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Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:39:34 -0700 (MST)
From: KOPFF E CHRISTIAN <kopff@spot.colorado.edu>
To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: de bello justo WAS: "WAR IS STUPID" AAS 02/20/03
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Karl Leo Noethlichs, "Die >>Christianisierung<< des Krieges vom
spaetantiken bis zum fruehmittelalterlichen und mittelbyzantischen Reich,
Jahrbuch fuer Antike und Christentum 44 (2001) 5-22

Some nice medieval prayers for consecratio ensis, benedictio vexilli
bellici and the blessing of an army. Some discussion with ample German
bibliography of Roman attitudes toward bellum justum. A paragraph on the
fully developed Christian doctrine based mainly, as it seems, on Aquinas.
Most of the article discusses the change from the pre-Constantinian to
the post-Constantinian church. The early church Fathers express "eine
strenge Ablehnung der militia fuer Christen." Most of the quotes seem to
come from Tertullian in his Montanist stage. T. is also the earliest
source for Christian soldiers, who claim credit for their god for the
rain-miracle, which is also found on Marcus Aurelius's column.
consecratio ensis:
Exaudi, Domine, quaesumus, preces nostras, et hunc ensem, quo hic famulus
tuus ... se circumcingi desiderat, maiestatis tuae dextera benedicere
dignare, quatenus defensio atque protectio possit esse ecclesiarum,
viduarum, orphanorum omniumque deo servientium contra saevitiam paganorum
aliisque insidiantibus sit pavor, terror et formido."
Amen!
The Just War doctrine is discussed in the National Review editorial for
the March 10, 2003 issue

(http://www.nationalreview.com/10mar03/editors031003b.asp

A few quotes:
"For historical reasons, the just-war tradition is most closely identified
with the Catholic Church. But... It has, or ought to have, force for
non-Catholic statesmen because its moral criteria are, in the deepest
sense of the term, reasonable.... Under the traditional doctrines a war
to overthrow the Iraqi regime is amply justified...When war is morally
permissible, as it is here, it is also morally obligatory."

The last sentence, I believe, is not a paraphrase of Thomas Aquinas.

Christian Kopff
University of Colorado, Boulder
kopff@spot.colorado.edu


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