Abstract
Declarations of war were probably the oldest form of diplomacy. The descriptions of the earliest Roman declarations found in Livy’s History of Rome have been interpreted as reflecting a Neolithic magical tradition of unknown antiquity. Since the ritualistic warfare as practiced by those Stone Age tribes, which has survived into historical times, usually required a ceremony for inaugurating a war, it is logical to suppose it was also true for European tribes in the distant past.1 In the course of what are usually labeled as the ancient and medieval eras of European history, the act of declaring war was transformed from a magical process to one entirely conventional, although the proper performance of the act was still seen as conveying divine approval of the coming war.
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Notes
According to J. Bayet, Croyons et rites dans la Rome antique (Paris: Payet, 1971), pp. 9–43, the original meaning of the Roman spear thrown into enemy territory was magical.
But according to Maurice Davie, The Evolution of War (reprint Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1968), p. 176, “A declaration of war … does not exist among the lowest peoples. The essence of savage warfare is treachery and ambush.” While it is true that the essence of war at any level of culture is treachery and ambush, his Chapter XIV “The Mitigation of War “ and Appendix L “The Declaration of War” catalogues the different ways in which tribal societies declared war, and contradict this earlier statement.
Coleman Phillipson, The International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome, 2 vols., (London: Macmillan, 1911), II, 197. In his Art of Warfare, Sun-tzu comments only that when war is declared, the passes should be closed off to the enemy and his emissaries dismissed.
Sun-tzu, The Art of Warfare, trans. by Roger Ames (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), p. 162. In 1894 China and Japan declared war on each other, but both texts drew upon Western usage: http://sinojapanesewar.com/declaration.htm, accessed on January 6, 2009.
Ross Hassig, Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), p. 48. Those Aztec merchants frequently were involved in provocative acts.
Hartley Alexander, Latin-American Mythology (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1920), p. 244.
William Farabee, Indian Tribes of Eastern Peru (Cambridge, MA.: Peabody Museum, 1922), p. 108. It is not clear whether Farabee was referring to Amerindian tribes in general or only those in the region where the Amahuaca lived.
Victor Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (London: Cassell, 1999), p. 68.
The best source on the practices of declaring war in the ancient world is Alberico Gentili, Three Books on Embassies, trans. by G. J. Laing (Oxford: University Press, 1924), Book I. On Gentili, see below, Chapter III.
Quoted in Philip Harding, ed., From the End of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Ipsus (Cambridge: University Press, 1985), p. 96.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities: 2, 72, provides a nearly identical but briefer description of the fetials. Since he and Livy were contemporaries, it is probable that both took information from the same sources. J. W. Rich, Declaring War in the Roman Republic in the Period of Transmarine Expansion (Brussels: Latomus, 1976), p. 58.
William Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 167–75, 269–70.
A. Futrll, The Roman Games: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, pp. 121–22.
Livy: XXXVI, 3. On the Roman declarations of war in 200 and 192, see A. McDonald and F. Walbank, “The Origins of The Second Macedonian War,” Journal of Roman Studies 27 (1937), 192–97.
P. A. Brunt, “Charges of Provincial Maladministration under the Early Principate,” Historia, 10 (1961), 189–223.
Quoted in Sylvester Mazzolini da Pirierio, Summa Summarum, que Sylvestrina dicitur (Venice, 1578), Section Ad Bellum, p. 40ff. Ulpian restricted the use of the word hostes to enemies involved in a formally declared war.
The strongest case for early Christian pacifism is found in C. John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude toward War (New York: Seabury Press, 1982).
For the argument that many pre-313 Christians were not pacifists, see Robert Daly et al., Christians and the Military: The Early Experience (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985).
James Johnson, The Quest of Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
Frederick Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: University Press, 1975), p. 27.
The Works of James Wilson, ed. by Robert McCloskey, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1967).
Majid Kadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955).
Rudolph Peters, trans., Jihad in Medieval and Modern Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1970).
Abdulaziz Sachedina, “Justifications for Violence in Islam,” in Burns, J. Patout, ed. War and Its Discontents: Pacifism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Traditions (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1996), pp. 122–69.
Alfred Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (Oxford: University Press, 1967), pp. 230–31.
Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World 1492–1640 (Cambridge: University Press, 1995), pp. 74–76, states that the Spanish Muslim scholars were adamant about the need for such a summons, but she gives no specific examples of it being used, and my search, admittedly not exhaustive, in works on medieval Iberian history found no examples.
Quotations found in A. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921).
Examples in Ibn al-Qalanisi, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, trans. by H. R. Gibb (London: Luzac, 1967), pp. 48, 68, 90.
Richard Trexler, The Spiritual Power: Republican Florence under Interdict (Leiden: Brill, 1974), p. 12–13.
Michael Wilkes, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: University Press, 1964), pp. 445–46.
The bull is in Sigismondo dei Conti da Foligno, Le storie de’ suoi tempi dal 1475 al 1510, 2 vols. (Rome, 1883), I, 223–27.
Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, 44 vols. (St. Louis: Herder, 1950), V, 254, states that the Holy See “declared war against the King”; but that phrase does not appear in the bull’s text.
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 228; John Ferne, The Blaxon of Gentrie (London, 1586, reprint New York, 1973), part II, p. 85.
Rachel, Dissertationes de jure naturae et gentium, trans. by John Bate, 2 vols. (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1916). According to Ferne, the word herald came from the German words heerre and auld, meaning an old gentleman. Part 1, p. 151.
John Bridge, History of France From the Death of Louis XI to 1515, 5 vols. (reprint New York: Octagon, 1978), III, p. 168.
Paul Kendall, Louis XI (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971), pp. 265, 283.
Guillaume Budé, Annotationes in XXIV. libros Pandectarum (Paris, 1535), p. 96.
Giovanni da Legnano, Treatise on War, Reprisals, and Duels, trans. by Thomas Holland (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1917).
Alfred Vanderpol, La doctrine scholastique du droit du guerre (Paris: Pedone, 1919).
John Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1935).
Honoré Bonet, Book of the Tree of Battles, trans. by G. W. Coopland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 192.
John Noonan, A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), p. 241.
Ibid., p. 54; Peter Bordwell, The Law of War Between Belligerents: A History and Commentary (Chicago: Callaghan & co., 1908), p. 11.
Christine de Pisan, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, trans. by Sumner Willard (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 2. As the editor points out, the inclusion of dukes among those who could declare war might have been a gesture to the duke of Burgundy, one of her patrons, who held fiefs from the king of France and the emperor.
John Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), I, 209. William Caxton’s 1489 translation of the Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry used the word Parliament for council, surely giving Christine’s statement a more representative sense than she intended.
Text of letter in Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle: Containing the History of England (reprint New York: AMS Press, 1965), pp. 59–60.
Jean LeFèvre de Saint-Rémy, Chronique, ed. by J. Morand, 2 vols. (Paris, 1876–81), I, 236–37.
Paul Kendall and Vincent Ilardi, eds., Dispatches with Related Documents of Milanese Ambassadors in France and Burgundy, 1450–1483, 3 vols. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1970), I, 58.
B. Dmytryshyn, Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 900–1700, 2nd ed. (Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press, 1973), p. 176.
The fatwa that was issued in 1915 as Turkey joined World War I in alliance with Germany is in A. Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims; (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005), pp. 221–25.
E. Creasey, History of the Ottoman Turks (New York: Henry Holt, 1878), p. 133.
Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs, ed. by Samuel Kinser, 2 vols. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1969–73), I, 264–65.
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© 2011 Frederic J. Baumgartner
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Baumgartner, F.J. (2011). Ancient and Medieval Precedents. In: Declaring War in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118898_2
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