Lordship, Violence and Very Small Churches in Southern France, c. 1000-1200

After the turn of the first millennium, southern France suffered a period of ‘feudal anarchy’, beset by rapacious local lords who subjugated the peasantry and seized control of ecclesiastical property. The only bulwark against this was the Church, which tried to exert greater moral control over violence through the ‘Peace of God’, and by pressuring lords to return those churches and lands they held ‘unjustly’. Or so, at least, a number of historians have claimed. But is this really so, or are we being misled by a few moments of enthusiasm and denunciation? And if we look beyond the claims of violence, what can we actually see of Christian religion in the towns and villages of the south?