En garde! - The Last Word

As war with Iraq appears increasingly unavoidable, some have suggested that George W. Bush's obvious personal animosity toward Saddam Hussein is more a question of honor than of national security. Saddam did, after all, try to assassinate the president's father after the first Gulf war. Yet if family honor is the issue, perhaps it would be more appropriate for Saddam and George W. to fight a duel, rather than drag the whole world into turmoil and possible chaos. In fact, one high Iraqi official has already suggested it. Happily, there are Christian precedents for such an alternative to war.

"I came not to send peace but a sword," we famously learn from Matthew (10: 34). While there was never an invitation to swordplay, the church nevertheless had to come to terms with the world of arms, and with the particular branch of arms that swordplay made its own: the duel.

Dueling dominated the landscape of swordsmanship for over a thousand years. Most historians date the origin of the duel to a.d. 501, when Gundebald, king of Burgundy, under pressure from a relentless bishop, drew on pre-Christian precedents to declare "trial by battle" a recognized judicial proceeding. Gundebald's Lex Burgundiorum held that since God directed the outcome of wars, it was only right to trust providence to favor the just cause in private quarrels. Thus victory in combat would be admissible as proof in legal proceedings, and duels became the norm throughout Europe to decide even the most arcane conflicts. In Toledo, in 1085, a duel determined whether Latin or Mozarabic rites should be used in the liturgy (the Mozarabic champion won).

Early on, the church took a stand against judicial combat. Pope Stephen IV (816-17) condemned all duels, and at the Council of Valencia (855), practitioners were threatened with excommunication. Within three years, however, Pope Nicholas I pronounced dueling "just and legitimate." Abbots and priors began taking their share of the confiscated goods of a defeated combatant, and sometimes even fought themselves. In 967, the Council of Ravenna declared judicial combat acceptable, citing David and Goliath as evidence of divine sanction. A century and a half later, there were church blessings for duels, and the intercession of a handful of saints was thought to be particularly effective in determining an outcome. Certain monasteries, like those around Paris in the fourteenth century, maintained special fields, equipped with viewing stalls, expressly for judicial duels--with the monks renting out facilities as needed.

Several duelists were to become famous figures of the church, most notably, Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). Born into an aristocratic family of Castile on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, he had fiery red hair and, although just 5 ft. 1, possessed a "love of martial exercises and a vainglorious desire for fame." He enlisted in the army at seventeen. Once he challenged a Moor to a duel for denying the divinity of Christ, and ran him through. Other duels followed, until a musket ball passed through both his legs in 1517 as he defended a Navarrese garrison against the French. While convalescing, he read a life of Christ and the lives of the saints, and then determined on a religious career. The Abbe de Rance (d. 1700), a reformer of the Cistercians, was also a regular duelist before his move to La Trappe.

Even more formidable was Philip Latini (1605-67) of Corleone, Sicily, an illiterate cobbler turned swordsman. He learned to fence from the Spanish mercenaries based in Palermo (Sicily was ruled by Spain at the time), and became so expert that he was known as "the best blade of the island." A local crime boss named Vinuiacitu (literally, "wine turned vinegar") sent one of his henchmen, Vito Canino, to see if he could best Corleone. The issue was quickly settled when the young cobbler cut off the would-be assassin's arm. Terrified that Vinuiacitu would exact vengeance, Corleone took sanctuary in a local church until the coast was clear, during which time he repented his sword-fighting ways, and in 1632 he became a Capuchin friar. In June 2001, he was canonized for his piety and good works as Saint Bernard of Corleone.

President Bush, a pious man, may want to look to these saintly predecessors as he contemplates a more personal confrontation with Saddam Hussein. And for those who find the idea of dueling barbaric, it is worth remembering what Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-90) wrote of the time-honored practice: "The duel is one of those provisional arrangements which, like cannibalism, slavery, polygamy, and many others, belong to certain stages of society, and which drop off as decayed and dead matter when, no longer necessary, they become injurious excrescences upon the body social." Nevertheless, he adds: "Those who look only at the surface of things consider these temporary institutions as unmixed evils, forgetting the immense amount of good which they did in their own day." And could still do today.

Richard Cohen's most recent book is By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions (Random House).

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