CHAPTER XXIV.
BERNARD—CONRAD III.—LOUIS VII.—SUGER—SIEGE OF DAMASCUS.
Pope Honorius delegated Bernard to preach throughout France and Germany the renewal of the holy war. Drawn as much by the fame of the monk as by the mandates of the king and the Pope, a vast assembly of prelates and nobles gathered at Vezelay in Burgundy. A large platform was erected on a hill outside the city. King and monk stood together, representing the combined will of earth and heaven. The enthusiasm of the assembly of Clermont in 1095, when Peter the Hermit and Urban II. launched the first crusade, was matched by the holy fervor inspired by Bernard as he cried, “O ye who listen to me! hasten to appease the anger of heaven, but no longer implore its goodness by vain complaints. Clothe yourselves in sackcloth, but also cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers. The din of arms, the danger, the labors, the fatigues of war, are the penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance.” As in the olden scene, the cry “Deus vult! Deus vult!” rolled over the fields, and was echoed by the voice of the orator: “Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood.”
The king set the example by prostrating himself at the feet of the monk and receiving from his hands the badge of the cross. “The cross! the cross!” was the response of thousands who crowded about the platform. Queen Eleanor imitated her husband, and was followed by such a host of nobles, bishops, and knights that Bernard tore his garments into strips to supply the enthusiasts with the insignia of their new devotion. Similar scenes were enacted throughout France wherever the saint appeared. Eye-witnesses do not hesitate to tell of miracles wrought by his hands, emblazoning his mission with the seals of heaven.
The enlistments were so many that Bernard wrote to the Pope, “The villages and castles are deserted, and there are none left but widows and orphans, whose husbands and parents are still living.”
The orator visited Germany. A diet of the empire was at the time of his arrival convened at Spires. The new emperor, Conrad III., at first refused to heed the more private counsel of Bernard to join the crusade, urging in return the need of the imperial hand upon the helm of state. One day Bernard was saying mass, when suddenly he stopped and pictured Jesus Christ, armed with the cross and accompanied by angels, reproaching the emperor for his indifference. Conrad was as impotent to resist this eloquence and assumption of divine authority as his predecessor had been. He burst into tears and exclaimed, “I, too, swear to go wherever Christ shall call me.” With many of his lords and knights, he received the cross from Bernard’s hand.
From the Rhine to the Danube the enthusiasm spread like an epidemic. No class had immunity from it. Even thieves and cutthroats were so far converted as to swear to rob and murder only Infidels. Bernard’s gift of persuasion was unsurpassed since the days of Pentecost, for men and races that could not understand a word he said were as readily persuaded as those who spoke the Frankish tongue.
Roger of Sicily offered to convey the new armies to Palestine in his fleets, urging the hereditary treachery of the Greeks; for, though Alexius had “gone to his own place” below, his grandson Manuel occupied his place at Constantinople. The leaders, however, preferred the perils of the land route to the uncertainties of the deep.
The government of France during the absence of Louis VII. was committed to the hands of Suger, Abbot of St. Denis. A wiser choice could not have been made. He had been the adviser of Louis the Fat, and to his astuteness rather than to that of the king were due the consolidation and development of French autonomy, which made that reign notable. An evidence of Suger’s foresight, as well as of his independence and courage, is the fact that he, almost alone of men, opposed the crusading scheme and predicted its fatality. Only at the command of the Pope did Suger assume the guardianship of the kingdom.
Not distrustful of the king, but credulous of the heavenly mission of Bernard, the multitude, including the most noted warriors, called for the monk to become their military leader. Only the intervention of the Holy Father, who declared that it was sufficient for the saint to be the trumpet of Heaven without wielding the sword, allayed the universal demand. Thus at Whitsuntide, 1167, a hundred thousand Frenchmen set out for their rendezvous at Metz. Their monarch bore at their head the sacred banner of St. Denis, an oriflamme under which, at even that early day, the kings of France believed themselves invincible.
But though royally commanded, the army was somewhat a motley array. Troubadours joined the host to relieve the tedium of the camp with their songs of expected triumph. Ladies of the court and soldiers’ wives graced and encumbered the enterprise. One troop of female combatants was commanded by an Amazon, whose gilded boots made her known as “the lady with the legs of gold.” Old men and children were carried along with the baggage. By the side of the saint trudged the libertine and the criminal, whose remorse had been kindled by the preaching of Bernard, and whose search for the remission of sins at Jerusalem was to poorly compensate the dissolute outbursts of their unchanged natures along the way.