Jehangir Yezdi Malegam

No Peace for the Wicked: Conflicting Visions of Peacemaking in an Eleventh-Century Monastic Narrative

The Miracula sancti Ursmari recounts an eleventh-century tour of relics during which monks from Lobbes brought peace to squabbling Flemish knights. While it could be assumed that the monks mediated between antagonists or organized reconciliation ceremonies, peacemaking in this text is not the arbitration of disputes but rather a conveyance of transformative grace; it is a sacrament offered to Flemish communities whose ethos of fighting reflects the region’s need for religious reform. Methods of arbitration or compromise undertaken in the absence of the saint are parodies of peace: any tranquility they bring is illusory and consequently betrayed by renewed conflict. This text prompts us to reexamine conflict narratives for theological understandings of pax that structure the depiction of a dispute resolution. The descriptions should not be taken as prima facie evidence of medieval social ordering but treated as guides to monastic aspirations during a period of church reform.

Suspicions of Peace in Medieval Christian Discourse

Oppositional constructions of peace and war and simplistic equations of peace with justice obscure the importance of activities primarily geared toward the limitation of harm. The medieval and patristic legacy of thinking with peace restricts peace to variants of a singular concept that dictates the diplomatic and domestic policy of modern states. At the same time, secular political theory has moved away from medieval clerical acknowledgment of compatibilities between turbulence and peace, producing temporally bounded categories of peace and war that facilitate damage or at best allow harm to endure. In this discourse, social disruption must act as signifier for more general (structural and systemic) violence—but then is repressed on exactly the same terms, making it difficult to arrive at solutions for conflict on the ground without renouncing calls for justice and equity in the long term.

INTRODUCTION: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy

Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy “Only connect . . .” — is there any single phrase that offers a more direct and humane method of conflict resolution? This sensible exhortation serves as the epigraph for E. M. Forster’s 1910 “condition of England” novel, Howards End, in which Forster humorously, then desperately, plots to get people, classes, and even places (rural England versus cosmopolitan London) utterly opposed in character and in values to “connect.” The moral good of human connection, the central theme of all of Forster’s fiction, is a primary article of his humanistic creed, as expounded with great urgency and yet a certain wistfulness in his 1938 essay “What I Believe.” “I realize,” he confesses,“Only connect . . .,” the epigraph of Forster’s Howards End , offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection — whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations — in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel’s conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty.

Peace by Other Means:: Symposium on the Role of Ethnography and the Humanities in the Understanding, Prevention, and Resolution of Enmity Part 3

Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy “Only connect . . .” — is there any single phrase that offers a more direct and humane method of conflict resolution? This sensible exhortation serves as the epigraph for E. M. Forster’s 1910 “condition of England” novel, Howards End, in which Forster humorously, then desperately, plots to get people, classes, and even places (rural England versus cosmopolitan London) utterly opposed in character and in values to “connect.” The moral good of human connection, the central theme of all of Forster’s fiction, is a primary article of his humanistic creed, as expounded with great urgency and yet a certain wistfulness in his 1938 essay “What I Believe.” “I realize,” he confesses,“Only connect . . .,” the epigraph of Forster’s Howards End , offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection — whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations — in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel’s conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty.

Peace by Other Means

Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy “Only connect . . .” — is there any single phrase that offers a more direct and humane method of conflict resolution? This sensible exhortation serves as the epigraph for E. M. Forster’s 1910 “condition of England” novel, Howards End, in which Forster humorously, then desperately, plots to get people, classes, and even places (rural England versus cosmopolitan London) utterly opposed in character and in values to “connect.” The moral good of human connection, the central theme of all of Forster’s fiction, is a primary article of his humanistic creed, as expounded with great urgency and yet a certain wistfulness in his 1938 essay “What I Believe.” “I realize,” he confesses,“Only connect . . .,” the epigraph of Forster’s Howards End , offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection — whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations — in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel’s conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conventional feeling as an act of moral heroism. This essay introduces the third installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means”: it explores and indeed extols the moral efficacy of connection in containing force and resolving conflicts, but it also contemplates the obstacles to connection, which Forster dramatizes with his characteristic honesty.