THE SUMMONS—PETER THE HERMIT—POPE URBAN—POPULAR EXCITEMENT.
It has been customary to attribute the actual initiation of the crusades
to the fiery eloquence of Peter the Hermit. This man was a native of
Picardy, and was possessed of a spirit as restless as the seas that
washed the shores of that northern province of France. He at one time
seems to have followed the life of a soldier, but his ardent mind
demanded higher entertainment than the gossip of camps and exploits of
the field. The pursuit of letters, in an age so barren of literary
resources, soon wearied him. Ecclesiastical duties seemed also a dreary
routine. Like many of the nobler spirits of his day, he deserted the
world and in the seclusion of his own thoughts sought communion with
Heaven. His mind, unfurnished with information of the actual world,
filled itself with visions. From ecstatic solitude he emerged at times
to sway the masses with the eloquence of a second John the Baptist.
According to tradition, he made the pilgrimage to Palestine, the sight
of whose holy places inflamed his spiritual zeal, while the atrocities
perpetrated upon his fellow-Christians by the Turks rent his heart.
Together with Simeon, the venerable Patriarch of Jerusalem, he wept over
the desolation of Zion. He there conceived the sublime purpose of
rousing all Europe to take up arms against the common enemy. One day,
while praying before the Holy Sepulchre, he heard the voice of Christ
saying, “Peter, arise! hasten to proclaim the tribulations of My
people.” Bearing a letter from the patriarch, he went to Rome and
summoned Pope Urban II., as the Vicegerent of Jesus, to listen to this
new evangel from the ascended Lord. Urban perceived in the monk’s fervor
the signs of the will of Heaven, and commissioned him to proclaim it to
the nations of Europe.
It is unfortunate for the romance of this part of Peter’s life that it
is unconfirmed by any contemporary records. Anna Comnena, the Greek
annalist, who lived in Peter’s day, declares that, while he started upon
the pilgrimage, he did not reach Jerusalem.
It is best to regard Peter’s career as having been inspired by the
crusading project already determined upon by others. His eloquence was
like the first rush of steam from a newly opened volcano; it could not
have generated the mighty force that upheaved Europe and “hurled it
against Asia.”
But there can be no doubt of the personality of Peter, and of his
tremendous influence in exciting the populace to engage in the crusades
after they were decreed in the councils of Rome. His labors in the great
cause seem to have been limited to certain districts of France, for it
is scarcely credible that a man of strange language could have thrown
the spell of his rhapsodies over people living beyond the Rhine. Peter
the Hermit was of small stature, with long beard prematurely whitened by
the rigors of his life,—for he was not yet fifty years of age,—with deep
and penetrating eyes, fired by the enthusiasm that filled his soul. He
travelled from place to place with uncovered head and bare feet, mounted
upon a mule. The churches proving too small, the people thronged about
him in the market-places and fields, where they drank from his lips
wrath for the Moslem, pity for the Christian martyrs, whose blood he
painted as flowing in the streets of Jerusalem, and hope of eternal
reward if they should take the cross and sword. In the frenzy of
speaking he wept, wounded his own flesh with the violence of his
gesticulation, and exhausted his physical strength in the rhapsody of
speech, as he called upon the saints in heaven and the inanimate rock of
Calvary to cry out against the apathy of the Christian world. The people
were readily persuaded, and attributed the response of their own
passion, already inflamed by alarming events, to the preacher’s
miraculous gifts. They pressed about him that they might receive some
heavenly grace from touching his person, and preserved as sacred relics
the hairs they pulled from the tail of his mule.
Very opportunely there arrived at Rome in the year 1095 an embassy from
Alexius, the Greek emperor at Constantinople, begging assistance against
the Turks, who were threatening the shores of the Bosporus. In his
fright, or in the disingenuous diplomacy for which the Greeks were
noted, Alexius offered to reward the Western warriors with the treasure
of his capital, and even suggested that the empire they saved from the
Mussulman might one day become the prize of the Latin. Urban summoned a
synod at Piacenza, where the Greek messengers addressed in the open
fields the crowd of ecclesiastics and laymen, which was so vast that
neither the plazas nor churches of the city could contain them.
A second council, more imposing on account of the dignitaries present,
was held at Clermont in November of the same year. In his speech Urban
wrought the assembly to a fury of enthusiasm as he cried, “Exterminate
this vile race [Turks and Arabs] from the land ruled by our brethren....
It is Christ who commands.... If any lose your lives on the journey by
land or sea or in fighting against the heathen, their sins shall be
remitted in that hour. This I grant through the power of God vested in
me.... Let those who have hitherto been robbers now become soldiers. Let
those who have formerly been mercenaries at low wages now gain eternal
rewards. Let those who have been exhausting themselves to the detriment
both of body and soul now strive for a twofold reward, on earth and in
heaven.” This impassioned appeal was answered by the cry of bishop and
lord and knight, and was reëchoed by the assembled populace, “Deus vult!
Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”) “Deus vult! let that be your watch-cry,”
responded the pontiff.
All ranks and conditions of men thronged to receive the cross, if
possible from the hands of the Holy Father himself. This was a strip of
red cloth given with the assuring words, “Wear it upon your shoulders
and your breasts; it will be either the surety of victory or the palm of
martyrdom.” All priests throughout Europe were authorized to give the
sacred symbol, with the full papal benediction, to the people in their
parishes. Many, in their infatuation, burned the cross-mark into their
quivering flesh; others, grown insane through zealotry, imagined the
stigmata—as these signs were called—to have been produced by miraculous
process. An impostor was readily credited with having received the mark
on his forehead by the hand of an angel, and confessed the fraud, but
not until after he had been invested with the archbishopric of Cæsarea
in Palestine.
Preachers of the holy war went everywhere. Over western Europe the
enthusiasm passed like a forest fire. During the winter of 1095 there
seemed to be but one occupation of men in palace, monastery, and cottage
throughout northern France and along the Lower Rhine—that of preparing
arms and enrolling bands for the mighty exodus, which should take place
as soon as the roads became passable in the spring. The rich sold or
mortgaged their estates to raise the means of fitting out themselves and
their retainers. Knights and esquires drilled incessantly for feats of
arms against a foe whom they honored for his rumored prowess in fight as
much as they detested him for impiety. Recluses left their religious
retreats, their minds overwrought with anticipations of miracles to be
performed as in old Bible days, when waters divided and city walls fell
down at the approach of God’s people. Robbers emerged from their
hiding-places or were delivered from jails, that they might expiate the
crimes already committed against their fellow-Christians by atrocities
to be practised upon the unbeliever. Doubtless many were influenced by a
genuine religious emotion, as the proclamation of the crusade was
accompanied by the preaching of the “terrors of the Lord” against the
prevalent sins of the people. To the persuasion of Peter the Hermit many
of the most notorious sinners attributed their reformation. Young men
who were inclined to the monastic habit to escape the temptations of the
world were easily led to substitute the helmet for the cowl, as offering
a life more congenial to youthful enterprise and at the same time more
acceptable to God. Multitudes of the ignorant were animated by the new
and popular enthusiasm without understanding its motive, and were drawn
as by a freshet into the common channel. That no one might be deterred
by domestic anxieties from engaging in the crusades, the church
guaranteed the protection of the families and property of absentees; and
that no one might be tempted, in the subsidence of the first fervor, to
reconsider his purpose, excommunication was threatened on those who did
not fulfil their vows.
Thus western Europe in the spring of 1096 was not unlike a beehive, on
the outside of which the insects are gathered preparatory to swarming.
Guibert, a contemporary, says: “Although the French alone had heard the
preaching of the crusade, what Christian people did not supply soldiers
as well?... You might have seen the Scotch [who represented to the
continental mind the ends of the earth], covered with shaggy cloaks,
hasten from the heart of their marshes.... I take God to witness that
there landed in our ports barbarians from nations I wist not of; no one
understood their tongues, but placing their fingers in the form of a
cross, they made sign that they desired to proceed to the defence of the
Christian faith.”
The flight of these swarms of humanity eastward had three consecutive
features which should be noted. First, it was a crusade of the crowd,
which began in March, 1096; secondly came the more orderly military
movement, under the great feudal chieftains, which began in the
subsequent autumn; and thirdly, the enterprise became consolidated on
national lines, under the kings, who gradually acquired power and took
command of their various peoples. This last feature, however, did not
appear until the second crusade, nearly half a century later.
THE FIRST CRUSADE.