According to these questionable sources, Peter the Hermit was a native of Amiens, where he was born about the middle of the 11th century. He was edu- cated first at Paris, and afterwards in Italy, and then became a soldier. After serving in Flanders without much distinction, he retired from the army, married, and had several children; but on the death of his wife he became religious, and exhausted, without satisfying the cravings of his religious zeal, all the ordinary excite- ments— the studies, the austerities and mortifications, the fasts and prayers — of a devout life. Still yearning for more powerful emotions, he retired into the solitude of the strictest and severest cloister. Not even content with this life of a recluse, he ultimately became a her- mit. But even this failed to satisfy him, and he would not rest contented with himself until he had projected a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For this he set out about 1093. On his visit to the East he saw with a bleeding heart that the Holy Sepulchre was in the hands of the infidel, and beheld the oppressed condition of the Christian residents or pilgrims under the Moslem rule : " his blood turned to fire," and the hermit made his vow that with the help of God these things should cease. In an interview with the patriarch Simeon he de- clared that the natives of the West should take up arms in the Christian cause. On his return to the West he spoke so earnestly on the subject to pope Urban II that the pontiff warmly adopted his views, and, however selfish may have been the promptings of his zeal in the cause — he foreseeing probably that, whatever might be the result to the warriors of the cross, his own power would thenceforth rest on more solid foundations — Urban eagerly bestowed his blessing on the fervent enthusiast, and commissioned him to preach through- out the West an armed confederation of Christians for the deliverance of the Holy City. Mean in figure and diminutive in stature, and gifted only with an el- oquence that was as rude as it was ready, his deficien- cies were more than made up by the earnestness which gave even to the glance of his eye a force more pow- erful than speech. His enthusiasm lent him a power which no external advantages of form could have com- manded. He was filled with a fire which would not stay, and the horrors which were burnt in upon his s<ud were those which would most surely stir the conscience and rouse the wrath of his hearers. His fiery appeals carried everything before them. " He traversed Italy," writes the historian of Latin Christianity, "crossed the Alps, from province to province, from city to city. lie rode on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his head and feet bare: his dress was a long robe, girt with a cord, and a hermit's cloak of the coarsest stuff. He preached in the pulpits, on the roads, in the market- places. His eloquence was that which stirs the heart of the people, for it came from his own— brief, figura- tive, full of bold apostrophes ; it was mingled with his own tears, with his own groans; he beat his breast : the contagion spread throughout his audience. His preach- ing appealed to every passion — to valor and shame, to indignation and pity, to the pride of the warrior, to the compassion of the man, the religion of the Christian, to the love of the brethren, to the hatred of the unbeliever
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aggravated by his insulting tyranny, to reverence for i hi K dei mi r and i he saints, to the desire of expiating sin, to the hope of eternal life." The results arc well known as among those moral marvels of enthusiasm of which history presents occasional examples. All France especially was stirred from its very depths; and just al the time when the enthusiasm of that coun- try had been enkindled to its full fervor, it received a sacredness and an authority from the decree of a council held at Clermont, in which Urban himself was present, and in which his celebrated harangue was but the signal for the outpouring, through all Western Christen lorn, of the same chivalrous emotions by which France had been borne away under the rude eloquence of the Hermit. To understand this success, we musl take into account the poverty of the masses, and the alluring prospect of a residence in Eastern lands, the sceiM- of which were painted in glowing colors by the apostle of the holy war. Thousands of outcasts had always been ready to follow the princes in their maraud- ing expeditions or political wars, and how much more in a war which enlisted the highest sympathies of their nature in its behalf, which received the sanction of the ministers of religion, and was regarded as the will of God! For the details of the expedition, we must refer to the article Cri sadi 9, our sole present concern being with the persona] history of Peter. Of the enormous but undisciplined army which assembled from all parts of Europe, one portion was committed to his conduct; the other being under the command ofa far more skilful leader. Walter (q. v.) the Penniless. Peter, moimted upon an ass, with his coarse woollen mantle and his rude sandals, placed himself at the head of his followers. On the march through Hungary they became involved in hostilities with the Hungarians, and suffered a severe defeat at Semlin, whence they proceeded with much dif- ficulty to Constantinople. There the emperor Alexius, filled with dismay al the want of discipline which they exhibited, was but too happy to give them supplies for their onward march; and near Nice they encountered the army of the sultan Soliman, from whom they suf- fered a terrible defeat. Peter accompanied the subse- quent expedition under Godfrey; but worn out by the delays and difficulties of the siege of Antioch, he was about to withdraw from the expedition, and was only retained in it by the influence of the other leaders, who foresaw the worst results from his departure. Accord- ingly he had a share, although not marked by any sig- nal distinction, in the siege and capture of the Holy ( ity in 1099, and the closing incident of his history a- a cru- sader was an .address to the victorious army delivered on the Mount of Olives. He returned to Europe, and founded a monastery at liny, in the diocese of Liege, where lie died, July 7. 1 1 15. The movement which had been inaugurated continued to agitate Europe for nearly two centuries, and its general effect upon the march of civilization may well he pronounced incalculable. See Milmau, Hist. ofLat. Christianity, iv. •-'.'> sq, ; I !ox, Thi Crusades (N. V. 1874, is,u,,>. p.26 sq.; Gibbon, Declim and Fallofth Ionium Empire, eh. xx.xiii. Peter the Lombard. See Lombard, Peter, Peter | Pierri i oi Maillezais, a French chronicler of the Mtli century, was, according to I>om Rivet, a man of talent, of merit, and learning. He- embraced the mo- nastic rule in the early part of the llth century, and flourished under Goderanne, abbe of Maillezais, in Baa- I'oiiou. We have an interesting article of his upon the