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CAUSES OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.

which Urban could not have made any previous calculationa long-prepared event, and hastened to its crisis by a circumstance in itself insignificant. Already had Silvester the Second and Gregory the Seventh broached the idea of an expedition of Western Christendom for the liberation of their fellow-believers in the East, and for the recovery of the holy places; but the minds of men were not as yet quite ripe for such a thought: there was need, in the first place, of a gradual preparation. Pope Victor the Third issued, in the year 1086, an invitation for a crusade, to be undertaken under the banner of St. Peter, against the Saracens in North Africa, and promised to all who should take part in it a plenary indulgence. After this came pilgrims from the East, with most distressing accounts of the insults and ill treatment which Christians had to suffer from the rude Mohammedans, and of the manifold profanations of the holy places. Among these pilgrims one deserves particularly to be mentioned, the hermit Peter of Amiens (Ambianensis). This individual believed himself divinely called, by visions in which Christ appeared to him, to invoke the assistance of Western Christians in recovering the holy places and the original seats of Christianity; and he brought with him a letter of complaint, calling for help, written by the patriarch of Jerusalem. He first sought an interview with pope Urban; and that pope was himself deeply affected, as well by the personal narrative of the monk as by the letter of which he was the bearer. He commissioned monk Peter to travel through the countries, and, testifying before high and low to the scenes he had witnessed, call upon them to go to the rescue of the East, now groaning under so heavy a yoke, and of the Holy Sepulchre. Peter the Hermit was a person of small stature and ungainly shape; but the fire of his eloquence, the strong faith, and the enthusiasm which furnished him with a copious flow of language, made a greater impression in proportion to the weakness of the instrument. It is to be remarked, as a peculiar trait in the life of these times, that men of mean outward appearance, and with bodily frames worn down by deprivation, were enabled by a fiery energy of discourse to produce the greatest effects. In a monkish cowl, and a woollen gown or cloak over it, this Peter itinerated the countries, barefoot, and riding on a mule. Immense crowds of people gathered round

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him he was loaded with presents, and from these he bountifully distributed to the poor; his words were received as the utterances of an oracle, and he made many a good use of the high influence he enjoyed; by his exhortations he wrought a change of character in abandoned women, for whom he procured husbands, and then bestowed on them a dowry; he reconciled contending parties to one another; he was venerated as a saint; men were eager to obtain from him something in the shape of a relic, were it but a hair from his mule. A contemporary and eye-witness who relates this, the abbot Guibert of Nogent sous Coucy (Guibertus Novigentensis),* says that he does not remember having ever witnessed the like veneration paid to any man; but he looks upon it as the effect which the charm of novelty exercises on the minds of the multitude. Thus, by the labours of this individual, were the minds of men already prepared, when Urban, in the year 1095, held the church assembly at Placenza, at which he first brought this matter forward. The assembly was so numerous that no church could contain it, and they were obliged to hold their sessions in the open air.‡ At Clermont, in Auvergne, an assembly of men, of both the spiritual and secular order, was afterwards holden, which was composed of still greater numbers, because it was known beforehand that this matter, which took such hold on the universal interest and sympathy, was to be the subject of discussion. The pope, in a fiery discourse, described the importance of the city of Jerusalem in its bearing on the Christian faith, the insults and abuse which the residents of the place and the Christians sojourning there as pilgrims were obliged to suffer. Next, he invited the assembly to be zealous for the law and glory of

* In his Historia Hierosolymitana apud Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, f. 482. + Quod nos non ad veritatem, sed vulgo referimus amanti novitatem. Bernold of Constance, who relates this in his Chronicle, endeavours to show by examples that this was nothing unbecoming: Hoc tamen non absque probabilis exempli auctoritate, nam primus legislator Moses populum Dei in campestribus legalibus præceptis Deo jubente instituit, et ipse Dominus non in domibus, sed in monte et in campestribus discipulos suos evangelicis institutis informavit. Missas quoque nonnunquam extra ecclesiam satis probabiliter, necessitate quidem cogente, celebramus quamvis ecclesias earum celebrationi specialiter deputatas non igno

ramus.

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God; and, impelled by the love of Christ, to grasp the sword, and turn the weapons which they had hitherto borne against Christians, and which they had stained with Christian blood, against the enemies of the Christian faith. The time was now come when, by participating in this holy work, they might atone for so many sins, robbery, and murder, and obtain forgiveness of all.* He announced the fullest indulgence to all who, in the temper of true repentance and devotion, would take part in this expedition. He promised forgiveness of sin and eternal salvation to all who should die in Palestine in true penitence, and he took all participators in this expedition under his own papal protection. This discourse of the pope produced a great effect on the already excited minds of men; and, after the example of Ademar, bishop of Puy, to whom the pope gave the guidance of the whole, many on the spot marked their right shoulder with the sign of the cross, as the symbol of the holy expedition, indicating their readiness to take upon them the cross of Christ, and follow him.

From this council, and from the impression which the itinerant monk Peter made on the multitude, proceeded an uninterruptedly progressive enthusiasm of the nations. It was like a voice of God to a generation given up to unrestrained passion and wild desires, amidst the mutual feuds and violent deeds of princes and knights, amidst the corruption which was only increased by that quarrel between pope and emperor-a mighty religious shock,-a new direction given to the imagination and to the feelings of men. So this fire poured out upon the nations, with which was mingled some portion at least of a holier flame, became one which, as it tended to counteract the hitherto prevailing rudeness of the fleshly sense, was considered, even by the pious and intelligent men of this age, a refining fire. It needed no exhortations from the clergy;

*It is a well-known fact that we have several recensions of this discourse, and no verbally accurate record of it, so that we can only give with certainty the general thoughts.

+ So says Guibert of Novigento, L. I. init.: Quoniam omnium animis pia desinit intentio et habendi cunctorum pervasit corda libido, instituit nostro tempore prælia sancta Deus, ut ordo equestris et vulgus oberrans, qui vetusta paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabantur cædes, novum reperirent salutis promerendæ genus.-And William of Tyre: Necessarius erat hic ignis purgatorius, quo præterita, quæ nimia erant, diluerentur commissa et occupatio ista utilis, qua declinarentur futura.

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men mutually stimulated one another; there was a mutual emulation. People of every class, of all ages, from nations the most diverse, hastened to the appointed spot. Everything required for the journey was quickly collected together; though, owing to bad seasons, provisions had become dear, yet of a sudden there was a fall in the market because all vied with each other in contributing, as they were able, to promote the holy enterprise, as they also recognized in the abundance of the following year a special providence of God for the promotion of the crusade.* Thus the extraordinary movement of mind produced by the preaching of the crusade, owing to which that which seemed impossible was made possible, appeared to contemporaries as a work of God not to be mistaken.† Yet the unprejudiced, even amongst them, were obliged to confess, that it was by no means the pure enthusiasm for a work undertaken in the interest of Christian faith, which hurried all to take part in it, but that a great variety of motives mixed in with this. Some had been awakened, by this call, out of a life stained with vices, to repentance, and sought by joining the crusade to obtain the forgiveness of their sins; while many, at other times, were led by a sudden awakening to repentance from a life of crime to embrace monasticism, there was now opened to them, in this enterprise, a more convenient way, and one more flattering to their inclinations. They might continue their accustomed mode of life as knights, and still obtain indulgence or the forgiveness of sin. Others meditated escaping in this way the civil punishments which threatened them, or delivering themselves from the oppressive burden of debt. Others were hurried along by the force of example and of the fashion.

*Fulcher of Chartres, on the year which followed upon the council of Clermont: Quo anno pax et ingens abundantia frumenti et vini per cuncta terrarum climata exuberavit, disponente Deo, ne panis inopia in via deficerent, qui cum crucibus suis juxta ejusdem præcepta eum sequi elegerant. In Bongars, 1. c. f. 384.

The men who looked upon this great movement of the nations as a work of God, still do not fail to mark the disturbing elements of vanity, self-deception, or intentional fraud. Thus the abbot Balderic, afterwards bishop of Dole, after having cited examples of this sort in his Historia Hierosolymitana, adds: "Hæc idcirco instruimus, ne vel aliquid præteriisse videamur, vel nostratibus in vanitatibus suis pepercisse redarguamur." Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, T. I. f. 89.

William of Tyre says, in Bongars, f. 641: Nec tamen apud omnes

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AMALGAMATION OF MONASTICISM AND KNIGHTHOOD.

If the religious awakening produced by the preaching of the crusades took such a turn with many as that, to speak in the language of those times, they preferred the pilgrimage to the heavenly Jerusalem, through the contemplative life of monasticism, to the pilgrimage to the earthly Jerusalem, the spiritual contest beneath the banner of the cross, to the bodily; others, on the contrary, rejoiced at the opportunity thus afforded them of forsaking, to follow a holy vocation, the quiet and solitude of monasticism which had become irksome to them; and even monks believed themselves warranted to break away from their confinement and grasp the sword;* till at length, from a necessity grounded in the life of the times, a blending together of monasticism and knighthood afterwards shaped itself into the spiritual order of knights. Under this prevailing tone of excited feeling men were easily disposed to fancy they saw miracles, and stories of miraculous works, wrought for the furtherance of the holy object, easily found credence, and were made the most of to promote the same, on the principle of the so-called pious fraud.† Men and women stood forth from among the people and pretended that a cross had been miraculously stamped on their bodies:‡ many branded this sign upon their persons with a hot iron, whether from zeal for the holy cause or purely out of

in causa erat Dominus, sed quidam, ne amicos desererent, quidam ne desides haberentur, quidam sola levitatis causa aut ut creditores suos, quibus multorum debitorum pondere tenebantur obligati, declinantes eluderent, aliis se adjungebant.

*Bernold of Constance attributes to this cause the misfortunes of a body of the first crusaders: Non erat autem mirum, quod propositum iter ad Hierosolymam explere non potuerunt, quia non tali humilitate et devotione, ut deberent, illud iter adorti sint. Nam et plures apostatas in comitatu suo habuerunt, qui abjecto religionis habitu, cum illis militare proposuerunt. L. c. p. 171. And another contemporary, Balderic, states, in his Historia Hierosolymitana: Multi eremitæ et reclusi et monachi, domiciliis suis non satis sapienter relictis, ire viam perrexerunt, quidam autem orationis gratia ab abbatibus suis accepta licentia profecti sunt, plures autem fugiendo se subduxerunt. Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, T. I. f. 89.

† In the appendix to Balderic's Chronicle, ed. Le Glay, p. 373: Portenta et signa in cœlo se videre multi asserebant.

Multi de gente plebeja crucem sibi divinitus innatam jactando ostentabant, quod et idem quædam ex mulierculis præsumserunt, hoc enim falsum deprehensum est omnino. Baldric. Histor. Hieros. 1. c.

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