Armsbearing and the Clergy in the History and Canon Law of Western Christianity

The history of the vexed relationship between clergy and warfare is traced through a careful examination of canon law. In the first millennium the Christian Church forbade its clergy from bearing arms. In the mid-eleventh century the ban was reiterated many times at the highest levels: all participants in the battle of Hastings, for example, who had drawn blood were required to do public penance. Yet over the next two hundred years the canon law of the Latin Church changed significantly: the pop