THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.
[Sidenote: Influence of Roman imperialism on the early popes.]
The Pope is the bishop of Rome, and the traditions of the papacy delight
in recalling the humble origin of his vast monarchy, at once spiritual
and temporal, ecclesiastical and secular. If the poor Galilæan fisherman
ever entered the Eternal City, it was as a stranger who had come to
be the guide and friend of a small knot of men who saw and hated and
wished to keep themselves aloof from the abominable corruption of Roman
society. But if Christianity itself, as we have seen (p. 6), was, when
it had once taken root in the West, modified by the popular feelings and
old associations of the converts, the constitution of the church was in
like manner insensibly modified by the political forms of the state with
which it had at first to wage a terrible conflict. Rome was not as other
cities: and the bishop of Rome could not long remain like the presidents
of other churches. He was dealing with the subjects, and he lived in
the heart, of the empire. It was inevitable that the imperial tradition
should fasten on the object of their worship; nor was it long before the
exulting cry went up to heaven, Christ lives, Christ rules, Christ is
emperor (Christus vivit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat).
[Sidenote: A. D. 587-604.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1073-1085.]
As the vicars of this invisible emperor, the popes acquired gradually
a power which overshadowed that of the mightiest sovereigns. It was
exercised with monastic austerity by Gregory the Great; it was wielded
with the ability of a consummate general by Gregory VII., Hildebrand.
The first Gregory was a monk, therefore also a Manichean; in other
words, one who believed in the essential impurity of all matter; but
this philosophy, if it had any attractions for Gregory VII., was wholly
subordinate to the one absorbing passion of ecclesiastical dominion. His
aim was to subdue the world by a spiritual army: but the issue of his
conquest was not to be confined to spiritual influence. It was to give
him power over kingdoms, dictation over princes, the command of their
weapons and their wealth. It was to humble civil polity under priestly
autocracy; it was to prove, what Hildebrand scrupled not to assert, that
the civil rule was in itself the mere development and working of the
evil principle. The foundations had long been laid; but Hildebrand left
to his successors not much to do towards completing the fabric of papal
empire. His predecessors had learnt to avail themselves dexterously
of popular feeling or the ambition of princes, to direct wide-spread
movements, if not to create them. It was the papal sanction which had
aided to depose the degenerate Merovingian; it was the papal chrism which
had anointed the first Carolingian king. It was the diadem of the ancient
Cæsars, bestowed by the hand of Leo III., which rested on the head of
Charles the Great. It was Hildebrand himself, who, by the hands of his
instrument, Alexander II., had transferred the crown of England from
the son of Godwine to William the Bastard of Normandy. It has been well
remarked, that although the name had not yet been heard, yet in truth it
was now that the first crusade was preached, and it was preached by the
voice of Rome against the liberties of England. We may note further that
the preacher was a pontiff, who, when he found it convenient to thank
the Sultan of Morocco for some indulgences granted to Christians in his
territories, could assure that infidel ruler that both worshipped the
same God and held the same faith, though their modes of worship and their
expressions of devotion might be different.
[Sidenote: Schemes and motives of Gregory VII.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1074. His circular letter to the faithful.]
The popes had become capable of setting vast armies in motion, and of
raising to a white heat the fire of a popular sentiment which had already
been kindled. These two conditions were needed before the power of
Europe could be precipitated on the infidel conquerors of Syria; and the
inability of the popes to accomplish this end if they were not in accord
with the prevalent feeling of the people is strikingly shown in the
history of Gregory VII. Eight years after he had helped to slay Harold
at Hastings, Hildebrand addressed a letter to all who loved and cared
to defend the Catholic faith, beseeching them to put aside all other
tasks in favour of the great work of chasing the hordes of the Seljukian
Turks beyond the bounds of the Eastern empire. Constantinople, the new
city of the Seven Hills, was even now threatened by these barbarians;
nor could any say how soon the danger might not menace Rome itself. It
could not be doubted that the faith, the energy, the warlike skill of
Christendom would sweep away these undisciplined unbelievers; and the
victory of the faithful would be followed by very solid gain to the
popes. The price to be paid by the emperor for his deliverance from
the Turks was his submission as a vassal to the see of Rome; in other
words, the pope was to become absolute lord both of East and West, and
the claims of the Byzantine patriarch to a co-ordinate dignity with
the successor of St. Peter should no longer be made with impunity. But
although the scheme thus carefully drawn out was to promote the interests
of a spiritual power, for the great mass of Latin Christians it was
purely a political enterprise. The fears and distresses of the Eastern
emperor could excite no sympathy; the Cæsar of Constantinople was not a
being who had exhibited the image of superhuman love or shed his blood
for those who had taken delight in torturing him; and the excommunication
which Hildebrand had imprudently hurled against the emperor Nicephorus
(Nikephoros) III., had left behind it in the East a feeling not
favourable to the designs of the Roman pontiff. The letter of Hildebrand
appealed to no religious associations; it said nothing of abominations
committed in the holy places, of terrible crimes wrought on the persons
of faithful pilgrims; it was silent about the eternal reward which the
bare act of pilgrimage would win for the believer. It was of little use
to say in passing that more than 50,000 warriors longed to rise up under
his guidance against the enemies of God and reach the sepulchre of their
Lord. He had not struck the right chord, and Hildebrand failed to see the
West gird itself for the great conflict with the enemies of the faith.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1081. The Normans in Italy.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1082.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1083.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1085.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1087.]
For a time he may have supposed that the great fire was already kindled,
when with a fleet of 150 ships and an army of 30,000 men Robert Guiscard
set sail from Brundusium (Brindisi). But the conqueror who had done so
much in Italy was to do but little to the east of the Adriatic. While
his army put forth its whole strength before the walls of Dyrrhachium
(Durazzo), his fleet under the command of his son Bohemond was miserably
defeated; and nothing but the wretched jealousy felt by the emperor
Alexios for his general Paleologos saved the army of Guiscard from ruin
and turned the threatened disaster into victory. When, being compelled to
return to Italy, he left Bohemond to carry on his enterprise, the latter
overran Epeiros and had well nigh succeeded in reducing the Thessalian
Larissa, when he too was compelled to hasten to Italy for reinforcements
both in men and money. In his absence his deputy, Brienne, the constable
of Apulia, was constrained to abandon the siege of Kastoria and to bind
himself not to invade again the territories of the Byzantine emperor.
Not many months later Robert Guiscard gathered another armament for the
conquest of the East. He raised the siege of Corfu (Korkyra), and had
reached Cefalonia (Kephallenia), when his career was cut short by death
and his scheme for the time seemed utterly brought to naught. The war
which Hildebrand sought to stir up against the Mahomedan powers was not
less vigorously preached by his successor Victor III., who promised
remission of sins to all who might engage in it; but his words called
forth no bands of warriors for the recovery of Jerusalem. The fleets of
Genoa and Pisa swept the African coasts, and gained in the shape of booty
a harvest which was to fall to the lot of few among the myriads who were
soon to leave their homes for the Holy Land.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1095. Council of Piacenza.]
Ten years after the death of Hildebrand three or four thousand of the
clergy and thirty thousand laymen were gathered to meet pope Urban II.
at the council of Piacenza (Placentia). So vast a throng could find
standing ground in no building, and the business of the council was
transacted in the plain outside the city. The envoys of the Eastern
emperor, Alexios Comnenos, were there to plead his distresses and
beseech the strenuous aid of the faithful. The policy of checking the
progress of the Turks while they were still at a good distance from
Italy may have influenced the more statesmanlike of their hearers; the
more vehement and enthusiastic among them were moved to tears by the
pathetic recital of the Byzantine ambassadors, and demanded loudly to
be led against the enemy. But Urban, with his heart more determinately
set upon the enterprise than any man present, felt that the hour for
the supreme decision had not yet come. He was in a country torn by
intestine divisions, where his own claim to the papacy was disputed by
an anti-pope whom with his adherents it was here his especial business
to excommunicate. He had to deal with other matters also. Some of the
clergy still refused to abandon their wives; and the wife of the emperor
Henry IV. was present to complain of treatment unimaginably monstrous on
the part of her husband. Both emperor and clergy must be condemned, and
brought into obedience; and Urban felt that after such business as this
it would be well to reserve his eloquence for another scene. He therefore
dismissed the envoys of Alexios with the assurance that when the hosts
of Western Christendom advanced to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre they
would not forget that they had work to do near Constantinople.
[Sidenote: A. D. 799.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1095. The council of Clermont.]
From Piacenza Urban made his way across the Alps to the realm of the
great Charles, whose intercourse with the ambassadors of the Caliph
Harun-al-Reschid may have laid the foundation for the myth, expanded
into a systematic fiction in the lying Chronicle of Turpin, that he had
himself smitten down the unbelievers under the shadow of the Church of
Constantine. On the northern side of the Alps Urban could breathe more
freely. The sentence of excommunication was impending, it is true, over
Philip the First, who called himself or was called King of France; but
the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, powerful though he might be within his
own dominion of Paris and Orleans, was little more than nominal lord of
the vast throng of feudal chiefs who lay beyond its borders. From his
old home in the great monastery of Clugny, Urban set off in the autumn
for Clermont in the territories of the Count of Auvergne. Before he
could reach the city, thousands of tents were pitched without the walls
for those who could find no shelter within them; and the eight days
during which the council held its sessions were spent in regulating
the enterprise about which the pope had spoken with so much reserve at
Piacenza, and in prescribing the measures to be taken for the safety
of those who might remain at home during the absence of their natural
protectors.
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1093.]
There was now no more need for hesitation. Popular feeling to the north
of the Alps was far more deeply moved by the woes of the pilgrims and
the conquests of the infidels than on the southern side of the great
mountain barriers; and the wrath of the people had been fanned into an
ungovernable flame by the preaching of the hermit Peter. This man, born
at Amiens in Picardy, had forsaken his wife and laid aside the sword
which he wielded in the service of the Counts of Boulogne, to follow
the council of perfection in silence and solitude. Like others, he felt
himself drawn by an irresistible attraction to the Holy Land; but if his
passionate yearnings were rewarded by the privilege of offering up his
prayers before the tomb of the Redeemer, his very heart was stirred by
the sight of things, the mere recital of which had awakened his wrath at
a distance. The Sanctuary was in the hands of the infidels; the patriarch
was reduced practically to the state of a slave, and the pilgrim was
happy who returned from the Holy City without undergoing humiliations
and buffetings scarcely deserved by the worst of criminals. The murder
of many Christian men, the deadly wrongs done to many Christian women,
called aloud for vengeance, and the hermit made his vow that, with the
help of God, these things should cease. His conversations with the
patriarch Simeon brought out only confessions of the incapacity of the
Greek Emperor and the weakness of his empire. ‘The nations of the
West shall take up arms in your cause,’ said the hermit; and with the
patriarchal benediction Peter hastened to obtain for the mission which he
now saw before him the sanction of the man who claimed to be at the head
of Eastern and Western Christendom alike.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1094. The mission and preaching of the hermit.]
Before the Roman pontiff Peter poured forth his story of the wrongs which
called for immediate redress; but no eloquence was needed to stir the
heart of Urban. The zeal of the pope was probably as sincere as that of
any others who engaged in the enterprise; but it could not fail to derive
strength from the consciousness that, whatever might be the result to the
warriors of the cross, his own power would rest henceforth on more solid
foundations. His blessing was therefore eagerly bestowed on the fervent
enthusiast who undertook to go through the length and breadth of the
land, stirring up the people to the great work for the love of God and
of their own souls. His eloquence may have been as rude as it was ready;
but its deficiencies were more than made up by the earnestness which gave
even to the glance of his eye a force more powerful than speech. Dwarfish
in stature and mean in person, he was yet filled with a fire which would
not stay, and the horrors which were burnt in upon his soul were those
which would most surely stir the conscience and rouse the wrath of his
hearers. His fiery appeals carried everything before them. Wherever he
went, rich and poor, aged and young, the knight and the peasant, thronged
round the emaciated stranger, who with his head and feet bare rode on
his ass, carrying a huge crucifix. That form, of which they beheld the
bleeding sign, he had himself seen; nay, he had received from the Saviour
a letter which had fallen down from heaven. He appealed to every feeling
which may stir the heart of mankind generally, to every motive which
should have special power with all faithful Christians. He called upon
them for the deliverance of the land which was the cradle of their faith,
for the punishment of the barbarian who had dared to defile it, for the
rescue of the brethren who were the victims of his tyranny. The vehemence
which choked his own utterance became contagious: his sobs and groans
called forth the tears and cries of the vast crowds who hung upon his
words, and who greedily devoured the harrowing accounts of the pilgrims
whom Peter brought forward as witnesses to the truth of his picture.
Motives more earthly may have mingled with his austere call in the minds
of some who heard him. Of these motives the hermit said nothing: but
there is no doubt that he made his last and most constraining appeal to
that notion of mechanical religion which the prophet Micah puts into
the mouth of Balak the king of Moab. The consciences of some amongst
his hearers might be weighed down by the burden of sins too grievous
almost for forgiveness. He besought them to remember that such fears were
altogether misplaced, if only they made up their minds to take part in
the redemption of the Holy Land. If they chose to become the soldiers
of the cross, their salvation was at once achieved. There was no sin,
however fearful, which would not be cancelled by the mere taking of the
vow; no sinful habits which would not be condoned in those who might
fall in battle with the unbelievers. The excitement of the moment, the
frenzy which, having first unsettled the mind of the hermit, was by him
communicated to his hearers, threw, we cannot doubt, a specious colouring
over a degrading morality and a hopelessly corrupting religion; but as
little can we doubt that the whole temper which stirred up and kept
alive the enterprise left behind it a poisoned atmosphere which could be
cleared only by the storms and tempests of the reformation.
[Sidenote: Decrees of the council of Clermont, prohibiting private wars,
and confirming the Truce of God.]
The preaching of the hermit predetermined the results of the council
of Clermont; but Urban and the throng of bishops and abbots who were
gathered round him were well aware that something more was needed than
the enlisting of an army of zealots for distant warfare. With our settled
laws and orderly government it is almost impossible for us to realize
the condition even of the most advanced states of Christian Europe in
an age when the power of the king over his vassals meant simply that
which the strength or the weakness of the vassals made it, and when the
vassal, if he owed allegiance to his lord, was bound by no ties to his
fellow vassals. The system of feudalism could not fail to feed the worst
passions of human nature; and the absence of an authority capable of
constraining all alike involved for those who felt or fancied themselves
aggrieved an irresistible temptation to take the law into their own
hands. But the practice of private war thus set up would sooner or later
assume the form of a trade, and in the words of William of Malmesbury
things had now come to so wretched a pass that feudal chiefs would
take each other captive on little or no pretence, and would set their
prisoners free only on the payment of an enormous ransom. This military
violence of the laity was accompanied by corruption on the part of the
clergy, showing itself in a shameless traffic of benefices and dignities
which, in brief phrase, fell to the lot of the highest bidder. In such
a condition of things to drain off to distant lands a large proportion
of the men who at home might do something to check, if not to repress,
the mischief, would be to leave those who remained behind defenceless.
Decrees were therefore passed condemning private wars, confirming the
Truce of God which suspended all hostilities during four days of each
week, and placing the women and the clergy under the protection of
the Church, which in an especial manner was extended to merchants and
husbandmen for three years.
[Sidenote: Speech of Urban II. before the people.]
When, the business of the council being ended, Urban ascended a lofty
scaffold and began his address to the people, he spoke to hearers for
whom arguments were no longer needed, but who were well pleased to hear
from the chief of Christendom words which carried with them comfort
and encouragement. Three forms or versions of this speech have been
preserved to us; one in the pages of William of Tyre, a second in those
of William of Malmesbury, a third from a manuscript in the Vatican. It
is possible that they may represent three different speeches: but the
substance of all is the same, and we are left in no doubt of the general
tenor of his words. With some inconsistency he dwelt on the cowardice
of the barbarians who had contrived to conquer Syria and whose tyranny
called forth the appeal which he now made to them. The Turk, shrinking
from close encounters, trusted to his bow and arrow; and the venom of
his poisoned shaft, not the bravery of a valiant warrior, inflicted
death on the man whom it struck. Their fears, he added, were justified,
for the blood which ran in the veins of men born in countries scorched
with the heat of the sun was scanty in stream and poor in quality as
compared with that which coursed through the bodies of men belonging to
more temperate regions. ‘In these temperate regions you were born,’ he
pleaded, ‘and you have therefore a title to victory which your enemies
can never acquire. You have prudence, you have discipline, you have
skill and valour, and you will go forth, through the gift of God and the
privilege of St. Peter, absolved from all your sins. The consciousness
of this freedom shall soothe the toil of your journey, and death will
bring to you the benefits of a blessed martyrdom. Sufferings and torments
may perhaps await you. You may picture them to yourselves as the most
exquisite tortures, and the picture may perhaps fall short of the agony
which you may have to undergo; but your sufferings will redeem your souls
at the expense of your bodies. Go then on your errand of love, of love
for the faithful who in the lands overcome by the infidel cannot defend
themselves, of love which will put out of sight all the ties that bind
you to the spots which you have called your homes. Your homes, in truth,
they are not. For the Christian all the world is exile, and all the world
is at the same time his country. If you leave a rich patrimony here, a
better patrimony is promised to you in the Holy Land. They who die will
enter the mansions of heaven, while the living shall behold the sepulchre
of their Lord. Blessed are they who, taking this vow upon them, shall
inherit such a recompense: happy they who are led to such a conflict,
that they may share in such rewards.’
[Sidenote: The assent of the multitude.]
It was no wonder that words thus striking chords of feeling already
stretched to intensity should be interrupted with the passionate cry
‘It is the will of God! It is the will of God!’ which broke from the
assembled multitude. ‘It is, in truth, his will,’ added the pontiff, ‘and
let these words be your war-cry when you unsheath your swords against the
enemy. You are soldiers of the cross: wear, then, on your breasts or on
your shoulders the blood-red sign of Him who died for the salvation of
your souls. Wear it as a token that his help will never fail you: wear it
as the pledge of a vow which can never be recalled.’
[Sidenote: The cross and the vow of the crusaders.]
By these words the war now proclaimed against the Turks received the name
which has become a general title for all wars or hostile undertakings
carried on in the name of religion. Thousands hastened at once to put on
the badge and so to take their place among the ranks of the crusaders.
The rival claims of the anti-pope withheld Urban himself from taking the
pledge to which he was clamorously invited; and worldly prudence alone
may have suggested the wisdom of standing aloof from a conflict in which
disaster to a Roman pontiff would certainly be regarded as a visible sign
of the divine displeasure. Of the clergy, the first to assume the cross
was Adhemar (Aymer), bishop of Puy, and as his reward he received the
powers and dignity of papal legate. At the head of the laity Raymond,
count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence, promised
through his ambassadors to be ready by the Feast of the Assumption,
August 15, next following the council, the day fixed for the departure of
the crusading hosts for Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Motives of the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1058-9.]
[Sidenote: Financial effect of the crusade.]
Thus was the die cast for a venture which in the eye of a keen-sighted
general or a far-seeing statesman should have boded little good, but
which held out irresistible attractions for the great mass of the
people,—attractions which continued to draw hundreds and thousands still
to the unknown and mysterious East, when a long series of disasters had
proved that the journey to Jerusalem was in all likelihood a journey to
the grave. For the really sincere and devout, whose lives had been passed
without reproach and who could await the future with a clear conscience,
there was the deep sense of binding duty, the yearning to be brought
nearer whether on earth or in heaven to the Master whom they loved. For
the feudal chieftain there was the fierce pastime of war which formed the
main occupation and perhaps the only delight of his life, with the wild
excitement produced by the thought that the indulgence of his passions
had now become a solemn act of religion. There was also the prospect
of vast and permanent conquest; and the duke or count who left a fair
domain behind him might look forward to the chance of winning a realm as
splendid as that which Robert Guiscard and his Normans had won in Apulia
and Sicily. For the common herd and those whom gross living had rendered
moral cowards, there was the offer of a method by which they might wipe
away their guilt without changing their character and disposition. Not a
few might be caught by the philosophy of the abbot Guibert, who boldly
drew a parallel between the crusades and holy orders or monachism. That
height of perfection which ecclesiastics might reach in their own sphere
was now attainable by laymen through an enterprise in which their usual
license and habits of life would win them the favour of God not less
than the most unsparing austerity of the monk or the priest. It was, in
short, a new mode of salvation, and they who were hurrying along the
broad road to destruction now found that the taking of a vow converted
it into the narrow and rugged path to heaven. Nor was the number few
of those for whom this convenient arrangement was combined with some
solid temporal advantages. The cross on the breast or shoulder set
free from the clutches of his lord the burgher or the peasant attached
to the soil, opened the prison doors for malefactors of every kind,
released the debtor from the obligation of paying interest on his debts
while he wore the sacred badge, and placed him beyond the reach of his
creditors. Lastly, the episode of a crusade might be for the priest a
pleasant interruption to the dull routine of parochial work, to the monk
an agreeable change from the wearisome monotony of his conventual life.
The usurer and the creditor might fancy himself to be somewhat hardly
treated. Yet they were amongst the few to whom the crazy enterprise
(crazy not from the impracticability of its objects, but from the way
in which these were followed,) brought a solid benefit. The unthinking
throng might rush off to Palestine without making the least preparation
for their journey or their maintenance, in the blind faith that they
would be fed and clothed like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the
field. But for those who could judge more soberly, and for those who were
not willing to forego their luxuries or their pleasures, there was the
need of providing a store of the precious metals by means of which alone
their wishes could be gratified. The duke, who had to maintain a vast and
brilliant retinue, was compelled to mortgage his dominions; and thus for
the sum of ten thousand marks, wrung from the lower orders in the English
state, William Rufus obtained from his brother Robert the government of
his dukedom for five years, and took care that the prize so won should
not slip again from his grasp. Nobles and knights, setting off on the
crusade, all wished to sell land, all wished to buy arms and horses. The
arms and horses therefore became ruinously dear, the lands ridiculously
cheap. It is easy to see that the prudent trader, the cautious merchant,
the landowner whose eye was fixed on the main chance, would stand at an
enormous advantage.
[Sidenote: Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope and the
clergy.]
[Sidenote: Dispensing power of the pope.]
But if these were gainers, the gains of the pope and the sacerdotal army
of which he was the chief were greater still. If the proclamation of the
crusader rendered all private warfare a treason against Christendom,
if it set free even the noble from the power of the overlord, and made
the latter incapable of summoning his vassal to his standard, if the
crusader, as the soldier of the Church, was released from every other
obligation, these tremendous changes had been wrought wholly by the power
of the pope and his hierarchy. In placing the dominions of all crusading
princes under the protection of the Church, the council of Clermont may
have provided for those chiefs a most inadequate defence; but it placed
the pope on a level above all earthly princes, and the power which
withheld the arm of the creditor from falling upon his debtor became a
vast dispensing authority, the possession of which would have delighted
the heart and realized the highest longings of Hildebrand. Urban did
not go to Palestine: but even there he was present in the person of
his legate Adhemar, and thus claimed the guidance of a war sanctified
by his blessing and undertaken in the cause of the Church. The vows of
the crusader were taken, again, by many who had no present intention of
fulfilling them. Sickness, or misfortune, or qualms of conscience might
lead them to assume the fatal sign; but from that moment until they set
off on their journey they put themselves in the power of the pope, who
sometimes used with cruel effect the hold thus obtained over emperors and
kings.
[Sidenote: Tendency of the crusades to break up the feudal system.]
Kings, it is true, reaped no small benefit from the impulse which drove
their vassals to the Holy Sepulchre; and the absorption of the smaller
into larger fiefs and of these again into royal domain, tended to that
extension of the sovereign power which ultimately broke up the feudal
system. But these results were far distant: the immediate harvest was
gathered by the pope.
[Sidenote: Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy.]
Thus far he had appeared by his representatives in general or local
councils; by these he had interfered in the settlement of disputes,
through these he had negotiated with princes. But the preaching of the
crusades furnished a reason or a pretext for sending his legates into
every land. Their primary business was to stir up the hearts of the
faithful or to keep them up to fever heat: but scarcely less important
was the task of collecting money for the support of the crusading armies.
On the clergy, whether secular or regular, and on the monastic orders,
the pope had a claim which they dared not to call into question, and the
subsidies exacted or enjoined for this purpose were paid with a real or a
feigned cheerfulness. To the laity the prayer for voluntary alms assumed
practically the form of a demand. Refusal would imply lukewarmness in the
faith, if not positive heresy; and the imputation could not be incurred
without peril of temporal and even of eternal ruin. Both for the clergy
and the laity the charge for a special and temporary purpose became
a permanent tax, the proceeds of which the pope might expend on any
objects, and in the theory of the time he could spend them on none which
were not good.
[Sidenote: Alienation and pledging or mortgaging of lands.]
But for the impost thus laid upon them the clergy had a compensation
which by the nature of the case could not be enjoyed by the laity. If
a bishop put on the cross he might lay a burden on his estates, but he
could not alienate them, as his right over them ceased with his death;
but in point of fact it was chiefly the prelates and the monastic
houses that became guardians or mortgagees of lands belonging to men who
had betaken themselves to the Holy Land. The Jews, who amassed immense
profits on their loans to needy crusaders, had nothing to do with the
cultivation of the soil, and in most countries could not be owners of it.
But the Church was everywhere ready with its protection and its money;
nor were there wanting enthusiasts who, as they fixed the blood-red
cross on their garment, gave up all their lands and worldly goods to the
spiritual body whose prayers they regarded as a more than sufficient
recompense. Even they who left the Church merely the guardian of their
estates in their absence might die in the East; and if they died without
heirs the guardians became absolute owners. If they came back, toil and
disappointment had often so worn them down that they took refuge in a
cloister and handed over to the fraternity whatever of their property
might still remain to them. The vast gains thus accruing were all over
and beyond the accumulations amassed from the bequests of ordinary or
extraordinary penitents on their death-beds or the gifts of enthusiastic
devotees during their lifetime; and all the land so gained to the Church
was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the sovereign who professed
to rule the country, and thus formed a kingdom within a kingdom, the
spiritual domain threatening constantly to absorb that of the secular
monarch. A collision, followed by violent and iniquitous spoliation,
became inevitable; and when the time was come the great fabric of
ecclesiastical wealth was plundered and demolished.
[Sidenote: The crusades not national enterprises.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1085. Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II.]
In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom thus stood committed, the
several nations or countries of Europe took very equal parts; or,
rather, no nation, as such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact
we have the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent
or average generalship, which is commonly seen in national undertakings.
For the crusade there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a
base of supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of individual
adventurers who either went without making any provisions for their
journey or provided for their own needs and those of their followers
from their own resources. The number of these adventurers were naturally
determined by the political conditions of the country from which they
came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the anti-pope went far
towards chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading army
came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to the
sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer
home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahomedan dominion
which had once threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and carry
the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years before
the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled
by Alfonso, king of Gallicia: the kingdom of Cordova had fallen twenty
years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying hither
and thither through the countries of northern Europe, the Christians of
Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was ringing with
the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By the Germans the
summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with comparative
coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the dust
by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently
eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the
aged duke Guelf of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous
journey: not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the
distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement
to follow their example. In England the English were too much weighed
down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much occupied in
strengthening their position, and the king, William the Red, more ready
to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert than to incur any
risks of his own. The great movement came from the lands extending from
the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike made ready with
impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens of thousands, who could
not wait for the formation of something like a regular army, hurried
away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their inevitable doom.