Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

But the political struggles which Gregory VII. had to sustain against the princes of the West, and the refusal of the King of Germany, Henry IV., to grant him the assistance he had demanded, prevented him from undertaking the sacred expedition which was to have crowned his apostolic work. Victor III., his successor, inspired by his example, continued to preach the Holy War against the infidels. The latter not only manifested throughout the entire East their implacable hatred to the Christian race, but, having founded large settlements on the shores of Africa, they infested the seas, endangered the security of all maritime trading, ceaselessly pillaged the coasts of Italy, ravaged the greater part of Spain, and seemed to be within very little of making Europe a tributary of Islam. But if Victor III. was unable to give birth to a real crusade, he at least succeeded in persuading the Italians to take up arms. An army of Pisans and Genoese landed in Africa (1087), gave battle to the Saracens, killed more than a hundred thousand of them, took and sacked two of their towns, and returned victorious with an immense booty, which they devoted to the embellishment of the churches of Genoa and of Pisa. But this daring enterprise, in spite of its important results, is not mentioned by any of the historians of the Crusades, although in every respect it had the characteristics of a holy war. This appears to prove that its guiding principle was by no means entirely a religious one, but was one bound up with many more material interests, particularly with that of Italian commerce, which had suffered so much from African piracy that it naturally wished at any price to punish the accursed race from which it sprung.

The successor of Victor III. was Urban II., a pontiff of French extraction, who, following up the policy of his predecessors, endeavoured with all his influence to stir up the Christians against the infidels. But the Almighty often confides the execution of his most important designs to the hands of the humblest, and the honour of initiating the Crusades was not reserved for the occupant of the chair of St. Peter. It was destined to fall to the lot of a humble pilgrim, who, as the learned historian of these events tells us, was inspired only by his zeal, and whose only influence was the force of his character and his genius. This humble pilgrim was Peter of Acheris, better known as Peter the Hermit. Descended from a noble family of Picardy, but ungainly in body and short of stature, he had vainly sought happiness and peace in the most opposite conditions of society. At first he embraced the profession of arms, then he gave himself up to literature, then he married, and being soon left a widower, he entered into holy orders. Everywhere, however, he met with nothing but bitterness and deception. Having become at last, to use the expression of William of Tyre, “hermit both in deed and in name,” he sought in solitude, in fasting, and in prayer to forget the empty vanities of the world, and it was no doubt with a last hope of giving some practical effect to his fervent but barren devotion that he undertook his pious pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

His habits of meditation and prayer had infused a burning ardour and an enlightenment into his soul. When he found himself on the very soil that had been pressed by the Saviour’s feet, when he witnessed the hardships and the humiliations inflicted on the worshippers of Christ by the infidels, when, above all, he heard the lamentations of the venerable Simeon, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and had wept with him over the terrible trials of the Eastern Church, indignation, grief, piety, and faith awoke in his heart the feeling that he must at all hazards devote his life to a special vocation. He resolved to devote himself to the protection of his brethren in Christ, and to the deliverance of the holy places.

One day, as he was secretly praying in front of the Holy Sepulchre, he heard a voice saying, “Peter, arise! go forth and announce the tribulation of my people; it is time that my servants be succoured and my holy places delivered.” Under the influence of this heavenly command, the poor pilgrim, convinced that he was henceforward chosen by the divine will, determined to allow himself no rest till the holy mission, with which Christ himself had entrusted him, had been fully and faithfully accomplished. He left Palestine with letters from the patriarch Simeon to the Pope; he crossed the sea, hurried to Rome, and threw himself at the feet of Urban II., who, listening to the pathetic and eloquent language of the poor pilgrim, fancied that he was addressed by some inspired prophet, and entrusted him with the mission of summoning the nations to the holy war (Fig. 100).

Peter the Hermit, says the historian whose account we are following, left Italy, crossed the Alps, and wandered over France and a great part of Europe, infusing into all the burning zeal with which he was filled. He journeyed on a mule, a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girdled with a thick cord, and clad in a long frock and mantle of the commonest, coarsest stuff. His peculiar garments excited the curiosity of the people, while the austerity of his life, his charity, and the morality he inculcated, made them reverence him as a saint. He wandered in this guise from town to town, from province to province, stirring up the courage of some and the piety of others; sometimes he addressed them from church pulpits, sometimes in the highways and public places. His eloquence was keen and vigorous, full of vehement appeals that carried away the multitudes who listened to him. He recalled to their memories the profanation of the holy places, and the Christian blood that had poured in rivers down the streets of Jerusalem; he called on Heaven, the saints, and the angels, whose testimony he invoked as to the truth of his statements; he appealed to them by the holy hill of Sion, by the heights of Calvary, and by the mount of Olives, whose slopes he declared were ringing with groans and lamentations. When words failed him to further depict the miseries of the faithful in the far East, he showed them the crucifix which he always carried about him, and, beating his breast, burst into passionate tears.

Fig. 100.—Peter the Hermit delivering the Message of Simeon, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Urban II.—From a Coloured Drawing by Germain Picavet in the “Histoire des Croisades,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).

The populace everywhere crowded around him. The preacher of the holy war was received as the special envoy of the Almighty. To be allowed to touch his clothes was considered an inestimable privilege, the hair even of the mule he bestrode was prized and preserved as a relic. The tones of his voice hushed domestic strife, forced the rich to succour the needy, and the profligate to slink ashamed away. His austerities and his miracles, his discourses and his exhortations, were repeated to those who had not been fortunate enough to witness the former or to hear the latter. As his hearers realised the fact that Jerusalem, Holy Jerusalem, was in the power of the infidel, the emotions of pity and the desire for vengeance were kindled within them. Every voice was lifted up to beseech God to restore to his keeping his once-beloved city. Some proffered their wealth, others their prayers, and all their life, to deliver the holy places.

Everything in Europe was ready for the great expedition; every heart beat high and every voice re-echoed the solemn hope so ardently and so persistently instilled by Peter the Hermit. Nothing now was wanted but to crown the work so far accomplished, and some watchword that would strike home to every heart, and raise, amidst the pious and countless hosts of the Crusaders, some one central banner around which they could all unite and rally. To this end Urban convoked a council on the very spot in that land of the Franks in which he had been born, a land which had always been foremost to set a noble example to surrounding nations.

The council assembled in Clermont, a town in Auvergne, scarcely large enough to contain the crowd of illustrious personages that soon flocked thither, “in such numbers,” says the French chronicler, William Aubert, “that, towards the middle of November, in the year 1096, the neighbouring towns and villages were so full of strangers that many were obliged to pitch their tents in the midst of the fields and meadows, although the season was extremely cold.”