Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives

2. Taming Warriors in Classical and Early Medieval Political Theory

2 Taming Warriors in Classical and Early Medieval Political Theory john von heyking As a first sign you will observe that [a man of strength] finds all his pleasure and all his delight in being in arms, and in just wars, and in defending all just causes, quarrels, and holy arguments. Honoré Bonet, The Tree of Battles Medieval political theory is often accused of being arcane and incapable of speaking to contemporary political problems. This appearance seems especially true when it comes to contemporary thinking on war: what do the likes of Tertullian, Origen, Ambrose, and others have to say about nuclear weapons, apocalyptic terrorists, dictators, and tribal genocide in postcolonial Africa? In fact, medieval political theory has a lot to say about these issues, and its voice is actually being heard in public discourse . For example, one can see the pacifistic tradition of Tertullian and Origen in the stance against war articulated by the American Catholic bishops in their public statements, and the attitude toward “infidels” among members of al-Qaeda is reminiscent of the way some medieval Christians viewed heretics. Pacifism and denying the humanity of one’s enemy seem to some to be the only two choices to us, as they seemed to be the only choices to the early medieval thinkers. Neither accounts for 11 ∏ the real world of politics, as the former demands an unattainable level of political virtue and the latter demands that we renounce our humanity (as the first choice also does). Fortunately, our moral choices are not restricted to these two options any more than they were for the early medieval writers. This chapter surveys the dynamics of just war thinking in the early Christian period and examines Ambrose’s attempt to moderate political and military ambitions, as well as the religious fervor, of his contemporaries, in a way that was sufficiently realistic to understand that the psychological and philosophical complexities behind war made its elimination impossible. Medieval political thinking on just war often aggravated a tension evident in classical political thought between virtue and actively displaying (and glorifying) that virtue. Theorizing about just war in both traditions had to contend with the reality that a significant portion of the population —the active, political class—thought war was simply fun. As one twelfth-century troubadour sang: “I love the gay Eastertide that brings forth leaves and flowers . . . but it gives me great joy to see, drawn up on the field, knights, and horses in battle array . . . and when battle is joined, let all men of good lineage think of nothing but the breaking of heads and arms. . . . I tell you I find no such savor in food or in wine or in sleep” (Bertrand de Born, quoted in Bloch, 1964: 293).1 Similarly, the Song of Roland, a kind of medieval Iliad, idealizes warriors, whose courageous souls go to heaven, as if courage alone were enough for this. However, many commentators point out that medieval just war theories could account for the love of glory only by making it serve God; that is, war was meant to glorify God and just war became holy war, which made war a much more serious enterprise (Russell, 1975: 13).2 By having war serve God, medieval just war theory decreased the number of just causes for going to war that were listed by the pagans. For example, Cicero and Aristotle regarded glory—human glory—as a just cause for going to war, but that was considered idolatrous by the early Christians up to Ambrose (the period under consideration in this essay) (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1177b14; Cicero, 1983 [De officiis; hence12 John von Heyking 1. I thank Professor E. A. Goerner for this reference. 2. Similarly, the Song of Roland is an elegy about the war between Charlemagne’s forces and the Muslims at Roncevaux. Conversely, some commentators, such as James Turner Johnson , overlook glory as a cause for just war in the just war tradition (see his summary of the tenets of the tradition in Johnson, 1999: 28). forth DO]: 3.86–87). If medieval just war theories limited the number of purposes for war by removing wars for glory, they seem to have removed some of the internal limitations for the means of waging wars with a just cause. For instance, Ambrose sharply distinguishes between the treatment of heretics and nonheretics in warfare (see On Tobias 15.51; see also Swift, 1983...