which there were annual festivals. This religious bond kept up a certain sense of national unity, which, however, has never produced national sympathy. At the festivals at Upsala peace was enforced for the time and place[1]; disputes were settled and fairs held, and there were also feasts and conferences. The Swedes in the thirteenth century formed kin-groups which adopted rules of mutual succor and defense.[2] The dwellings of kings also came to have in so far the character of sanctuaries that peace was maintained around them.[3] The ancient Germans maintained by law and severe penalties peace for women as to person and property; the penalties for wrong to a woman varied in the laws of the different German nations, but were two or three times as great as for wrongs to men.[4] The house-peace was also very fully developed in German law.[5] The Peace of God was perhaps the most remarkable case in history of a law to establish a time-taboo against war and violence. In the tenth century the church tried to curb the robber barons and to protect merchants; the attempts were often repeated with little result, but the "Truce of God" was at last established in 1041 by the Bishop of Arles and the Abbot of Cluny, and it won some acceptance throughout France. There was to be no fighting between Wednesday evening and Monday morning; later these limits were changed.[6] No such law was ever obeyed with any precision and it never became a custom, much less an institution, but it had some influence. As the kings gained real power and prestige in the feudal states they made the king's peace
