Long before this final sentence, Urban's hearers had been lifted to indescribable enthusiasm. A mighty shout as from a single throat answered him: "God wills it. God wills it. We will join the army of God!" Urban commands the bishops to rouse their dioceses by preaching the instant duty of war for the Holy Sepulcher. The enthusiasm spread everywhere like an infection under ripe conditions.
France took the lead; Germany with slower step; the Italians slowest of all, except the Normans who dwelt among them. England contributed least of all, the Normans being still busy in holding what they had won, and Anglo-Saxons too discouraged over their own defeats. Spain had her own anti-Mohammedan battle to fight. Some noblemen, unable to prevent their vassals from going, joined them and took command that they might not wholly lose their authority over them. Many had fought notwithstanding papal prohibition. So many had sins to expiate that they were happy that they could find forgiveness while indulging their chief passion, and could wash away their sins by shedding blood.
Here again contemporary chronicles prove that humanity is seldom governed by other than mixed motives. Bishops who were also barons bore the skill in warfare which they had gained in defending their bishoprics in the Crusades. Some of the priests, whose eyes were upon the rich bishoprics of the East, found hope enlarged by arming for the war. "Knights of God and Beauty" found a new field in the march to Jerusalem.
The distresses due to scanty harvests in 1094-95 contributed in some measure to the easy gath
ering of the hosts of the first crusade. Famine seemed so close at hand that those who left their homes had little to lose and much to gain. Nor were the masses unwilling to fly from the oppressions and exactions of rulers who claimed the privilege to do wrong by Divine Right.
Normans and Saracens
Marvels Begin
Apulia and Sicily had been wrested from the Saracens by a few hundred Normans. This bred confidence in the final result of the war. One of the most curious of the fanaticisms, which developed from the larger fanaticism, was that of the sign of the cross in the flesh. Women and children imprinted crosses on their limbs. A monk who made a large cross on his forehead kept it from healing and colored the gash with prepared juices. He declared it was a miraculous stigma done by an angel, and his lie served him well in abundant help. It is further related that a company of Crusaders being shipwrecked near Brundusium all the bodies had a cross imprinted on their flesh just under where the cross had been sewed on their clothes. Perhaps they had done what the monk did; perhaps poor dyes soaked through. A miracle was in those days the easiest explanation of all marvels.
True Religion in the Movement
Yet all this was no more than the earth which clings for awhile to all plants which spring from