§ 49. THE CALL TO THE CRUSADES. 225
Council of Clermont, 1095. Its chief popular advocate was Peter the Hermit.
The idea of such a movement was not born at the close of the eleventh century. Gregory VII., appealed to by Michael VII. of Constantinople, had, in two encyclicals, 1074,1 urged the cause upon all Christians, and summoned them to go to the rescue of the Byzantine capital. He reminded them that the pagans had forced their way almost up to the walls of the city and killed many thousands of their brethren like cattle.2 He also repeatedly called atten tion to the project in letters to the counts of Burgundy and Poitiers and to Henry IV. His ulterior hope was the sub jection of the Eastern churches to the dominion of the Apos tolic see. In the year 1074 he was able to announce to Henry IV. that fifty thousand Christian soldiers stood ready to take up arms and follow him to the East, but Gregory was prevented from executing his design by his quarrel with the emperor.
There is some evidence that more than half a century earlier Sergius IV., d. 1012, suggested the idea of an armed expedition against the Mohammedans who had "defiled Jerusalem and destroyed the church of the Holy Sepulchre." Earlier still, Sylvester II., d. 1003, may have urged the same project.3
Peter the Hermit, an otherwise unknown monk of Amiens, France, on returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, spread
speaks of it as an invention of a later time. Certainly no criticism could be more unwarranted unless all the testimonies of the contemporary writers are to be ruthlessly set aside.
1 Beg., I. 49 ; II. 37, Migne, 148, 329, 390.
2 multa millia Christianorum quasi pecudfs occidisse, Reg., I. 49.
3 See Jules Lair, Etudes crit. sur divers textes des Xe et XI e siecles. Bulle dupape Sergius IV., etc., Paris, 1899. Lair, in opposition to Riant, Pflugk- Harttung, etc., gives reasons for accepting as genuine Sergius's letter, found 1857. For Sylvester's letter see Havet, Lettres de Gerbert, Paris, 1889. Rohricht, Gesch. d. ersten Kreuzzuges, 8, pronounces Sylvester's letter a forgery, dating from 1095. Lair tries to prove it was written by Sergius IV.
Q
226 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
its tale of woes and horrors. 1 In Jerusalem he had seen the archbishop, Simeon, who urged him to carry to Europe an appeal for help against the indignities to which the Christians were subjected. While asleep in the church of the Holy Sepulchre and after prayer and fasting, Peter had a dream in which Christ appeared to him and bade him go and quickly spread the appeal that the holy place might be purged.2 He hurried westward, carrying a letter from Simeon, and se cured the ear of Urban at Rome. This is the story as told by William of Tyre and by Albert of Aachen before him. Alleged dreams and visions were potent forces during the First Crusade, and it is altogether likely that many a pilgrim, looking upon the desolation of Jerusalem, heard within him self the same call which Peter in imagination or in a real dream heard the Lord making to him.
Urban listened to Peter's account as he had listened to the accounts of other returning pilgrims. He had seen citizens of Jerusalem itself with his own eyes, and exiles from Antioch, bewailing the plight of those places and begging for alms.3
1 The date of the pilgrimage is not given, but may be accepted as having fallen between 1092-1094. Peter is called " the Hermit " by all the accounts, beginning with the earliest, the Ge.sta Francorum. There is no good ground for doubting that he was from Amiens, as Albert of Aachen distinctly states. William of Tyre says from the "bishopric of Amiens." Hagenmeyer, p. 39, accepts the latter as within the truth.
~2 William of Tyre, Bk. I. 12, Rec., I. 35, gives only a few lines to the visions and the words spoken by the Lord. His account of the meeting with Urban is equally simple and scarcely less brief. Peter found, so he writes, " the Lord Pope Urban in the vicinity of Rome and presented the let ters from the patriarch and Christians of Jerusalem and showed their misery and the abominations which the unclean races wrought in the holy places. Thus prudently and faithfully lie performed the commission intrusted to him."
3 At the Council of Clermont Urban made reference to the " very many reports" which had come of the desolation of Jerusalem, Fulcher, Rec., III. 324. Robert the Monk, I. 1, Rec., III. 727, says relatio gravis scepissime jam ad mires nostras pervenit. According to Baldric he appealed to the many among his hearers who could vouch for the desolate condition of the holy places from their own experience, Rec., IV. 14. See Hagenmeyer, 74-77.