War for the Cross
The Northmen had not stopped, in their sea-borne incursions, at England and the northern coasts of France. They had established themselves in parts of Spain, they had come through the Straits of Gibraltar, they had ousted, or had greatly helped in ousting, the Saracens who had taken possession of Sicily and of the south of Italy. They had set themselves up as rulers of that Italian south, with Naples as their capital. Thus enterprising, and ever further pushing, were these people from the north.
So these, too, took a part, and a leading part, in the great war for the Cross. Crusade is from the French croissade, which is from croix, a cross. You may have seen figures on tombs in churches, of knights in armour with one leg crossed over the other. This distinction of the crossed legs is only given to the figures of knights who had taken part in one or other of the Crusades.
A CRUSADER.
It was in the year following the disastrous enterprise of Peter the Hermit, that these Crusaders, starting from different points in Europe, came together at Constantinople. Trouble arose then, because the Emperor of the East wished the leaders to do homage to him. That meant that any victory they might win in the Holy Land would be a victory gained for him. Homage is a word derived from homo, a man, and the meaning of "doing homage" was that you confessed yourself the homo, or man, of him to whom you did it.
Thus the Emperor desired these leading Crusaders to be his "men," in the sense that any lands and cities that they conquered should be his. That was not quite the idea which they had in their own minds, when they came to his assistance. The Emperor's view was that all Asia Minor and Palestine and other lands such as Egypt, which the Saracens had taken, really belonged to his Empire and should be given back to the Empire if the Crusaders could gain them.