ABSTRACT
Just as Christian just war theory provided the philosophical grounds of innocent immunity-that is, the matrix from which finally evolved a generalized notion of moral innocence in war-so, too, legal and social institutions emerged that would in their turn provide the basis for a notion of objective nonparticipation in war. The great historian of medieval warfare, Sir Charles Oman, considers its period to extend from the defeat of the Emperor Valens at Adrianople in 387 to the destruction of English feudalism in the Wars of the Roses; the period from Adrianople to the battle of Hastings in 1066 is the period of cavalry development; the period after Hastings is the era of the knight's unchallenged supremacy. In the words of one commentator, the state of the unmounted fighting man is an index to the social conditions of an age: To an extent the social and economic structure of medieval warfare itself acted as a restraint on the conduct of war.
