CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

understood only to apply between Christian states; war on unbelievers was inherently
‘just.’ 138 Michael Ignatieff 139 makes the point thus:
In Medieval Europe, there was a distinction between bellum hostile (warfare
characterized by restraint) and bellum romanum (warfare, in the words of the
historian Michael Howard, “in which no holds were barred and all those
designated as enemy, whether bearing arms or not, would be indiscriminately
slaughtered”). Medieval Christendom carried this distinction into the Crusades
against Islam: unmitigated ferocity reserved for unbelievers. Islam responded in
kind; * jihad was its very own bellum romanum. … … … …
… … Out of (an) Enlightenment rage at Christian hypocrisy came a concerted
attempt to frame a universalist ethic based on supposed facts of human nature,
especially our universal susceptibility to pain and cruelty.
Like Augustine, Aquinas touches upon issues of just conduct in war but he too puts
greatest emphasis on the right to wage war. Nevertheless, it is in the medieval period –
and not withstanding what has just been said about inter-faith warfare – that, through
the merging of the Roman jus gentium (civil law) with chivalric codes, jus in bello as
we recognise it today, with its twin pillars of proportionality and discrimination, begins
to emerge. 140 It is also in St Thomas’s writings that the first formulation of what is now
known as the law of double effect can be found. Simply put this says that it is an act’s
intention that is to be morally judged, not its unintended, coincidental – even if foreseen
– consequences: ‘Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended and
not what is beside the intention, since this is accidental.’ 141
The religious phase in the development of just war doctrine is drawn to a close in the
writings of the late scholastics such as the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (1480- 1546)
and the Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617). The requirement that war be a last resort
is largely attributed to Vitoria who repeatedly emphasises the need for prudence in
resorting to force for ‘not every kind and degree of wrong can suffice for commencing a
war’ and ‘it is the extreme of savagery to seek for and rejoice in grounds for killing and
destroying men whom God has created and for whom Christ died. But only under
compulsion and reluctantly should the ruler come to the necessity of war.’ 142 For
Vitoria ‘(t)here is a single and only just cause for commencing a war, namely, a wrong
received.’ 143
* And some might argue elements within the faith are doing so again.
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