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Impact of Ecclesiastical Peace Movements on the Development of the Law of Armed Conflicts – Some Aspects of the Protection of Persons and Facilities
Presentation by Assist. Prof. Miran Marelja, PhD
The legal regime of the protection of persons and facilities from the effects of armed hostilities has a long and complex developmental curve. Even though it is possible to find examples of amelioration of wartime cruelty against persons and public facilities as early as in the Antiquity, the source of the contemporary legal provisions governing in bello actions should be sought in the Middle Ages. The chaotic circumstances of the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire saw an increase in violence. As a response to the inability of the central government to ensure the protection of its citizens and their property, there emerged ecclesiastical peace movements such as Peace and Truce of God. The movements are aimed at the protection of its own clergy and innocents (those who do not participate in the conflict), which is followed by requests to exempt their property from destruction and looting. The doctrinary elaboration of such thoughts at the end of the Middle Ages began to seep into the chivalric ethos.
In the Early Modern Period, the protection of persons who do not participate in armed conflicts and buildings of public interest as well as cities themselves piqued a significant interest among the contemporary scholars such as the late Spanish Scholastics or Grotius and other Protestant authors who continued his theories. Even though the noble requests to restrict violence in armed conflicts lagged significantly behind the martial practice, it was those intellectual foundations of the embryonal international law that led to the gradual sensitisation of the martial practice starting from the 17th century, with their impact on the contents of common-law norms.
The doctrinary legacy of the earlier centuries and the common-law formative foundation not only began to form international treaties beginning in the mid-19th century, having their milestone in the Geneva Conventions on 1949, but also became the subject of systematic scientific study and teaching to students at numerous European universities in the 19th century.
Key words: law of armed conflicts, protection of facilities, ecclesiastical peace movement, in bello principles
