When the great Empire of the Abassides crumbled and fell, the Fatimite Caliphs of Cairo were usually tolerant of infidels, who increased their wealth and power. Commercial relations with the Christian West continued; and pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land. In the tenth century, that darkest of the Dark Ages, John of Parma visited Palestine no fewer than seven times; and even far-off Iceland sent its pilgrims.
But in the eleventh century (A.D. 1074) the Seljuk Turk swept down from the Oxus, and, aided by Emirs in revolt, took Jerusalem. The main body of the Turkish army retained the barbarous habits of a nomadic people; they lusted for battle; they were drunk with blood. Palestine became the scene of exaction, of debauchery, and of every kind of licence and excess. Churches were ransacked for spoil; the rich pilgrim was subject to threat and compelled to disgorge much of his wealth before he was allowed to see Jerusalem; the poor pilgrim, already worn down by privation and suffering in some diminutive crazy craft, met, on landing, with insult and outrage. Neither Mohammedan Cairo nor Christian Constantinople were strong enough to deal with the Turk: he exhibited Moslem fanaticism at its worst. The Scimitar had indeed displaced the Cross.
CHAPTER II. “DIEU LE VEULT.”
One of the eye-witnesses of the wretchedness of Christians in Palestine was a certain Peter, a man from Picardy; high-strung; one to whom a very varied experience brought no satisfaction. His restless disposition had driven him into the profession of arms; he had sought for peace in study; he had tried the companionship of a wife, who had borne him the boon of children; his spirit found no tranquility among cloistered monks; he fled to the greater seclusion of a hermitage. There visions left his soul still unsatisfied, and he went to the Holy Land. The sufferings of Christians at the hands of the Turk filled him with spiritual fury. He returned to Europe, and with inextinguishable zeal, traversed its western half to urge in impassioned eloquence, which made every heart throb and frenzied every mind, the union of all Christendom for the destruction of the Turk and the re-establishment of the True Faith in its first home.
He set Europe ablaze. Fourteen generations of Christians had grieved over the Moslem occupation of the Holy Land. John Zimiskes, the ablest and most popular of Byzantine generals, had carried his arms as far as Lebanon in the year 975, and had recovered what were said to be the shoes of the Saviour and the hair of John the Baptist. But, contrary to the vainglorious assertions of Byzantine historians, he was unable to penetrate into Palestine. In 1073, Hildebrand, the great Pope-Statesman, was anxious to deliver the Holy Places; but any project that he may have formed came to naught; for the Head of the Holy Roman Empire was bent on subordinating the Church to his Imperial Will; and the Head of the Church was even more resolute in his resolve to make the Papacy independent and supreme. About this time, German prelates headed 7,000 pilgrims, of whom only 2,000 survived to see their home once more. The conquest of Jerusalem remained a dream until Peter the Hermit awoke the sleeper.
But now Urban II responded to his call, and summoned and presided over the famous Council of Clermont in Auvergne. “God wills it,” shouted the assembly; “a truce of God” was declared; private war and princely quarrels appeared to be forgotten; and all Western Europe prepared for a Crusade.
The barons were undoubtedly captive to a great idea, and their zeal was sincere. But little of any human action is due to a single motive. Remission of sin was promised to those who should assume the Cross; and love of battle, the charm of novelty, and the desire of acquiring large and lucrative fiefs in the Holy Land also played their part. The imagination of the common people, so lively and virile, often so spiritual and exalted in the Middle Ages, was no less fired than that of the barons. The spirit which directed men to the cloister now summoned them to the camp. A belief that God had decreed the expulsion of the Turk, and would protect and direct them to the capture of the Holy City, filled all men with fanatic fervour. The sound of clarion and trumpet and the clash of arms mingled with the voice of the preacher exhorting seigneur and serf. To men of the eleventh century, the curtains of the Unseen were often withdrawn, and the splendour of God shone forth, or devils appeared, comely to tempt, or distorted to terrify. Guibert tells us that, while at Beauvais, he noticed, at mid-day, a few clouds stretched a little obliquely athwart others, and “All at once, thousands of voices from every quarter cried out that a cross had appeared in the sky.”
But, as with the barons, motives other than religious also moved the populace and favoured the Crusade. Private war had been unceasing; famine and pestilence, the attendants on war, had desolated Europe; the serf lay prostrate under the heel of his exacting seigneur. There would be release from these evils in that land which the Redeemer of Mankind had chosen to be the scene of his birth and Sacrifice.