of Christ is not supposed to be a unified earthly empire, but it contains the patchwork of several kingdoms: the Christian-German kingdoms. These kingdoms are the cells of the Church and are ruled by earthly and human kings. A human king, who is a Christian priest and the chief of the German people, should reflect Christ in his virtues, so he has to be just according to the rules of Christianity and German common law, and he is supposed to be pious and merciful to his people, and to restrict the strictness of the law. Behaving virtuously, the king sets a good example to his people, because of which the king is God’s gift to the people. His principal responsibility is to care for his own Christian people, and Christians beyond the border of his rule as well. For this reason, the king is permitted to defend his people by just war and to extend his rule and Christianity (Canning 1996, 16–28; Crouch 1994, 14–16; Isidore of Seville 2006, 117–118, 199–200, 359–360; King 2007, 141–143; Ullmann 1970, 17–38).

Kings can be judged only by God. This is slightly contrary to men in general, who are judged by human judges if they have the necessary evidence, even if a human judge should leave the ultimate judgement to God. If a king becomes an unjust, impious, and merciless tyrant, then his people are not permitted to rebel against him, because judgement is on God’s side. God punishes the king and his people as well, if they follow the king in his sin, or if the source of the sin is the people (Isidore of Seville 2018, 200, 203; Loschiavo 2019, 389).

God’s judgement is of two types: on the one hand, it punishes or gives rewards in this life only; on the other, it punishes or gives rewards in this life and in the future – one may say at the end of history – as well. In some cases, an earthly punishment or reward is enough (to change that life, or to mark that life as just and pious); hence, these deeds are judged in the life of the sinner or the pious only. Other deeds, however, are so extreme that they need to be punished or rewarded in this life and in the afterlife as well (Isidore of Seville 2018, 202). Both forms of judgement, however, include God’s judgement in this life, which means that God’s judging activity in this sense is part of earthly history.

We can take an example that illustrates the role of the earthly judgement of God from Isidore’s History of the Kings of the Goths, which reads under the year 587:

Agila was appointed king and reigned for five years. He waged wars against the city of Cordova, and since in contempt of the Catholic religion he did harm to the most blessed martyr Acisclus and profaned and defiled the sacred place of his sepulcher … . he earned a fitting punishment through the agency of the saints. For he was smitten by vengeance for present war and lost there his son, … and lost the whole treasure with his renowned riches. (Isidore of Seville 1966, 21–22)

We should well understand this narrative: First King Agila made the affirmative judgement to go to war against Cordova, however, this judgement is not reported in the text epressis verbis; then God made His own condemning judgement on Agila’s war against the Catholic religion and Saint Aciscus, and punished Agila accordingly. The implication of the two judgements is that Agila’s judgement was false because it was overridden by God’s. The final judgement on the moral character of the deeds (that is, whether they were just or unjust) belongs to God.

Isidore wrote his works in a particular spiritual and intellectual environment. Visigothic society was converted to Arian Christianity in the fourth century, but later they were converted again in the second half of the sixth century, now to Catholic Christianity, and at the same time Arianism was condemned as a heresy. Isidore wrote his works waging a spiritual and intellectual war against the Arian heresy.

The first Hungarian king, Saint Stephen I (Szent (I.) István, reigned 1000–1038) created the Catholic Christian Hungarian kingdom under very similar circumstances. Besides ruling the kingdom and supporting the conversion of the pagan Hungarians, Stephen fought against Bogumil heretics, who held that Jesus Christ was begotten by God the Father only and had a wholly godly nature. Stephen wrote a political work, the Admonitions, to his son on the virtues of a good ruler and the conditions of good reign, partly with the purpose of fighting against the Bogumil heresy.

In this work, the king described the world as created and ruled by God’s will. God presented kingdoms to men, promoting their utility and dignity, holding that God ordered people to be ruled by an earthly and human king relying on God’s teachings and the suggestions of noble secular advisors. If the king was disobedient and failed to follow these instructions, then God would reveal his justice and the king would be punished, as God punished the king of Israel (David) for Israel’s sins. However, if the king respected these teachings and suggestions, that is, he honored Christian belief as a shield, then he would defeat his “visible and invisible enemies” and be glorified in the earthly world, and in Heaven as well. The core part of the Christian teaching was the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the emphasis on the birth of Jesus Christ from the human Mary (Szent István 2014, 18–24). This doctrine hence emphasized the partly human nature of Jesus Christ and was directed against the teachings of Bogumils.

Practice of the ideology of ordeal

The basic point we have now uncovered about the ideology of ordeal is the claim that the final judgement on the just or unjust character of human deeds belongs to God. God performs His judgement by judging justly, which includes observing all the relevant facts and returning the just verdict. These divine abilities, of course, are not available to people. However, men may know the character of the deeds that have great value in God’s eye from the Bible and historical works, so they can positively work to influence God’s judgement. Influence, however, is not determination, so people can try to attain a better judgement from God, but they cannot be certain about the result.

One form of influencing God’s judgement is the conversion of the king. Eusebius of Caesarea and Gregory of Tours reported that Roman emperor Constantine (who ruled at the beginning of the fourth century) and the Frankish king Clovis (who ruled at the beginning of the sixth century) had had difficulties in the war against their enemies (the Roman fellow-emperor, and the Alemanni respectively) before their conversion. However, right after the conversion (in the case of Constantine using the Chi Rho symbol in the battle), they won their battles (Eusebius 1904, 490; Gregory of Tours 1974, II.30).

Another form of influence consisted of practicing and proving that men who served in the army led a pious life, which was secured by rites performed before and after the battle. These rites included cleaning the soul from sin, asking God for help before battle, confessing sins necessarily committed in the battle, and thanking God for help after the battle. Hence, the rites were geared toward individual preparation for partaking in fighting, for reconciliation with God, and to cultivate the relationship with God after the battle (Bachrach 2003, 32–45). According to the Hungarian Illuminated Codex, king Saint Ladislas I

was always a man of exceeding piety, [and] was moved to compassion when he saw so many thousands fallen, even though those who were killed had been his enemies; his heart was moved and lacerating his cheeks and tearing his hair, he wept over them bitter tears, like a mother at the grave of her sons. (Illuminated Codex 2018, 227).

Finally, the third form of influencing God in making His judgement was holding religious ceremonies in peace and wartime, the latter by those who stayed at home. Peacetime ceremonies included taking part in public prayers held for the souls of soldiers killed in previous battles. Wartime home-rites included conducting masses and singing psalms for the king, for the army, and for the reduction of suffering in the kingdom, and also, fasting, alms-giving, and partaking in processions (Bachrach 2003, 33–38; Maier 1997, 634).

Summary of the basic elements of the ideology

After having now presented the historical form of the ideology of ordeal, a summary of its four cardinal elements is in order. The most important element of the ideology is a special understanding of justice: God adjudicates the deeds of humans with the help of His nature and special abilities. This form of justice can be called, using a modern term, (pure) procedural justice, which “obtains when there is no independent criterion for the right result: instead, there is a correct or fair procedure such that the outcome is likewise correct or fair, whatever it is, provided that the procedure has been properly followed” (Rawls 1999, 75). The correct procedure in the case of the ideology is God’s judging process.

God’s judgement is not entirely unpredictable for people, so they are able to influence that by a just and pious lifestyle, or even by an unjust and impious lifestyle. However, influence is not equal to determination, so one cannot be certain that one’s influence will be successful, because God’s judgement concerns all the connecting deeds of the past, present, and future (Gerics 1980, 118), most of which are knowable only to Him. Even the most pious man cannot have a one hundred percent certainty in principle (however, according to Isidore, just men do understand that they are tested in adversity) (Isidore of Seville 2018, 210).

The second important element of this justice-related justification of war involves a retrospective character of justice (Evans 2017, 2). Whether a deed in general and starting a war in particular is just or unjust is revealed, according to this view, only by the end of the war, because that end is the judgement of God. If the end is victory, then the war is judged as a just war by God, but if ends in defeat, then it should be understood as an unjust war and a punishment imposed by God. One cannot say in advance whether a war will be just or unjust because God’s judgement can be observed only after the war.

Another basic element of the ideology of ordeal is the partiality of the ideology, albeit with an objective twist. This is reflected in the God-required form of lifestyle and in the biblical concept of “chosen people”, which here referred to Christian-German people of the Early Middle Ages (cf. Evans 2017, 6–7; Garrison 2004, 114–123). The required way of life should be in accordance with Christian rules. Respecting these rules may result in God’s help to his people and their king, which leads them to victory against every enemy. This shows the partial character of the ideology. However, if the king and people fail to follow the rules of Christianity, then God will certainly punish them and give victory to the enemy. This is an objective twist on the content of the ideology because it shows that while God has rules obtaining for a special group of persons, the Christian-German people, these rules are also objective rules. There are different consequences of respecting and disrespecting the rules; an enemy, however, can only assist God’s judgement as an instrument. For this reason, the partiality of the ideology of ordeal should be understood as a particularly addressed set of requirements, and not as practicing unrestricted preference.

Finally, the fourth essential concept of the ideology is God’s peace. In the Early Middle Ages, peace was technically dependent on victory in the field (Isidore of Seville 2006, 360; Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 160–162). In the sense of the ideology, victory is the result of God’s judgement and personal help. Hence, the peace coming into being is a peace in the material world maintained by God.

Assessment of the warfare ideology of ordeal as a separate theory of warfare justification

Having described the alternative warfare ideologies of the Middle Ages, and demonstrating that there were examples of what we have here called the ideology of ordeal, this article now turns to examine whether this particular ideology can be seen as a separate theory of warfare justification. The examination will proceed in two steps, assessing the formal and the content-related features of the ideology.

On whether ideology of ordeal is a formally separate theory of warfare justification

I claimed above that ordeal is a form of justice because it is the result of performing according to the just abilities and judgements of God. The concept of God’s judgement has a twofold origin in the Early Middle Ages, the Old Testament and German customs, and both had justice-related implication. The content of the Old Testament idea of God’s judgement (Deuteronomy 1:17) links to ruling, maintaining customs, and above all religious-legal discrimination between conflicting parties. The judge and particularly the Supreme Judge discriminating between the pious and impious, the just and unjust, decides on the justice and facilitates it. He punishes the unjust and confirms the claims of the just ones (Morris 1960, 9–18). The German concept of God’s judgement also had justice-related implications because it had an important role in individual duels and conflicts, which were connected to the asking of divination before the battle, and to requesting God’s judgement in a lawsuit (Burgundian Code 1992, 76; Udwin 1999, 34–45). We should conclude that God’s judgement had essential justice-related properties in both traditions, which had the function of expressing and doing justice independently of the religious properties.

Now turning to traditional just war theory, which also has a religious content, but with greater importance attached to the moral concept of justice vis-à-vis the purely religious aspect. The ideology of ordeal and just war theory are similar in their representing a compound of religious and moral content, however, they differ because in just war theory the moral content has a more important role than the religious concept, while in the ideology of ordeal, both are essential.

These two forms of warfare justification also differ in the applied form of justice. While the ideology of ordeal is based on procedural justice, just war theory implies a form of substantive justice, which is defined by the principle that “it is just to give to anyone what he deserves” (cf. MacIntyre 2007, 251). From the perspective of procedural justice, that deed is just which will be judged by God as just, but from the perspective of substantive justice that deed is just – as committed or suffered – which is according to desert. This difference has a further implication, namely, that while just war theory can justify wars before the war, the ideology of ordeal can do that only afterwards, in retrospection.

Finally, regular war theory is constituted by the demand that war is a regulated form of legal contest between states, which is settled by the war itself. In my opinion, Fulgosius (taken by Reichberg as the first representative of regular war theory) represents a transition from the ideology of ordeal to later regular war theory. Fulgosius claimed that “Let war be the judge”, which is the principal claim of the regular war theory. However, Fulgosius’ theory slightly deviates from regular war theory because he also claimed, right after the just quoted sentence, that “For victory in war comes about as it were by the judgement of God because God is the righteous and just judge of all” (Fulgosius 2013, 229).

The position of Fulgosius suggests that there are similarities and differences between the two ideologies. The common point is that according to both reasonings, a war can be justified without having a just cause before the war because it is the war itself that can demonstrate a just decision. Hence, both justifications appeal to procedural justice. However, while in regular war theory, war itself is the just procedure, in the ideology of ordeal war reflects God’s judgement and so the latter represents the just procedure. This is a cardinal difference, and it implies that while the ideology of ordeal is a form of just war thinking, regular war theory arguably is not.

Another difference between the two justifications is that regular war theory demands that soldiers should have similar moral status on both sides (Reichberg 2008, 200). The ideology of ordeal does not at all hold such a claim. According to that ideology, the members of one of the conflicting parties are either unjust and impious or just and pious, and this is one reason for God to make a decision.

Summary

This article has outlined the history of several medieval warfare ideologies. The ideology of ordeal was broadly applied in the thought of the Early Middle Ages, and suited the mindset of those living in that age. The basic element of this mindset was to observe the world as created and ruled directly and permanently by God’s will. This element in itself, however, is a precondition of holy war ideology. With the additional conceptual element of the “chosen people”, one arrives at the ideology of ordeal. This Biblical element was important for people who were living in a hostile environment, like the barely converted Visigoths and Hungarians. By the High Middle Ages (thirteenth century) this mindset had changed, the Church councils had condemned ordeals in general, and Saint Thomas Aquinas claimed that the basic rules of men could be deduced not from God’s permanent will but from the laws of human nature (which were created by God). For this reason, from the thirteenth century onwards, God’s direct (earthly) judgement became less important, and the judgement of human reason, first of all in the princes who did not have a superior, won increasing respect. The priority of Christian doctrines, however, remained, but their influence was receding. The most important role of Christian doctrines consisted in the fact that they could yield a point of reference for a unified pattern of judgement that facilitated just causes of war. The just cause of war had a significant role to play in traditional just war theory, but in the Early Modern idea of regular war, just procedure was more important and filled some of the role that the ideology of ordeal had had earlier in the justification of warfare.

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Mihaly Boda

Mihaly Boda is an Associate Professor of Military Ethics at the National University of Public Service, in Budapest, Hungary. He has worked mainly on the topic of military virtues and moral abilities. He has also worked on issues such as the ethics of war and military ideologies, including just war theory, both historical and contemporary. He has a long-standing personal interest in historical military virtues and Hungarian warfare ideologies, particularly the idea of the Holy Crown.