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.
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.
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!
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.