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Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

James Turner Johnson
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Extract

“Stab, smite, slay!” These are not the words of Bashar al-Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524–1525. His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion:

He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume.

Type
Roundtable: The Ethics of Rebellion
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , Winter 2013 , pp. 371 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2013 

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References

NOTES

1 From Luther, Martin, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants,” in Lehmann, Helmut T. and Schultz, Robert, eds., Luther's Works, vol. 46: Christian in Society III (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), p. 54Google Scholar.

2 Churchyard, Thomas, A Generall Rehearsall of Warres (London: Edward White, 1579)Google Scholar, Sig. Q. ii.

3 Cited from Reichberg, Gregory, Syse, Henrik, and Begby, Endre, eds., The Ethics of War (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 182–83Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 185.

5 Ibid., p. 195.

6 Ibid.

7 Augustine in various places; see ibid., pp. 81, 86–89.

8 Ibid., pp. 81–82.