THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE.
[Sidenote: _Preparation for Peter_]
The study of the Foreground of the Crusades exhibits the preparation for
the man who was to be the great leader and, one might say, originator of
these astonishing movements. Whatever part others played, or whatever
the measure of the aid given, to Peter the Hermit is to be given the
credit of the effective inspiration and active leadership.
The leadership here claimed for Peter is challenged, it is only fair to
say, by Von Sybil whose views are, in the main, accepted by Hagenmeyer.
Von Sybil gives credit to the Pope alone for inspiration and direction.
It seems more probable, however, that the Pope utilized and magnified
the enthusiasm and influence of Peter; and directed it into channels
more likely to permit the movement of the Roman Church Eastward and the
growth of Pontifical supremacy. This is the view contained in these
pages.
[Sidenote: _Peter's Birth_]
We know where Peter came from. Born in Picardy, the historians are not
agreed whether of obscure or noble family. It makes little difference,
since if this were known all their dignity and life in history would
proceed from Peter. He was called Peter the Hermit because he was a
hermit, and not, as some have maintained, because it was his surname.
The weight of opinion favors his descent from humble parents.
All are agreed that he was of very ordinary appearance; one says
"ignoble and vulgar." The sum of the statements of contemporaries as to
his personality, is that he was of sharp understanding, energetic,
decided; coarse and sometimes brutal; enthusiastic; of great imaginative
power. If a Picard, then a Frank, and if a Frank, then a fighter, and
very ready to fight for religion. His nationality, therefore, gave him
access by speech to a most restless, gallant, and adventurous people.
Born with courage, moral intensity, restlessness, and activity, he
experimented for satisfaction in every direction.
[Sidenote: _Chooses Hermit's Life_]
[Sidenote: _Effect of Self-confidence_]
It seems that neither celibacy nor marriage, study nor warfare, long
attracted him. The conditions about him seemed beyond his remedy, and,
like many others, he retired from a sinful world to the harshnesses and
austerity of a hermit's life. Fasting did for him what it seems to do
for all when excess is reached either by self-will or necessity. He
became truly a "visionary." "He saw visions and dreamed dreams." His
temperament and his religious exercises made him feel that, better than
others he knew the will of God and that he was chosen to execute it. In
this stage a man becomes capable of great things in a poor cause. The
world is always impressed by the confident and the courageous. No great
movement, however wrong in doctrine, defective in morals, or disastrous
in results, has been without such leadership.
Like all orators of the Latin race, his fervor showed itself, not only
in his tones, but in his gesticulation and his postures. He was a master
of pantomime. If any were beyond his voice, they were not beyond his
meaning. If he had lived in our time he would have been counted among
the most "magnetic" of preachers. The reputation of his sanctity
showered him with gifts. He kept nothing for himself. All went to the
poor, and evil women were dowried by him that they might cease from evil
in honorable marriage.
[Sidenote: _Generosity Self-Sacrifice_]
Peter was not stirred alone by the relations of returning pilgrims as to
the ignominies heaped alike on the sacred places and on the religious by
the Turks. He followed in the wake of the devotees who traversed the
long road to the Holy City. That Peter actually made this journey is
sufficiently attested by his contemporary, Anna Conmena. She probably
met him while tarrying in Constantinople, and could easily know of his
presence at the palace of her father, Alexius. From her we learn that he
had to flee before the Turks and Saracens, and her narration makes it
doubtful if he reached Jerusalem on his first attempt. By so much as he
was more enthusiastic than others by nature, by so much was he fired
with indignation, which to him was but the just expression of his zeal
and his piety.
[Sidenote: _Emotions in Jerusalem_]
He stood with agony on Calvary. He adored with tears the tomb of Christ.
Then he sought speech with the Patriarch of Jerusalem. His name was
Simeon, and like another, waited for "the salvation of God." Who is
responsible for the report of this interview we do not know, but one
more probable and pathetic is not on record outside the Bible.
[Sidenote: _Patriarch Simeon_]
[Sidenote: _Simeon's and Peter's Hope_]
Simeon had suffered much for his faith as well as for his leadership.
The impatient enthusiasm of Peter was moved to tears by the patient
enthusiasm of Simeon. "Is there no remedy?" cried Peter, weeping. And
Simeon answered: "Is it not evident that our sins have shut us away from
the mercy of the Lord? All Asia is in the power of the Mussulmans; all
the East is enslaved; no power on earth can help us." Peter asked, "May
not the warriors of the West come to your help?" "Yes," said Simeon,
"when our cup is full, God will soften the princes of the West, and will
send them to the help of the Holy City." This was Peter's thought, and,
weeping with joy over a great hope, the patriarch and the pilgrim
embraced. The patriarch pledged himself to appeal to Europe by letter
and Peter by word of mouth.
The plan of Peter was strengthened by his further devotions at the Holy
Sepulcher. There are two ways in which men of strong will become sure
that their will is the will of God.
[Sidenote: _Peter's Mental Constitution_]
One is to make a plan, and then submit it to God in prayer. The other,
and the truer, is to ask God's help in the making of the plan as in its
execution. The first, as was probable from Peter's intellectual and
moral constitution, seems to have been the way in which he came to
certainty as to his life mission. There is no reason to doubt that in
his exiled state, moved at once by piety and peril, he saw the vision,
though inwardly, which inspired his return. At the Sepulcher he thought
he heard the voice of Christ commanding him to proclaim the sorrows of
Christ's land and of Christ's people. The best account of this vision
and commission is that of the Historia Belli Sacri: "One evening as
Peter went to rest the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision,
saying, 'Peter, stand up. Go back quickly into the West. Betake thyself
to Pope Urban with this commission from Me that he get all My brothers
as quickly as possible to hasten to Jerusalem, in order to purge the
city of unbelievers. All who do this from love to Me, to them stand open
the doors of the kingdom of heaven.'" This became to him a daily
commission from on high. Bearing letters from Simeon, he went to Italy
by sea, and sought the presence and aid of Urban II, then pope.
[Sidenote: _Pope Urban_]
Urban felt that this call, recognized by his predecessors, was more
fully and loudly given to him.
The refusal of Hagenmeyer to credit this vision and its influence on
Pope Urban seems to be the result of an ultra critical spirit. When a
pope speaks, after argument and urging, he is not likely to think it
consonant with his dignity to give credit in allocution or bull to those
who urged him. Holding that all men are properly servants of the Holy
See, he speaks as if he was the original source of knowledge and
impulse. Urban does not, in his famous speech at the Council of
Clermont, give Peter's vision or Peter's urgency as a ground for his
utterance or action. But he followed Peter on that occasion, and it may
well be that if Peter mentioned his vision as the inspiration of his
mission, the pope would not speak of its influence on himself.
[Sidenote: _Urban's Emotions_]
The Roman pontiffs, whatever their own ability or lack of it, have
always been distinguished for the wise use of enthusiasm. If not able to
make the wise direction of it themselves, some one of the Curia has
always been at their service to value the force and direct it into
channels of wider influence for the Church. There can be little doubt
that Urban was moved by a true and generous feeling. It would have been
almost impossible for any one to have simulated the grief he manifested
at the Council of Clermont.
[Sidenote: _Mixed Motives_]
But there can be as little doubt that, as the proposed movement must
inevitably aggrandize Roman Catholicity and make her the leader of the
Christian world, Urban was happier and stronger by the coincidence and
collaboration of both forces. There was a rival pope, and there were
sovereigns who were his enemies. What a God-given opportunity to humble
the Antipope and bring the unfriendly kings to his feet!
[Sidenote: _Peter's Garb_]
The pope gave Peter his commission and sent him forth with his blessing.
Mounting a mule, which soon attained in the thought of the people
something of its master's sanctity, he passed through Italy, crossed the
Alps, was in every part of France, and stirred the larger part of
Europe. With a crucifix in his hand, his body girdled with a rope,
clothed in a long cassock of the coarsest stuff, and a hermit's hood, he
could not have had, from the standpoint of public attention, a better
appearance. He kept himself free from monkish evils in habits and
conduct, and as he preached the loftiest morality by word as by life,
the people honored holiness in him.
[Sidenote: _Ready to Preach Anywhere_]
Like all who have been great reformers, he was indifferent as to where
he preached so that he could get a hearing. When the pulpits were open
and could reach the multitude, he was glad to preach in the sacred
inclosures; when his mission could reach more minds on the high roads
and public squares, he as gladly preached there. He knew how to use
apostrophes and personifications, and made the holy places themselves
clamor for help. He sometimes showed a letter which he said had fallen
from heaven wherein God called upon all Christendom to drive the
heathens out of Jerusalem and possess it forever. His favorite prophecy
was "Jerusalem shall be destroyed till the time of the heathen shall be
fulfilled." The agonies endured by the Christians of Palestine he
described with such accuracy of language and appropriateness of gesture,
that his hearers seemed to see them writhe under the lash and to hear
them groan in their wounds.
[Sidenote: _Waving his Crucifix_]
When he had exhausted his vocabulary and was exhausted by his emotions,
he would wave the image of Christ suffering on the cross before his
sobbing and wailing hearers.
The news of such preaching and of such scenes travels fast and far.
Wherever the Hermit went he was received as a saint, and if the people
could not obtain a thread of his garment they contented themselves with
a hair from the tail of his mule!
[Sidenote: _Effect of His Preaching_]
Whatever the modern mind may see of credulity among the people or of
fanaticism in Peter, contemporary annals show that his preaching was
followed by the results promised to the Gospel. Michaud says:
"Differences in families were reconciled, the poor were comforted, the
debauched blushed at their errors. His discourses were repeated by those
who heard to those who did not. His austerities and his miracles were
widely known and credited. When Peter found those who had been in
Palestine, or confessed to have been there, he used them as living
examples, and made their rags speak of the barbarities they had
suffered, or claimed to have suffered, at Turkish hands."
[Sidenote: _Constantinople in Peril_]
Additional strength was given to the cry for relief from Palestine by
the perils of Constantinople. This city, under nominally Christian
emperors, had become a museum of sacred relics. Alexius Comnena
threatened by the same warriors who had subjected the Holy City, offered
his sacred treasures and his secular riches to the leaders who would
rescue his capital. The poor esteem in which the haughty but, when in
danger, servile Greek held the Franks, as to everything but warlike
power, is indicated by his promising the Frank warriors the beauty of
the Greek women. As if these warriors were of the same tastes as the
Turks! To pass under the Mussulman yoke was infinitely more degrading
than to hand his scepter to the Latins.
[Sidenote: _Urban Concentrates Opinion_]
Urban now found it a suitable time to attempt to concentrate opinion and
prepare for action by summoning a Council at Plaisance. There was a
great response to the papal summons. Two hundred bishops and
archbishops, four thousand ecclesiastics, thirty thousand of the laity
came to the Council which had to meet, on account of its size, outside
the city wall.
[Sidenote: _Ambassadors of Alexius Humble_]
The tone of the Eastern emperors had long been so haughty that the
presence of their ambassadors at a Latin Council was a sufficient proof
of their humiliation. The pope seconded their requests and prayers with
all the force of speech and authority; yet the Council concluded
nothing. It seems probable that the astute pope passed the word that no
conclusion should be formulated, as he was not yet ready to indicate all
that was in his mind. It may well be that the danger to Constantinople
was not yet so evident to Alexius and to all as to indicate the hour for
absolute submission to the Roman authority.
[Sidenote: _Italy not yet Roused_]
[Sidenote: _Opening of the Council_]
It is more probable, however, that Urban could not yet command Italian
aid and unity. Commerce had so developed that religion, where it
interfered with it, could not command undivided allegiance. The
Italians, too, were near enough to know the limitations of Urban's
power, his failures and disgraces, and could not be summoned to action
as successfully as those who were farther away from knowledge of the
weakness of the papal grip. So the second Council met at Clermont in
Auvergne, and was equally weighty in the numbers attending and the
authority represented. "The cities and villages of the neighborhood were
so filled that tents and pavilions were erected in the meadows, although
the weather was very cold."[4]
Various matters of Church and social discipline were first considered
and determined. The purposed delay in reaching the real object of the
Council seemed to whet the appetites for the consideration of the wrongs
of the East. Enthusiasm grew to fanaticism, and a grand and universal
impatience of other topics finally brought the greater matter before the
body.
[Sidenote: _Artful Delay_]
The opening of the subject was had in the great square before the
cathedral. A throne had been prepared there for the pope, who approached
it followed by his cardinals and accompanied by Peter the Hermit in the
garb now known to the Christian world everywhere.
[Sidenote: _Describes Sufferings of Christians_]
Peter was put forward to speak first. His countenance was cast down with
humiliation, and his voice expressed his inward agony as he told what he
had seen of the sufferings of Christians at the scene of the world's
redemption. He told how they had been chained, beaten, harnessed like
brutes; how their bread had been taken away; how they had been compelled
to pay from the poverty of the pilgrim's wallet for approach to the
sacred shrines; how Christian ministers had, like their Lord, known the
rod, and met their death.
It is not needful to suppose that the growth of Peter's emotion, as he
told this tale of horrors, was simulated. In the cooler blood of to-day
the narrative stirs a sluggish heart. He ceased to speak because choked
with sobs.
[Sidenote: _Urban's Great Speech_]
The speech of Urban, who followed Peter, was one of the greatest ever
spoken in its effect on the history of the world. Delivered undoubtedly
in French, it survives only in ecclesiastical Latin. He was in France.
He wished to stir the French. He could not have moved them through an
interpreter as he moved them in his own tongue and theirs. He began in
the language of compliment.
[Sidenote: _Urban Compliments Franks_]
[Sidenote: _Describes Desecration of Palestine_]
"Nation beloved of God, it is in your courage that the Christian world
has placed its hope. Because I am well acquainted with your piety and
your bravery, I have crossed the Alps to preach to you.... You have not
forgotten that but for the exploits of Charles Martel and Charlemagne
France would have been under the rule of Mahomet.... Your fathers saved
the West from slavery. More noble triumphs await you. Under the guidance
of the God of Armies you will deliver Europe and Asia, you will rescue
the City of Jesus Christ from whence the Lord has come to us. Whose soul
does not melt? Whose bowels are not stirred with shame and sorrow? The
holy place has become not only a den of thieves, but the dwelling place
of devils. Even the Church of the Holy Sepulcher has become a stable for
cattle. Men have been massacred and women ravished within those blessed
walls. European Christians are warring on each other when they ought to
be rescuing their brethren from the yoke, and from the unbeliever's
sword."
[Sidenote: _Offers Rewards for Crusading_]
[Sidenote: _Pathetic Closing_]
[Sidenote: _Further Appeals_]
He appealed to every passion by captivating prophecies. "The wealth of
the unbelievers shall be yours. You shall plunder their treasuries. Your
commander, Christ, will not permit you to want bread or deny you a just
reward. There is no crime which may not be absolved by this act of
obedience to God. I offer absolutions for all sins; absolution without
penance to all who for this cause will take up arms.... I promise
eternal life to all who die on the battle-field or on the way to it. The
crusader shall pass at once to Paradise. I myself must stand aloof, but,
like Moses, I will be fervently and successfully praying while you are
slaughtering the Amalekites. I will not seek to dry the tears which
images so painful for a Christian and for the father of the faithful
draw from you. Let us weep over the sins which have withdrawn the favor
of God from us, but let us also weep over the calamities of the Holy
City. But if tears be all, we shall leave the heritage of the Lord in
the hands of the wicked. How can we sleep in comfort when the children
of Jesus Christ live in torments? Christian warriors, eager for pretexts
to unsheath your swords, rejoice that to-day you have found a just cause
for war. You mercenaries who have hitherto sold your valor for money, go
now and merit an eternal reward.... If you must have blood, bathe your
sword in the blood of infidels. Soldiers of Hell become soldiers of the
living God. Remember that 'he who loves father and mother more than Me,
is not worthy of Me.' Thus speaks Christ to you to-day."
[Sidenote: _Spread of Enthusiasm_]
[Sidenote: _Pardon by Fighting_]
Long before this final sentence, Urban's hearers had been lifted to
indescribable enthusiasm. A mighty shout as from a single throat
answered him: "God wills it. God wills it. We will join the army of
God!" Urban commands the bishops to rouse their dioceses by preaching
the instant duty of war for the Holy Sepulcher. The enthusiasm spread
everywhere like an infection under ripe conditions. France took the
lead; Germany with slower step; the Italians slowest of all, except the
Normans who dwelt among them. England contributed least of all, the
Normans being still busy in holding what they had won, and Anglo-Saxons
too discouraged over their own defeats. Spain had her own
anti-Mohammedan battle to fight. Some noblemen, unable to prevent their
vassals from going, joined them and took command that they might not
wholly lose their authority over them. Many had fought notwithstanding
papal prohibition. So many had sins to expiate that they were happy that
they could find forgiveness while indulging their chief passion, and
could wash away their sins by shedding blood.
Here again contemporary chronicles prove that humanity is seldom
governed by other than mixed motives. Bishops who were also barons bore
the skill in warfare which they had gained in defending their bishoprics
in the Crusades. Some of the priests, whose eyes were upon the rich
bishoprics of the East, found hope enlarged by arming for the war.
"Knights of God and Beauty" found a new field in the march to Jerusalem.
The distresses due to scanty harvests in 1094-95 contributed in some
measure to the easy gathering of the hosts of the first crusade. Famine
seemed so close at hand that those who left their homes had little to
lose and much to gain. Nor were the masses unwilling to fly from the
oppressions and exactions of rulers who claimed the privilege to do
wrong by Divine Right.
[Sidenote: _Normans and Saracens_]
[Sidenote: _Marvels Begin_]
Apulia and Sicily had been wrested from the Saracens by a few hundred
Normans. This bred confidence in the final result of the war. One of the
most curious of the fanaticisms, which developed from the larger
fanaticism, was that of the sign of the cross in the flesh. Women and
children imprinted crosses on their limbs. A monk who made a large cross
on his forehead kept it from healing and colored the gash with prepared
juices. He declared it was a miraculous stigma done by an angel, and his
lie served him well in abundant help. It is further related that a
company of Crusaders being shipwrecked near Brundusium all the bodies
had a cross imprinted on their flesh just under where the cross had been
sewed on their clothes. Perhaps they had done what the monk did; perhaps
poor dyes soaked through. A miracle was in those days the easiest
explanation of all marvels.
[Sidenote: _True Religion in the Movement_]
Yet all this was no more than the earth which clings for awhile to all
plants which spring from the soil. The essence of the movement as to
the masses was truly religious and the duties of religion released the
doer of "the will of God" from all other obligations. The monk from his
cloister and the hermit from his cave declared they had heard God's
call.
[Sidenote: _Sacrifices for the Cause_]
Men do not part with property for what they do not deem a valuable
consideration. Many at this time surrendered their castles, their lands,
their cottages, to "leave all and follow Him." Small sums sufficient to
eke out the alms of the pilgrimage, were accepted as pay, and, if not
forthcoming, the property was abandoned to him who might remain to use
it. It seemed as if all Europe was to emigrate to Palestine.
The Crusaders have been ordered to march on the Feast of the Assumption
in the year following the November of the Council. The whole winter was
given to preparation.
[Sidenote: _Spring Revives Enthusiasm_]
The warmth of spring rekindled the fires of crusading zeal, if indeed
they anywhere burned more slowly during the winter cold. Those who had
been at first indifferent to the movement now became in large numbers as
enthusiastic as those first influenced. Both classes set out to the
appointed camping places. On horseback, in carts, and on foot, the
multitudes marched. Sin marched with purity, and indulgence with
penitence. Prostitutes in arms appeared with the warrior and dragged
down many whom devotion sought to uplift. Secular and warlike music was
sometimes overcome by psalms and other religious songs.
[Sidenote: _Crazy Enthusiasm_]
[Sidenote: _Ignorance of the Crusaders_]
More pitiful sights could be occasioned only by a famine or pestilence.
Men who had dependent families were followed by the wives and children
who could not afford to be separated from their natural protectors. Old
men, helpless as to livelihood, dragged after their strong-armed sons.
There was no joy over staying at home. Happiness seemed to abide only
with those who were going to war. A stream starting from a village drew
other streams from the villages and towns through which it passed until
a river of humanity rushed on. They did not know the length of their
journey, and could not conceive of the dangers they must approach and
pass. Some had been so steadfast in residence as to have no idea of the
size of the world even as it was known to other men. Great lords with
hounds in front, and falcon on wrist, went out as if the chief aim was
to hunt and fish. All were crazed, and at first no sane mind was left to
point out the dangers, or prepare a commissariat, or plan a campaign.