It is best to regard Peter’s career as having been inspired by the crusading project already determined upon by others. His eloquence was like the first rush of steam from a newly opened volcano; it could not have generated the mighty force that upheaved Europe and “hurled it against Asia.”
But there can be no doubt of the personality of Peter, and of his tremendous influence in exciting the populace to engage in the crusades after they were decreed in the councils of Rome. His labors in the great cause seem to have been limited to certain districts of France, for it is scarcely credible that a man of strange language could have thrown the spell of his rhapsodies over people living beyond the Rhine. Peter the Hermit was of small stature, with long beard prematurely whitened by the rigors of his life,—for he was not yet fifty years of age,—with deep and penetrating eyes, fired by the enthusiasm that filled his soul. He travelled from place to place with uncovered head and bare feet, mounted upon a mule. The churches proving too small, the people thronged about him in the market-places and fields, where they drank from his lips wrath for the Moslem, pity for the Christian martyrs, whose blood he painted as flowing in the streets of Jerusalem, and hope of eternal reward if they should take the cross and sword. In the frenzy of speaking he wept, wounded his own flesh with the violence of his gesticulation, and exhausted his physical strength in the rhapsody of speech, as he called upon the saints in heaven and the inanimate rock of Calvary to cry out against the apathy of the Christian world. The people were readily persuaded, and attributed the response of their own passion, already inflamed by alarming events, to the preacher’s miraculous gifts. They pressed about him that they might receive some heavenly grace from touching his person, and preserved as sacred relics the hairs they pulled from the tail of his mule.
Very opportunely there arrived at Rome in the year 1095 an embassy from Alexius, the Greek emperor at Constantinople, begging assistance against the Turks, who were threatening the shores of the Bosporus. In his fright, or in the disingenuous diplomacy for which the Greeks were noted, Alexius offered to reward the Western warriors with the treasure of his capital, and even suggested that the empire they saved from the Mussulman might one day become the prize of the Latin. Urban summoned a synod at Piacenza, where the Greek messengers addressed in the open fields the crowd of ecclesiastics and laymen, which was so vast that neither the plazas nor churches of the city could contain them.
A second council, more imposing on account of the dignitaries present, was held at Clermont in November of the same year. In his speech Urban wrought the assembly to a fury of enthusiasm as he cried, “Exterminate this vile race [Turks and Arabs] from the land ruled by our brethren.... It is Christ who commands.... If any lose your lives on the journey by land or sea or in fighting against the heathen, their sins shall be remitted in that hour. This I grant through the power of God vested in me.... Let those who have hitherto been robbers now become soldiers. Let those who have formerly been mercenaries at low wages now gain eternal rewards. Let those who have been exhausting themselves to the detriment both of body and soul now strive for a twofold reward, on earth and in heaven.” This impassioned appeal was answered by the cry of bishop and lord and knight, and was reëchoed by the assembled populace, “Deus vult! Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”) “Deus vult! let that be your watch-cry,” responded the pontiff.
All ranks and conditions of men thronged to receive the cross, if possible from the hands of the Holy Father himself. This was a strip of red cloth given with the assuring words, “Wear it upon your shoulders and your breasts; it will be either the surety of victory or the palm of martyrdom.” All priests throughout Europe were authorized to give the sacred symbol, with the full papal benediction, to the people in their parishes. Many, in their infatuation, burned the cross-mark into their quivering flesh; others, grown insane through zealotry, imagined the stigmata—as these signs were called—to have been produced by miraculous process. An impostor was readily credited with having received the mark on his forehead by the hand of an angel, and confessed the fraud, but not until after he had been invested with the archbishopric of Cæsarea in Palestine.
Preachers of the holy war went everywhere. Over western Europe the enthusiasm passed like a forest fire. During the winter of 1095 there seemed to be but one occupation of men in palace, monastery, and cottage throughout northern France and along the Lower Rhine—that of preparing arms and enrolling bands for the mighty exodus, which should take place as soon as the roads became passable in the spring. The rich sold or mortgaged their estates to raise the means of fitting out themselves and their retainers. Knights and esquires drilled incessantly for feats of arms against a foe whom they honored for his rumored prowess in fight as much as they detested him for impiety. Recluses left their religious retreats, their minds overwrought with anticipations of miracles to be performed as in old Bible days, when waters divided and city walls fell down at the approach of God’s people. Robbers emerged from their hiding-places or were delivered from jails, that they might expiate the crimes already committed against their fellow-Christians by atrocities to be practised upon the unbeliever. Doubtless many were influenced by a genuine religious emotion, as the proclamation of the crusade was accompanied by the preaching of the “terrors of the Lord” against the prevalent sins of the people. To the persuasion of Peter the Hermit many of the most notorious sinners attributed their reformation. Young men who were inclined to the monastic habit to escape the temptations of the world were easily led to substitute the helmet for the cowl, as offering a life more congenial to youthful enterprise and at the same time more acceptable to God. Multitudes of the ignorant were animated by the new and popular enthusiasm without understanding its motive, and were drawn as by a freshet into the common channel. That no one might be deterred by domestic anxieties from engaging in the crusades, the church guaranteed the protection of the families and property of absentees; and that no one might be tempted, in the subsidence of the first fervor, to reconsider his purpose, excommunication was threatened on those who did not fulfil their vows.
Thus western Europe in the spring of 1096 was not unlike a beehive, on the outside of which the insects are gathered preparatory to swarming. Guibert, a contemporary, says: “Although the French alone had heard the preaching of the crusade, what Christian people did not supply soldiers as well?... You might have seen the Scotch [who represented to the continental mind the ends of the earth], covered with shaggy cloaks, hasten from the heart of their marshes.... I take God to witness that there landed in our ports barbarians from nations I wist not of; no one understood their tongues, but placing their fingers in the form of a cross, they made sign that they desired to proceed to the defence of the Christian faith.”
The flight of these swarms of humanity eastward had three consecutive features which should be noted. First, it was a crusade of the crowd, which began in March, 1096; secondly came the more orderly military movement, under the great feudal chieftains, which began in the subsequent autumn; and thirdly, the enterprise became consolidated on national lines, under the kings, who gradually acquired power and took command of their various peoples. This last feature, however, did not appear until the second crusade, nearly half a century later.