§ 48. CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 221
them, that Christ is not there, that He is risen, and ascended into heaven, where He sits at the head of a spiritual king dom. They conquered Jerusalem, 1099, and lost it, 1187; they reconquered, 1229, and lost again, 1244, the city in which Christ was crucified. False religions are not to be converted by violence, they can only be converted by the slow but sure process of moral persuasion. Hatred kindles hatred, and those who take the sword shall perish by the sword. St. Bernard learned from the failure of the Second Crusade that the struggle is a better one which is waged against the sin ful lusts of the heart than was the struggle to conquer Jerusalem.
The immediate causes of the Crusades were the ill treat ment of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem and the appeal of the Greek emperor, who was hard pressed by the Turks. Nor may we forget the feeling of revenge for the Mohammedans begotten in the resistance offered to their invasions of Italy and Gaul.1 In 841 they sacked St. Peter's, and in 846 threatened Rome for the second time, and a third time under John VIII. The Normans wrested a part of Sicily from the Saracens at the battle of Cerame, 1063, took Palermo, 1072, Syracuse, 1085, and the rest of Sicily ten years later. A burning desire took hold of the Christian world to be in possession of —
"those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross."
— SHAKESPEARE.
From an early day Jerusalem was the goal of Christian pilgrimage. The mother of Constantine, Helena, according to the legend, found the cross and certainly built the church over the supposed site of the tomb in which the Lord lay. Jerome spent the last period of his life in Bethlehem, trans-
1 Rohricht, Gesch. d. ersten Kreuzzuges, p. 6, says that in these struggles " the crusading enthusiasm was born."
222 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
latiug the Scriptures and preparing for eternity. The effect of such examples was equal to the station and fame of the pious empress and the Christian scholar. In vain did such Fathers as Gregory of Nyssa,1 Augustine, and even Jerome himself, emphasize the nearness of God to believers wherever they may be and the failure of those whose hearts are not imbued with His spirit to find Him even at Jerusalem.
The movement steadily grew. The Holy Land became to the imagination a land of wonders, filled with the divine presence of Christ. To have visited it, to have seen Jerusa lem, to have bathed in the Jordan, was for a man to have about him a halo of sanctity. The accounts of returning pilgrims were listened to in convent and on the street with open-mouthed curiosity. To surmount the dangers of such a journey in a pious frame of mind was a means of expiation for sins.2 Special laws were enacted in the pilgrim's behalf. Hospitals and other beneficent institutions were erected for their comfort along the main route and in Jerusalem.
Other circumstances gave additional impulse to the move ment, such as the hope of securing relics of which Palestine and Constantinople were the chief storehouses ; and the op portunity of starting a profitable trade in silk, paper, spices, and other products of the East.
These pilgrimages were not seriously interrupted by the Mohammedans after their conquest of Jerusalem by Omar in
1 See the beautiful testimony of Gregory, who advised a Cappadocian abbot against going with his monks to Jerusalem, Schaff, Cli. Hist. III. 906.
2 Fulke the Black, count of Anjou (987-1040), made three journeys to Jerusalem in penance for sacrilege and other crimes. He had burned his young wife at the stake dressed in her gayest attire, and caused his son to crouch at his feet harnessed as an ass. At Jerusalem he showed his devo tion by going about with a halter about his neck. He bit off a piece of the Lord's tombstone with his teeth and carried back to Europe objects most sacred and priceless, such as the fingers of Apostles and the lamp in which the holy fire was lit. Odolric, bishop of Orleans, gave a pound of gold for the lamp and hung it up in the church at Orleans, where its virtue cured mul titudes of sick people.