Writing Assignment 2 William Smith 11/10/12 CHPL 500-D02 LUO

David Bachrach delves into the duties and establishment of the military chaplaincy in the text of The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first (2004). The groundwork for the sacramental facets and principles of conduct for the chaplains office were already in place by the middle of the thirteenth century. On the August 9, 1238 a comprehensive list of duties that the military chaplaincy was required to fulfill was implemented by Pope Gregory IX. The Dominican and Franciscan orders received this legally binding expression of the papal governments authority in papal bull. The service of mendicant friars was authorized in the Hungarian Royal Army. These medieval chaplains were encouraged to hear confessions, assign penances, and carry out other sacraments. This could have included the celebration of mass and the provision of last rites, when necessary. Pope Gregory also required that these same military chaplains see to the mental well-being and moral of the soldiers through sermons. This went as far as instruction pertaining to the justification of the soldiers military service.1 This was not the first set of guidelines provided to the chaplaincy. Some twenty years earlier the nature of the military chaplaincy was also addressed by Pope Innocent III in the Lateran Counsel of 1215. His official declaration pertaining to the nature of the military chaplains office authorized the recruitment of priests and bishops to serve the army for three years during the First Crusade. Scholars do not recognize that Innocent and the Fourth Lateran Counsel made revolutionary changes to the office of the military chaplaincy or even play an important role in its structure.2 Due to the canonical prohibition against priests and bishops taking up arms or participating in combat, Bishop Ivo of Chartres addressed the required functions and
1

Doris Bergen, The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first (Notre Dame University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 70. 2 Bergen, The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first, 71.

responsibilities of the military chaplains in the armies of the West some one hundred years prior to the Fourth Lateran Counsel. His requirements included those laid out by Gregory and Innocent, but assigned four other pastoral duties. Anne Laurence noted that from the years 1642 to 1649, the English Parliament raised armies to fight against three different enemies in a civil war and two wars of conquest. Laurence went on to note that Religious matters played a central role in all three conflicts, and for all three, Parliament made provisions for chaplains to be a part of the army. Chaplains served on both sides of the civil war that split England in the period from 1642 to 1649, with the army of the Parliament of England and with Royalist troops of King Charles I. They also served in the struggles in Ireland and in Scotland, both of which concluded with conquest and occupation of those countries by English forces.3 In the Wars of the Three Kingdoms conflict ensued after the deterioration of the relationship between Parliament and the English monarch in 1642. Parliament believed that King Charles I had overstepped the bounds of his royal power and showed no regard for the rights of his subjects.4 This war pitted Protestants and Catholics with differing theological views, as well as Royalist armies and armies raised by Parliament against one another. This civil war consumed the British Isles with battles raging in Scotland and Ireland. For the first time the press could be utilized to advertise the virtues of one cause and the vices of the other.5 This was an important factor in the warfare of the mid-seventeenth century. Chaplains were subjects of the propaganda war conducted in the press by both sides, as well as being responsible for their age old pastoral duties as well as justification for violence against the enemies of God. It is apparent that the spiritual needs of the soldiers and the desire to keep the

3 4

Bergen, The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first, 89. Bergen, The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first, 91. 5 Bergen, The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first, 93.

armys morale at an acceptable level was paramount to the papacy, various rulers, and military commanders throughout the medieval period, but it can also be argued that the Office of the Chaplaincy was abused by these same leaders in an attempt further their individual causes.

Bibliography Bergen, Doris L. The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-first Century. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. 1-57.