(b)
In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, I, Henry, by the grace of God august Emperor of the Romans, for the love of God and of the holy Roman Church and of our lord Pope Calixtus, and for the saving of my soul, do give over to God, Investiture with ring and staff and to the holy apostles of God, Peter and Paul, and the holy Catholic Church, all investiture through ring and staff; and do concede that in all the churches that are in my kingdom or empire there shall be canonical election and free consecration.
All the property and regalia of St. Peter which, from the beginning of this conflict until the present time, whether in the days of my father or in my own, have been confiscated, and Restoration of confiscated property which I now hold, I restore to the holy Roman Church. And as for those things which I do not now hold, I will faithfully aid in their restoration. The property also of all other churches and princes and of every one, whether lay or ecclesiastical, which has been lost in the struggle, I will restore as far as I hold it, according to the counsel of the princes, or according to considerations of justice. I will also faithfully aid in the restoration of those things which I do not hold.
And I grant a true peace to our lord Pope Calixtus, and to the holy Roman Church, and to all those who are, or have been, on its side. In matters where the holy Roman Church shall seek assistance, I will faithfully render it, and when it shall make complaint to me I will see that justice is done.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CRUSADES
51. Speech of Pope Urban II. at the Council of Clermont (1095)
Within a short time after the death of Mohammed (632) the whole country of Syria, including Palestine, was overrun by the Arabs, and the Holy City of Jerusalem passed out of Christian hands into the control of the infidels. The Arabs, however, shared the veneration of the Christians for the places associated with the life of Christ and did not greatly interfere with the pilgrims who flocked thither from all parts of the Christian world. In the tenth century the strong emperors of the Macedonian dynasty at Constantinople succeeded in winning back all of Syria except the extreme south, and the prospect seemed fair for the permanent possession by a Christian power of all those portions of the Holy Land which were regarded as having associations peculiarly sacred. This prospect might have been realized but for the invasions and conquests of the Seljuk Turks in the latter part of the eleventh century. These Turks came from central Asia and are to be carefully distinguished from the Ottoman Turks of more modern times. They had recently been converted to Mohammedanism and were now the fiercest and most formidable champions of that faith in its conflict with the Christian East. In 1071 Emperor Romanus Diogenes was defeated at Manzikert, in Armenia, and taken prisoner by the sultan Alp Arslan, and as a result not only Asia Minor, but also Syria, was forever lost to the Empire. The Holy City of Jerusalem was definitely occupied in 1076. The invaders established a stronghold at Nicæa, less than a hundred miles across the Sea of Marmora from Constantinople, and even threatened the capital itself, although they did not finally succeed in taking it until 1453.
No sooner were the Turks in possession of Jerusalem and the approaches thither, than pilgrims returning to western Europe began to tell tales, not infrequently as true as they were terrifying, regarding insults and tortures suffered at the hand of the pitiless conquerors. The Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) put forth every effort to expel the intruders from Asia Minor, hoping to be able to regain the territories, including Syria, which they had stripped from the Empire; but his strength proved unequal to the task. Accordingly, in 1095, he sent an appeal to Pope Urban II. to enlist the Christian world in a united effort to save both the Empire and the Eastern Church. It used to be thought that Pope Sylvester II., about the year 1000, had suggested a crusade against the Mohammedans of the East, but it now appears that the first pope to advance such an idea was Gregory VII. (1073-1085), who in response to an appeal of Alexius's predecessor in 1074, had actually assembled an army of 50,000 men for the aid of the Emperor and had been prevented from carrying out the project only by the severity of the investiture controversy with Henry IV. of Germany. At any rate, it was not a difficult task for the ambassadors of Alexius to convince Pope Urban that he ought to execute the plan of Gregory. The plea for aid was made at the Council of Piacenza in March, 1095, and during the next few months Urban thought out the best method of procedure.
At the Council of Clermont, held in November, 1095, the crusade was formally proclaimed through the famous speech which the Pope himself delivered after the regular business of the assembly had been transacted. Urban was a Frenchman and he knew how to appeal to the emotions and sympathies of his hearers. For the purpose of stirring up interest in the enterprise he dropped the Latin in which the work of the Council had been transacted and broke forth in his native tongue, much to the delight of his countrymen. There are four early versions of the speech, differing widely in contents, and none, of course, reproducing the exact words used by the speaker. The version given by Robert the Monk, a resident of Rheims, in the opening chapter of his history of the first crusade seems in most respects superior to the others. It was written nearly a quarter of a century after the Council of Clermont, but the writer in all probability had at least heard the speech which he was trying to reproduce; in any event we may take his version of it as a very satisfactory representation of the aspirations and spirit which impelled the first crusaders to their great enterprise. It has been well said that "many orations have been delivered with as much eloquence, and in as fiery words as the Pope used, but no other oration has ever been able to boast of as wonderful results."