Napoleon: Man of Peace

A retired French officer, Gueguen, Emile René, has written a book titled Napoleon: Humanitarian and Man of Peace. This may come as a surprise to you, but he makes the case in his short book that Napoleon was a humanitarian and “man of peace.” (I feel better already since an ancestor, General Lefort, served in Nappies army.) That aside, what are the characteristics of a “man of peace”? Wikipedia informs us:

The title Man of Peace was created in 1999 by the annual World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in Rome. The purpose of the award is to recognize individuals who have offered “an outstanding contribution to international social justice and peace”.  An initiative by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, himself a winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, the award is presented in Rome’s Campidoglio (Capitoline Hill) by President Gorbachev, Walter Veltroni, Mayor of Rome, and the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates attending the annual summit meeting.

You will find some strange bedfellows on the list: FW de Klerk, Bono, Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) and Shimon Peres. This might leave you scratching your head as to the real meaning of a “man of peace.” Well, the phrase has its origin about 1999 years before 1999 when Jesus Christ gave his disciples a tip about who to look out for when they entered a city.

“If a man of peace is there…”

How did Jesus come up with this notion? What characteristics did he see in a man (nowadays we would say Person) of peace? What sets People of Peace apart from the rest of us?

Predictably, I have identified 10 Characteristics of a Person of Peace. I will blog about these, one characteristic at a time, in the days to come. Stay posted.



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