The enthusiasm of the First Crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration: that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the Council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending or recent calamity; the nations were moved by the authority of their pontiffs and the example of their kings; their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy orators; and among these, Bernard, the monk or the saint, may claim the most honourable place.
ST. BERNARD
[1115-1147 A.D.]
About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of twenty-three he buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervour of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux in Champagne; and was content till the hour of his death with the humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honours of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and disciples; and in the race of superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard stood high above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character of a saint. In a secular life he would have shared the seventh part of a private inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world, by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe, and the founder of 160 convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures; France, England, and Milan consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the church; the debt was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent II; and his successor, Eugenius III, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard.
It was in the proclamation of the Second Crusade that he shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who called the nations to the defence of the Holy Sepulchre. At the parliament of Vézelay he spoke before the king; and Louis VII, with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand. The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of the emperor Conrad; a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his progress from Constance to Cologne was the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes that only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows. The blind fanatics were desirous of electing him for their general; but the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes; and while he assured the crusaders of the divine favour, he prudently declined a military command in which failure and victory would have been almost equally disgraceful to his character.[b]
In the consternation throughout Palestine which the fall of Edessa occasioned, all classes of people beckoned their compatriots in the West. The news of the loss of the eastern frontier of the Latin kingdom reached France at a time peculiarly favourable for foreign war. After having reduced his vassal the count of Champagne to obedience, Louis VII the French king exceeded the usual cruelty of conquerors, and instead of sheathing his sword, when the inhabitants of Vetri submitted, he set fire to a church, to which more than thirteen hundred of them had fled for refuge. His sacrilegious barbarity excited the indignation of the clergy and laity. A fit of sickness calmed his passions; his conscience accused and condemned him, and he resolved to expiate his sins by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Louis VII was the first sovereign prince who engaged himself to fight under the banner of the cross. The news of the calamities in Palestine quickened his holy resolution, and like other men he was impetuously moved by the eloquence of St. Bernard, the great oracle of the age.
The wish of Louis for a crusade was applauded by Pope Eugenius III. His intention was pronounced to be holy; and Bernard was ordered to travel through France and Germany, and preach a plenary indulgence to those who followed the royal example. Eugenius wrote to the faithful sons of the church, urging them to cross the seas to Palestine. The first crusaders had provoked the wrath of heaven by their dissoluteness and folly; but the new soldiers of Christ ought to travel simple in dress, and disdaining the luxury of falcons and dogs of the chase. As Peter had represented the scandal of suffering the sacred places to remain in the hands of the infidels, the eloquent Bernard thundered from the pulpit the disgrace of allowing a land which had been recovered from pollution again to sink into it. He was admitted to the thrones of princes, as well as to the pulpits of their churches; to public assemblies and to private meetings. In a parliament held at Vézelay, in the season of Easter, 1146, Louis was confirmed in his pious resolve; and having on his knees received the holy symbol, he joined with Bernard in moving the barons and knights to save the sanctuary of David from the hands of the Philistines. No house could contain the multitude; they assembled in the fields and Bernard addressed them from a lofty pulpit. As at the Council of Clermont, so on this occasion shouts of “Deus id vult” rent the skies; the crosses which the man of God had brought with him to the meeting fell far short of the number of enthusiasts; and he therefore tore his simple monkish garment into small pieces, and affixed them to the shoulders of his kneeling converts. The successful incendiary then crossed the Rhine; and every city and village from Constance to Carinthia echoed the call to war.
[1147-1148 A.D.]
But the emperor Conrad III made a long and firm denial. As politics prevented the exercise of religious fervour, the preacher endeavoured to impress him with the belief that were he in arms for the kingdom of God, heaven would protect his kingdom in Europe. Still the emperor wanted faith; but when the holy orator, in a moment of peculiar energy, drew an animated picture of the proceedings of the day of judgment, of the punishments which would be inflicted on the idle, and the rewards which would be showered upon the Christians militant, then it was that conviction flashed across the mind of the royal auditor; and the profession was made that the lord of the Germans knew and would perform his duty to the church. Encouraged by this example, the barons and people flew to arms.[50]
Mainz was the rendezvous of the French crusaders, and Ratisbon of those from Germany. The French levies were of priests, of people, and of soldiers; and of the last class the number of men armed with the helmet and coat of mail was seventy thousand. The civil wars of England had been closed by the weakness of all parties; but some of the nobility, restless when not engaged in deeds of blood, joined themselves to the force of Louis. Conrad had an army quite as large and formidable, with a due proportion of light-armed men, and simple pilgrims. The enthusiasm of the crusade realised the dreams of romancers, and heroines as well as heroes had prepared themselves to make war upon the paynim brethren. A considerable troop of women rode among the Germans; they were arrayed with the spear and shield, but (like Virgil’s Camilla) some love of usual delights had mingled itself with the desire of great exploits, for they were remarkable by the splendour of their dress, and the bold leader was called “the golden-footed dame.”[51] The emperor marched through Hungary and solicited the friendship of the Grecian court.