Читать книгу Ten Great Events in History - James Johonnot - Страница 3

1. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, in the year 70 of the Christian era, Palestine continued for upward of two centuries in the condition of a Roman province, inhabited by a mixed population of pagans, Jews, and Christians. In Jerusalem, temples of Venus and Jupiter were erected on the most sacred spots of Christian history; and heathenism triumphed in the possession of the Holy City of two religions. On the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire by Constantine, in the year 321, this state of things was changed; Palestine and Jerusalem became objects of interest to all Christians, and crowds of pilgrims visited the localities celebrated by the evangelists. Splendid churches were erected on the ruins of pagan temples, and every spot pointed out as the scene of the memorable events in the life of Christ and his apostles was marked by a chapel or house of prayer. Jerusalem and the Holy Land became the resort of numerous bodies of clergy, who resided in the churches and monasteries which the piety of the wealthy had founded for them.

2. At the end of the fourth century, the gigantic Roman Empire was broken up into two, the Eastern, the capital of which was Constantinople, and the Western, the capital of which was Rome. It was to the former of these that Syria and Palestine were attached. Before the end of the fifth century the Western Empire had been destroyed by the eruption of the German races, and the beginnings of a new European civilization were rising from its ruins. Meanwhile, the Eastern remained entire, till about the year 630, when the Arabs, burning with the spirit of conquest infused into them by the religion of Mohammed, poured into its provinces. Egypt, Syria, and Palestine were annexed as dependencies to the great Arabic Empire of the

14

15

caliphs. The religion of Mohammed became dominant in the Holy Land, the temples and chapels were converted into mosques.

3. Numbers of pilgrims still continued each year to visit Palestine. In return for a certain tribute, the earlier caliphs permitted the Christians of Jerusalem to have a patriarch, and to carry on their own form of worship. Of all the caliphs, the celebrated Haroun al-Rashid, best known to us in the stories of the "Arabian Nights," was the most tolerant, and under him the Christians enjoyed perfect peace.

4. Great cruelties were practised by the Fatimite caliphs, who conquered Syria about the year 980. The pilgrims were robbed, beaten, and sometimes slain on their journey, the Christian residents oppressed by heavy impositions, and their feelings outraged by insults against their religion. These sufferings were slight, however, compared with those which they endured after the invasion and conquest of Palestine by the Turkish hordes in 1065. But recently converted to Moslemism, and therefore more rude and fanatical than the other Mohammedans, these Turks wreaked their vengeance on all alike—Christians, Jews, and even the native Mohammedans.

5. The news of the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks produced a deep sensation over the whole of Christendom, as well among the Latin Christians as among the Greek Christians, the name given to the population of what remained of the old Byzantine Empire. The latter had reason to dread that, if the Turks were not checked, Constantinople, their capital, would soon share the same fate as Jerusalem. Accordingly, about the year 1073, the Greek Emperor, Manuel VII, sent to supplicate the assistance of the great Pope Gregory VII against the Turks. Till now there had prevailed a spirit of antagonism between the Greek and Latin churches, the former refusing to yield obedience to the pope of the West as the universal head of the Church. Gregory, therefore, eagerly received the application of the Greek Emperor, seeing the promise of the final

16

subjection of the Greek to the Latin Church. He resolved to give the enterprise his countenance, and to march himself at the head of an army to rescue the Holy Sepulchre.

6. Gregory was prevented from ever carrying out his design, and the idea of a crusade gradually died away. Meanwhile, the Turks extended their victories at the expense of the Greek Empire. Before the accession of the celebrated Alexius Comnenus to the throne in 1081, the whole of Asia Minor was in the possession of the Turks, and broken up into a number of kingdoms, the sultans of which soon began to quarrel among themselves. The disturbed state of Asia Minor greatly increased the sufferings of the pilgrims; not one out of three returned to recount the story of his hardships.

7. Among those who undertook the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, when the dangers attending it were the greatest, was a native of Amiens in France, named Peter, who had become a monk and an ascetic, being called from his solitary manner of life, Peter the Hermit. He arrived safely at Jerusalem, and visited all the scenes sacred to a Christian's eyes. As he walked along the streets, looking at this and that holy spot, insolent and contemptuous Turks looked on and mocked him, and his spirit grew bitter within him, and his hand clutched itself convulsively as if longing for a sword.

8. Burning with a sense of injuries sustained by the Christians, and the desecration of the sacred places, he sought the counsel of Simeon, the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem. In reply to Peter's questions, he explained that nothing was to be expected from the Greek Empire in behalf of the Holy Land, the court of Constantinople was so dissolute and corrupt, and that the only hope was that the Latin princes might be persuaded to form a league for the grand purpose entertained by Gregory VII. "Write," Peter said to the patriarch, "to the pope and to all Latin Christians, and seal your letters with the signet of your office as patriarch of Jerusalem. As a penance for my sins, I will travel over

17

Europe, I will describe everywhere the desolate condition of the Holy City, and exhort princes and people to wrest it from the profane hands of the infidels."

9. The letters were accordingly written, and the hermit set sail with them from Joppa. Arriving in Italy he presented the documents to the pope, Urban II, a pupil and protégé of Gregory VII, urging his holiness to use his authority, as the head of Christendom, to set in motion a scheme for regaining the birthplace of Christ. Enthusiasm is contagious, and the pope appears to have caught it instantly from one whose zeal was so unbounded. Giving the Hermit full powers, he sent him abroad to preach the holy war. Peter departed, going from town to town, and from village to village, and, in the language of the chroniclers, "traversing the whole of Europe in less than a year's time." His strange and wild aspect, his glittering eye, his shrill and unearthly eloquence, the grandeur of his theme, his pathetic descriptions of Jerusalem and the Christians there, produced everywhere the most extraordinary sensations. "He set out," says a contemporary historian, "from whence I know not, nor with what purpose; but we saw him passing through the towns and villages, everywhere preaching, and the people flocking round him, loading him with gifts, and praising his sanctity with such eulogiums, that I never remember having seen so great honors paid to any other man. The people reverenced him so that they plucked the hairs from the mane of his mule, and kept them afterward as relics. Out of doors he generally wore a woolen tunic, with a brown mantle, which descended to his heels. His arms and feet were bare, he ate little or no bread, but lived on fish and wine."

10. Such being the success of the Hermit's mission, the pope showed his approbation of the project by summoning in the year 1095 two councils. The first of these was held at Placentia in March; ambassadors from the Greek Emperor appeared to petition for aid

18

against the Turks, and the members of the council were unanimous in their support of the crusade. The second, the famous Council of Clermont, was held at the town of that name in Auvergne in the month of November. It was in the midst of an extremely cold winter, and the ground was covered with snow. During seven days the council sat with closed doors, while immense crowds from all parts of France flocked into the town, in the expectation that the pope himself would address the people.

11. All the neighborhood presented the appearance of a vast camp. Issuing from the church in his full canonicals, surrounded by his cardinals and bishops in all the splendor of ecclesiastical costume, the pope stood before the populace on a high scaffolding, erected for the occasion, and covered with scarlet cloth. A brilliant array of bishops and cardinals surrounded him, and among them, humbler in rank but more important in the world's eye, the Hermit Peter, dressed in his simple woolen gown. The pope's eloquent words touched every heart. He was interrupted by the united voice of the people shouting "God wills it! God wills it!" Hushing the joyous tumult with a wave of his hand, the pontiff continued "Be they then your war-cry in the combat, for those words came from God. Let the army of the Lord, when it rushes upon its enemies, shout but that one cry, 'God wills it! God wills it!' Let whoever is inclined to devote himself to this holy cause wear on his breast or back the sign of the holy cross." From this time the red cross was the sacred emblem of the crusaders.