The lay feudatory, born
into a hereditary caste of soldiers, regards war as the highest vocation for a
man of honour, is impatient of priestly arrogance, and believes in his heart
that the Church ought not to meddle with politics. It would be a mistake to
think of the two privileged classes as always at strife with one another and
their social inferiors. But the great wars of Pope and Emperor, the fourteenth-century
revolts of French and English peasants, are not events which come suddenly and
unexpectedly; each such outbreak is like the eruption of a volcano, a symptom
of subterranean forces continually in conflict.
The state of peace in medieval
society was a state of tension; equilibrium meant the unstable balance of
centralising and centrifugal forces. And this was one reason why wars,
condemned in the abstract by the Church, were frequently regarded with favour
by sober statesmen and by idealists. In more ways than one a successful war
might serve to heal or salve the feuds of rival classes. It offered an outlet for
the restless and anarchic energies of feudalism; sometimes it ended in
conquests with which the landless could be permanently endowed. It might offer
new markets to the merchant, a field of emigration to the peasant, a new sphere
of influence to the national clergy. Better still, it might evoke common
sentiments of patriotism or religion, and create in all classes the consciousness
of obligations superior to merely selfish interests.
