THE CHURCH AND POLITICS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —The controversy between the Bishops who intervened in the mining dispute, and the Bishops who thought that such interference was outside the duty of the Church, suggests a histor:aol parallel. In Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest, Vol. IL, pages 239-240, we read that about A.D. 1041 the advocates of the Truce of God attempted " to forbid violence of every kind from the evening of Wednesday till the morning of Monday . . . . The days of Christ's supper, of His passion, of His rest in the grave and His resurrection were all to be kept free from strife and bloodshed. The Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the cause. . . . But the Bishop of Cambrai maintained, on the other hand, that the whole affair was no concern of the ecclesiastical power. It was, he argued, the business of temporal rulers to fight, and the business of spiritual men to pray ; the pious scheme of his brethren could never be carried out."—I am, Sir, &c.
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