Читать книгу The History of the Crusades (Vol.1-3) - Joseph François Michaud - Страница 6

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A.D. 300-1095.

From the earliest ages of the Church, a custom had been practised of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Judea, full of religious remembrances, was still the promised land of the faithful; the blessings of heaven appeared to be in store for those who visited Calvary, the tomb of Jesus Christ, and renewed their baptism in the waters of the Jordan. Under the reign of Constantine, the ardour for pilgrimages increased among the faithful; they flocked from all the provinces of the empire to worship Jesus Christ upon his own tomb, and to trace the steps of their God in that city which had but just resumed its name, and which the piety of an emperor had caused to issue from its ruins. The Holy Sepulchre presented itself to the eyes of the pilgrims surrounded by a magnificence which redoubled their veneration. An obscure cavern had become a marble temple, paved with precious stones and decorated with splendid colonnades. To the east of the Holy Sepulchre appeared the church of the Resurrection, in which they could admire the riches of Asia, mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome. Constantine celebrated the thirty-first year of his reign by the inauguration of this church, and thousands of Christians came, on occasion of this solemnity, to listen to the panegyric of Christ from the lips of the learned and holy bishop Eusebius.

St. Helena, the mother of the emperor, repaired to Jerusalem, at a very advanced age, and caused churches and chapels to be built upon Mount Tabor, in the city of Nazareth, and in the greater part of the places which Christ had sanctified by his presence and his miracles. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land became much more frequent. The pilgrims, no longer in dread of the persecutions of the Pagans, could now give themselves up, without fear, to the fervour of their devotion; the Roman eagles, ornamented with the cross of Jesus Christ, protected them on their march; they everywhere trampled underfoot the fragments of idols, and they travelled amidst the abodes of their fellow-Christians.

When the emperor Julian, in order to weaken the authority of the prophecies, undertook to rebuild the temple of the Jews, numerous were the prodigies related by which God confounded his designs, and Jerusalem, for that attempt even, became more dear to the disciples of Jesus Christ. The Christians did not cease to visit Palestine. St. Jerome, who, towards the end of the fourth century, had retired to Bethlehem, informs us in one of his letters that pilgrims arrived in crowds in Judea, and that around the holy tomb the praises of the Son of God were to be heard, uttered in many languages. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were so numerous, that several doctors and fathers of the Church thought it their duty to point out the abuses and danger of the practice. They told Christians that long voyages might turn them aside from the path of salvation; that their God was not confined to one city; that Jesus Christ was everywhere where faith and good works were to be found; but such was the blind zeal which then drew the Christians towards Jerusalem, that the voice of the holy doctors was scarcely heard.[4] The counsels of enlightened piety were not able to abate the ardour of the pilgrims, who believed they should be wanting in faith and zeal, if they did not adore Jesus Christ in the very places where, according to the expression of St. Jerome, the light of the gospel first shone from the top of the holy cross.

As soon as the people of the West became converted to Christianity, they turned their eyes to the East. From the depths of Gaul, from the forests of Germany, from all the countries of Europe, new Christians were to be seen hastening to visit the cradle of the faith they had embraced. An itinerary for the use of pilgrims served them as a guide from the banks of the Rhone and the Dordogne to the shores of the Jordan, and conducted them, on their return, from Jerusalem to the principal cities of Italy.[5]

When the world was ravaged by the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals, the pilgrimages to the Holy Land were not at all interrupted. Pious travellers were protected by the hospitable virtues of the barbarians, who began to respect the cross of Christ, and sometimes even followed the pilgrims to Jerusalem. In these times of trouble and desolation, a poor pilgrim, who bore his scrip and staff, often passed through fields of carnage, and travelled without fear amidst armies which threatened the empires of the East and the West.

Illustrious families of Rome came to seek an asylum at Jerusalem, and upon the tomb of Jesus Christ. Christians then found, on the banks of the Jordan, that peace which seemed to be banished from the rest of the world. This peace, which lasted several centuries, was not troubled before the reign of Heraclius. Under this reign, the armies of Cosroës, king of Persia, invaded Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; the holy city fell into the hands of the worshippers of fire; the conquerors bore away into captivity vast numbers of Christians, and profaned the churches of Jesus Christ. All the faithful deplored the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and shed tears when they learned that the king of Persia had carried off, among the spoils of the vanquished, the cross of the Saviour, which had been preserved in the church of the Resurrection.

Heaven, at length, touched by the prayers and affliction of the Christians, blessed the arms of Heraclius, who, after ten years of reverses, triumphed over the enemies of Christianity and the empire, and brought back to Jerusalem the Christians whose chains he had broken. Then was to be seen an emperor of the East, walking barefooted in the streets of the holy city, carrying on his shoulders to the summit of Calvary, the wood of the true cross, which he considered the most glorious trophy of his victories. This imposing ceremony was a festival for the people of Jerusalem and the Christian church, which, latter still, every year celebrates the memory of it.[6] When Heraclius re-entered Constantinople, he was received as the liberator of the Christians, and the kings of the West sent ambassadors to congratulate him.

But the joy of the faithful was not of long duration. Towards the beginning of the seventh century there had arisen, in an obscure corner of Asia, a new religion, opposed to all others, which preached dominion and war. Mahomet had promised the conquest of the world to his disciples, who had issued almost naked from the deserts of Arabia. By his passionate doctrine he was able to inflame the imagination of the Arabs, and on the field of battle knew how to inspire them with his own impetuous courage. His first successes, which must have greatly exceeded his hopes, were like so many miracles, increasing the confidence of his partisans, and carrying conviction to the minds of the weak and wavering. The political state of the East seemed to offer no obstacle to the progress of a sect, which, from its birth, showed itself everywhere with fire and sword. The worship of the Magi was sinking into contempt; the Jews scattered throughout Asia were opposed to the Sabeans, and divided amongst themselves; and the Christians, under the names of Eutychians, Nestorians, Maronites, and Jacobites, were engaged in heaping, reciprocally, anathemas upon one another. The empire of Persia, torn by intestine wars, and attacked by the barbarous races of Tartary, had lost both its power and splendour; that of the Greeks, weakened both within and without, was hastening to its fall; “every thing was perishing in the East,” says Bossuet. A new religion, a new empire, sprang up easily in the midst of ruins. The armed doctrine of Mahomet invaded, within a very short period, the three Arabias, a part of Syria, and a large division of Persia.

After the death of the Prophet of Mecca, his lieutenants and the companions of his first exploits carried on his great work. The sight of conquered provinces only increased the fanaticism and the bravery of the Saracens. They had no fear of death in the field of battle, for, according to the words of their prophet, paradise, with all its voluptuous pleasures, awaited those who precipitated themselves upon the enemy, and behind them hell opened its abysses. Their conquests were so much the more rapid, from their uniting, in their military and religious government, the prompt decision of despotism with all the passions that are met with in a republic. Masters of Persia and Syria, they soon took possession of Egypt; their victorious battalions flowed on into Africa, planted the standard of the Prophet upon the ruins of Carthage, and carried the terror of their arms to the shores of the Atlantic. From India to the Straits of Cadiz, and from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, language, manners, religion, everything was changed; what had remained of Paganism was annihilated, together with the worship of the Magi; Christianity scarcely subsisted, and Europe itself was threatened with a similar destruction. Constantinople, which was the bulwark of the West, saw before its walls innumerable hordes of Saracens: several times besieged both by sea and land, the city of Constantine only owed its safety to the Greek fire, to the assistance of the Bulgarians, and to the inexperience of the Arabs in the art of navigation.

During the first age of the Hegira, the conquests of the Mussulmans were only bounded by the sea which separated them from Europe; but when they had constructed vessels, no nation was safe from their invasion; they ravaged the isles of the Mediterranean, the coasts of Italy and Greece; fortune or treason made them masters of Spain, where they overturned the monarchy of the Goths; they took advantage of the weakness of the children of Clovis to penetrate into the southern provinces of Gaul, and were only stopped in their invasions by the victories of Charles Martel.

Amidst the first conquests of the Saracens, they had turned their eyes towards Jerusalem. According to the faith of the Mussulmans, Mahomet had been in the city of David and Solomon; it was from Jerusalem that he set out to ascend into heaven in his nocturnal voyage. The Saracens considered Jerusalem as the house of God, as the city of saints and miracles. A short time after the death of the Prophet, the soldiers of Omar besieged it. The Christians, animated by despair, swore to defend the city. The siege lasted four months, each day being marked by sorties or attacks; the Saracens approaching the walls repeating the words of the Koran “Let us enter into the holy land which God has promised us.” After enduring all the miseries of a long siege, the inhabitants of Jerusalem at length surrendered to the caliph Omar, who himself came into Palestine to receive the keys and the submission of the conquered city.

The Christians had the grief of seeing the church of the Holy Sepulchre profaned by the presence of the chief of the infidels. The patriarch Sophronius, who accompanied the caliph, could not refrain from repeating these words of Daniel, “The abomination of desolation is in the holy place.” Jerusalem was filled with mourning, a gloomy silence reigned in the churches, and in all the places in which the hymns of the Christians had so long resounded. Although Omar had left them the exercise of their worship, they were obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The bell no longer summoned the faithful to prayer; the pomp of ceremonies was interdicted, and religion appeared but as a desolate widow. The caliph ordered a mosque to be erected on the spot whereon the temple of Solomon had been built. The aspect of this edifice, consecrated to the worship of the infidels, still further increased the affliction of the Christians. History relates that the patriarch Sophronius was unable to support the sight of so many profanations, and died in despair, deploring the misfortunes and captivity of the holy city.

In the mean time, the presence of Omar, of whose moderation the East boasts, restrained the jealous fanaticism of the Mussulmans. After his death the faithful had much more to suffer; they were driven from their houses, insulted in their churches; the tribute which they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine was increased, and they were forbidden to carry arms or to mount on horseback. A leathern girdle, which they were never allowed to be without, was the badge of their servitude; the conquerors would not permit the Christians to speak the Arab tongue, sacred to the disciples of the Koran; and the people who remained faithful to Jesus Christ had not liberty even to pronounce the name of the patriarch of Jerusalem without the permission of the Saracens.

All these persecutions could not stop the crowd of Christians who repaired to Jerusalem; the sight of the holy city sustaining their courage as it heightened their devotion. There were no evils, no outrages, that they could not support with resignation, when they remembered that Christ had been loaded with chains, and had died upon the cross in the places they were about to visit. Among the faithful of the West who arrived in Asia in the midst of the early conquests of the Mussulmans, history has preserved the names of St. Arculphus and St. Antoninus of Plaisance.[7] The latter had borne arms with distinction, when he determined to follow the pilgrims who were setting out for Jerusalem. He traversed Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. On his arrival on the banks of the Jordan, Judea had not yet fallen into the hands of the infidels; but the fame of their victories already filled the East, and their armies were threatening the holy city. Several years after the pilgrimage of St. Antoninus, Arculphus, accompanied by Peter, a French hermit, set out from the coast of England in a vessel bound for Syria. He remained nine months at Jerusalem, then under the dominion of the enemies of Christ. On his return to Europe, he related what he had seen in Palestine, and in all the sacred spots visited by the pilgrims of the West. The account of his pilgrimage was drawn up by a holy monk of the Hebrides, for the information and edification of the faithful.

The Christians of Palestine, however, enjoyed some short intervals of security during the civil wars of the Mussulmans.[8] If they were not freed from their bondage, they could at least weep in peace upon the tomb of Christ. The dynasty of the Ommiades, which had established the seat of the Mussulman empire at Damascus, was always odious to the ever-formidable party of the Alides, and employed itself less in persecuting the Christians than in preserving its own precarious power. Merwan II., the last caliph of this house, was the most cruel towards the disciples of Christ; and when he, with all his family, sunk under the power of his enemies, the Christians and the infidels united in thanks to heaven for having delivered the East from his tyranny.

The Abassides, established in the city of Bagdad, which they had founded, persecuted and tolerated the Christians by turns. The Christians, always living between the fear of persecution and the hope of a transient security, saw at last the prospect of happier days dawn upon them with the reign of Haroun al Raschid, the greatest caliph of the race of Abbas. Under this reign the glory of Charlemagne, which had reached Asia, protected the churches of the East.[9] His pious liberality relieved the indigence of the Christians of Alexandria, of Carthage, and Jerusalem. The two greatest princes of their age testified their mutual esteem by frequent embassies: they sent each other magnificent presents; and, in the friendly intercourse of two powerful monarchs, the East and the West exchanged the richest productions of their soil and their industry. The presents of Haroun created a lively surprise in the court of Charlemagne, and gave a high idea of the arts and riches of Asia. The monarch of the Franks took pleasure in showing to the envoys of the caliph the magnificence of the religious ceremonies of the Christians. Witnesses, at Aix-la-Chapelle, of several processions, in which the clergy had exhibited all their most precious ornaments, the ambassadors, on their return to Bagdad, reported that they had seen men of gold.

There was no doubt policy in the marks of esteem which Haroun lavished upon the most powerful of the princes of the West. He was making war against the emperors of Constantinople, and might justly fear that they would interest the bravest among Christian people in their cause. The popular traditions of Byzantium foretold that the Latins would some day be the liberators of Greece; and in one of the first sieges of Constantinople by the Saracens, the report only of the arrival of the Franks had reanimated the courage of the besieged, and carried terror into the ranks of the Mussulmans. In the time of Haroun, the name of Jerusalem already exercised so powerful an influence over the Christians of the West, that it was sufficient to rouse their warlike enthusiasm, and raise armies to serve against the infidels. To take from the Franks every pretext for a religious war, which might make them embrace the cause of the Greeks, and draw them into Asia, the caliph neglected no opportunity of obtaining the friendship of Charlemagne; and caused the keys of the holy city and of the holy sepulchre[10] to be presented to him. This homage, rendered to the greatest of the Christian monarchs, was celebrated with enthusiasm in contemporary legends, which afterwards caused it to be believed that this prince had made the voyage and completed the conquest of Jerusalem.[11]

Haroun treated the Christians of the Latin Church as his own subjects; and the children of the caliph imitated his moderation. Under their sway, Bagdad was the abode of the sciences and the arts. The caliph Almamon, says an Arabian historian, was not ignorant that they who labour in the advancement of reason are the elect of God. Intelligence polished the manners of the chiefs of Islamism, and inspired them with a toleration till that time unknown to Mussulmans. Whilst the Arabians of Africa were pursuing their conquests towards the West, whilst they took possession of Sicily, and Rome itself saw its suburbs and its churches of St. Peter and St. Paul invaded and pillaged by infidels, the servants of Jesus Christ prayed in peace within the walls of Jerusalem.[12] The pilgrims of the West, who arrived there without danger, were received in an hospital, the foundation of which was attributed to Charlemagne. According to the report of the monk Bernard,[13] who himself performed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, about the middle of the ninth century, the hospital for the pilgrims of the Latin Church was composed of twelve houses or hostelries. To this pious establishment were attached fields, vineyards, and a garden, situated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. This hospital, like those which the emperor of the West founded in the north of Europe, had a library always open to Christians and travellers. From the tenth century there existed in the neighbourhood of the Fountain of Siloë, a cemetery, in which were interred the pilgrims who died at Jerusalem. Among the tombs of the faithful dwelt the servants of God. This place, says the relation of St. Antoninus, covered with fruit-trees, dotted with sepulchres and humble cells, brings together the dead and the living, and presents at once a cheerful and a melancholy picture.

To the desire of visiting the tomb of Jerusalem was joined the earnest wish to procure relics, which were then sought for with eagerness by the devotion of the faithful. All who returned from the East made it their glory to bring back to their country some precious remains of Christian antiquity, and above all the bones of holy martyrs, which constituted the ornament and the riches of their churches, and upon which princes and kings swore to respect truth and justice. The productions of Asia likewise attracted the attention of the people of Europe. We read in[14] Gregory of Tours, that the wine of Gaza was celebrated in France in the reign of Gontran;[15] that the silk and precious stones of the East added to the splendour of the dresses of the great and the noble; and that St. Eloi, at the court of Dagobert, did not disdain to clothe himself in the rich stuffs of Asia. Commerce attracted a great number of Europeans to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. The Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans,—the merchants of Amalfi and Marseilles,—had all stores at Alexandria, in the maritime cities of Phenicia, and in the city of Jerusalem. Before the church of St. Marie-la-Latine, says the monk Bernard, already quoted, extended a large place or square, which was called the Market of the Franks. Every year, on the 15th of September, a fair was opened on Mount Calvary, in which were exchanged the productions of Europe for those of the East.

Greek and Syrian Christians were established even in the city of Bagdad, where they devoted themselves to trade, exercised the art of medicine, and cultivated the sciences. They attained by their learning the most considerable employments, and sometimes even obtained the command of cities and the government of provinces. One of the caliphs of the race of Abbas[16] declared that the disciples of Christ were the most worthy to be trusted with the administration of Persia. In short, the Christians of Palestine and the Mussulman provinces, the pilgrims and travellers who returned from the East, seemed no longer to have any persecutions to dread, when all at once new storms broke out in the East. The children of Haroun soon shared the fate of the posterity of Charlemagne, and Asia, like the West, was plunged into the horrors of anarchy and civil war.

As the empire founded by Mahomet had for its principle the spirit of conquest; as the state was not defended by any provident institution; and as all depended upon the personal character of the prince, it might easily be perceived that symptoms of decay began to appear as soon as there remained nothing else to conquer, and the chiefs ceased either to make themselves feared or to inspire respect. The caliphs of Bagdad, rendered effeminate by luxury, and corrupted by long prosperity, abandoned the cares of empire, buried themselves in their seraglios, and appeared to reserve to themselves no other right than that of being named in the public prayers. The Arabians were no longer governed by that blind zeal, and that ardent fanaticism which they had brought from the desert. Degenerated, like their chiefs, they no longer resembled their warlike ancestors, who would weep at not having been present at a battle. The authority of the caliphs had lost its true defenders; and when despotism surrounded itself with slaves purchased on the banks of the Oxus, this foreign militia, called in to defend the throne, only precipitated its fall. New sectaries, seduced by the example of Mahomet, and persuaded that the world would obey those who should change its manners or opinions, added the danger of religious dissensions to that of political troubles. In the midst of the general confusion, the emirs or lieutenants, of whom several governed vast kingdoms, no longer offered anything beyond a vain homage to the successor of the Prophet, and refused to send him either money or troops. The gigantic empire of the Abassides crumbled away on all sides, and the world, according to the expression of an Arabian writer, was within the reach of him who would take possession of it. The spiritual power was itself divided; Islamism beheld at one time five caliphs, each of whom assumed the title of commander of the faithful, and vicar of Mahomet.

The numerous dynasties which sprung up amidst the troubles of Asia, shared amongst them the spoils of the sovereigns of Bagdad; those which ruled over Persia and upon the banks of the Tigris, under the pretence of defending the Mussulman religion, subjected their spiritual chiefs to the most humiliating subserviency. At the same time the Fatimites, who pretended to be descended from Aly, and who had usurped the title of caliph, raised armies, and launched anathemas against the Abassides; they had taken possession of Egypt, and they threatened to invade Syria, and to march to Bagdad, and dethrone the vicars of the Prophet.

The Greeks then appeared to rouse themselves from their long supineness, and sought to take advantage of the divisions and the humiliation of the Saracens. Nicephorus Phocas took the field at the head of a powerful army, and recaptured Antioch from the Mussulmans. Already the people of Constantinople celebrated his triumphs, and styled him “the star of the East, the death and the scourge of the infidels.” He might, perhaps, have merited these titles, if the Greek clergy had seconded his efforts. Nicephorus was desirous of giving to this war[17] a religious character, and to place in the rank of martyrs all who should fall in prosecuting it. The prelates of his empire condemned his design as sacrilegious, and opposed to him a canon of St. Basil, the text of which recommended to him who had killed an enemy to abstain during three years from a participation in the holy mysteries. Deprived of the powerful stimulus of fanaticism, Nicephorus found among the Greeks more panegyrists than soldiers, and could not pursue his advantages against the Saracens, to whom, even in their decline, religion prescribed resistance and promised victory. His triumphs, which were celebrated at Constantinople with enthusiasm, were confined to the taking of Antioch, and only served to create a persecution against the Christians of Palestine. The patriarch of Jerusalem, accused of keeping up an understanding with the Greeks, expired at the stake, and several churches of the holy city were consigned to the flames.

A Greek army, under the command of Temelicus, had advanced to the gates of Amida, a city situated on the banks of the Tigris. This army was attacked, in the midst of a hurricane, by the Saracens, who routed it, and made a great number of prisoners. The Christian soldiers who fell into the hands of the infidels, heard, in the prisons of Bagdad, of the death of Nicephorus; and as Zimisces, his successor, gave no attention to their deliverance, their chief wrote to him in these terms: “You who leave us to perish in an accursed land, and who do not deem us worthy to be buried, according to Christian usages, in the tombs of our fathers, we cannot recognize you as the legitimate chief of the holy Greek empire. If you do not avenge those who fell before Amida, and those who now sigh in foreign lands, God will demand a strict account of them of you, at the terrible day of judgment.” When Zimisces received this letter at Constantinople, says an Armenian historian,[18] he was penetrated with grief, and resolved to avenge the outrage inflicted upon religion and the empire. On all sides preparations were set on foot for a fresh war against the Saracens. The nations of the West were no strangers to this enterprize, which preceded, by more than a year, the first of the Crusades. Venice, which then enjoyed the commerce of the East, forbade her people, under pain of death, to convey to the Mussulmans of Africa and Asia, either iron, wood, or any species of arms. The Christians of Syria and several Armenian princes repaired to the standard of Zimisces, who took the field, and carried war into the territories of the Saracens. So great was the confusion which then prevailed among the Mussulman powers, and with such rapidity did one dynasty succeed to another, that history can scarcely distinguish what prince,[19] or what people ruled over Palestine and Jerusalem. After having defeated the Mussulmans on the banks of the Tigris, and forced the caliph of Bagdad to pay a tribute to the successors of Constantine, Zimisces penetrated, almost without resistance, into Judea, took possession of Cesarea, of Ptolemaïs, of Tiberias, Nazareth, and several other cities of the Holy Land. He was encamped upon Tabor when he received a deputation of the inhabitants of Ramala and Jerusalem, who promised him obedience, and required of him troops to defend their cities. Zimisces received their submission and their request favourably,[20] and pursued the wreck of the Saracen army, which had sought refuge in some cities of Phenicia and in the mountains of Libanus.

After this first campaign, the Holy Land appeared to be on the eve of being delivered entirely from the yoke of the infidels, when the emperor died poisoned. His death at once put a stop to the execution of an enterprize of which he was the soul and the leader. The Christian nations had scarcely time to rejoice at the delivery of Jerusalem, when they learnt that the holy city had again fallen into the hands of the Fatimite caliphs, who, after the death of Zimisces, had invaded Syria and Palestine.

The caliphs of Cairo, who had taken advantage of the transient conquests of the Greeks to extend their empire, at first treated the Christians as allies and auxiliaries. In the hope of enriching their new dominions and repairing the evils of war, they favoured the commerce of the Europeans, and tolerated the devotion of pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The markets of the Franks were re-established in the city of Jerusalem; the Christians rebuilt the hospitals of the pilgrims, and the churches which were falling to decay. They began to forget the peaceful domination of the Abassides, and felicitated themselves upon living under the laws of the sovereigns of Cairo; and still greater right had they to hope that all their troubles were about to be at an end, when they saw the caliph Hakim, whose mother was a Christian, ascend the throne. But God, who, according to the expression of contemporary authors, wished to try the virtues of the faithful, did not long delay to confound their hopes and raise new persecutions against them.

Hakim, the third of the Fatimite caliphs, signalized his reign by all the excesses of fanaticism and outrage. Unfixed in his own projects, and wavering between two religions, he by turns protected and persecuted Christianity. He respected neither the policy of his predecessors nor the laws which he himself had established. He changed, on the morrow, that which he had ordained the preceding day, and spread disorder and confusion throughout his dominions. In the extravagance of his mind and the intoxication of power, he carried his madness so far as to believe himself a god. The terror which he inspired procured him worshippers, and altars were raised to him in the neighbourhood of Fostat, which he had given up to the flames. Sixteen thousand of his subjects prostrated themselves before him, and adored him as sovereign of the living and the dead.

Hakim despised Mahomet, but the Mussulmans were too numerous in his states to allow him to think of persecuting them. The god trembled for the authority of the prince, and allowed all his anger to fall upon the Christians, whom he gave up to the fury of their enemies. The places which the Christians held in the administration, and the abuses introduced into the mode of levying the imposts, with which duty they were charged, had drawn upon them the hatred of all the Mussulmans. When the caliph Hakim had once given the signal for persecution, he found himself at no loss for executioners. At first, they who had abused their power were the objects of pursuit; the Christian religion became the next crime, and the most pious among the faithful were deemed the most guilty. The blood of the Christians flowed in all the cities of Egypt and Syria, their courage in the midst of torments only adding to the hatred of their persecutors. The complaints which escaped them in their sufferings, the prayers, even, which they addressed to Jesus Christ to put an end to their evils, were considered as a revolt, and punished as the most guilty treasons.

It is probable that motives of policy joined with those of fanaticism in the persecution of the Christians. Gerbert, archbishop of Ravenna, who had become pope, under the name of Sylvester II., had witnessed the ills to which the faithful were subjected in their pilgrimages to Jerusalem. On his return he excited the nations of the West to take up arms against the Saracens. In his exhortations, he made Jerusalem herself speak, made her deplore her misfortunes, and conjure her Christian children to hasten and break her chains. The people were deeply moved with the complaints and groans of Sion. The Pisans, the Genoese, with Boson, king of Arles, undertook a maritime expedition against the Saracens, and made an incursion upon the coasts of Syria. These hostilities, and the number of the pilgrims, which increased every day, might well create distrust in the masters of the East. The Saracens, alarmed by sinister predictions, and by the imprudent menaces of the Christians, saw nothing but enemies in the disciples of Christ; from that time terror and death guarded the gates of Jerusalem.

It is impossible, says William of Tyre, to describe all the species of persecutions to which the Christians were then exposed. Among the instances of barbarity cited by the historians, there is one which gave to Tasso the idea of his affecting episode of Olindus and Sophronia. One of the bitterest enemies of the Christians, in order to increase the hatred of their persecutors, threw, in the night, a dead dog into one of the principal mosques of the city. The first who repaired thither to morning prayer were seized with horror at the sight of this profanation, and proclaimed their anger aloud. Threatening clamours soon resounded in every part of the city; the crowd assembled in a state of tumultuous excitement around the mosque; the Christians were at once accused of this act of sacrilege, and all swore to wash out the outrage to their prophet in the blood of the perpetrators. All Christians were about to be immolated to the revenge of the Mussulmans, and already were they prepared for death, when a young man, whose name history has not preserved, presented himself in the midst of them. “The greatest misfortune that could happen,” said he, “would be that the church of Jerusalem should perish. When a people is threatened with destruction, it is just that a single man should sacrifice himself for the salvation of all; I here and now offer myself as a victim to die for you; to you I leave the charge of doing justice to my memory, and I recommend myself to your prayers.” After pronouncing these words, which dissolved the assembly in tears, he quitted them, and repaired to the chiefs of the Mussulmans; he declared himself alone to be the author of the crime imputed to the Christians, and invoked upon himself the death with which his brethren were menaced. The Mussulmans, without being in the least touched by his generous devotion, were satisfied with the victim who offered himself to their vengeance: the sword was no longer suspended over the heads of the Christians, and he who had immolated himself for their safety, went, according to the expression of William of Tyre,[21] to receive in heaven the reward reserved for those whose minds burn with a love of perfect charity.

Nevertheless, other misfortunes awaited the Christians of Palestine; all religious ceremonies were interdicted; the greater part of the churches were converted into stables; that of the Holy Sepulchre was completely destroyed. The Christians, driven from Jerusalem, were scattered throughout the countries of the East. Old historians relate, that the world took part in the mourning of the holy city, and was seized with trouble and consternation. Winter, with its frosts and storms, showed itself in regions where, till that time, it had been unknown. The Bosphorus and the Nile bore sheets of ice upon their bosoms. Earthquakes were felt in Syria and Asia Minor; and their shocks, which were repeated during two months, destroyed several large cities. When the account of the destruction of the holy places arrived in the West, it drew tears from all true Christians. We read in the chronicle of the monk Glaber, that Europe had likewise been presented with signs which foreboded great calamities: a shower of stones had fallen in Burgundy, and a comet and threatening meteors had appeared in the heavens. The agitation was extreme among all Christian nations; nevertheless, they did not take up arms against the Mussulmans, but the whole of their vengeance fell upon the Jews, whom all Europe accused of having provoked the fury of the infidels.

The calamities of the holy city rendered it still more venerable in the eyes of the faithful; persecution redoubled the pious delirium of those who went into Asia to contemplate a city covered with ruins, and to behold an empty sepulchre. It was in Jerusalem, filled with mourning, that God most manifestly distributed his blessings and delighted to point out his will. Impostors constantly took advantage of this opinion of the Christian people, to mislead the credulity of the multitude. To gain credit for their words, it was quite sufficient to exhibit letters which, they said, had fallen from heaven into Jerusalem. At this period, a prediction, which announced[22] the end of the world and the approaching coming of Jesus Christ into Palestine, very much increased the veneration of the people for the holy places. The Christians of the West arrived in crowds at Jerusalem, with the design of dying there, or there awaiting the coming of the sovereign judge. The monk Glaber informs us, that the affluence of pilgrims surpassed all that could be expected from the devotion of these remote times. First were seen on the holy march the poor and the lower classes, then counts, barons, and princes, all reckoning as nothing the grandeurs of the earth.

The inconstancy of Hakim had, in a degree, mitigated the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and he had just granted liberty to the Christians to rebuild their churches, when he died by the hand of the assassin. His successor, guided by a wiser policy, tolerated both pilgrimages and the exercise of the Christian religion. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was not entirely rebuilt till thirty years after its destruction; but the spectacle of its ruins still inflamed the zeal and the devotion of the Christians.

In the eleventh century the Latin Church allowed pilgrimages to suffice instead of canonical penitences; sinners were condemned to quit their country for a time, and to lead a wandering life, after the example of Cain. This mode of performing penance agreed better with the active and restless character of the people of the West. It ought to be added, that the devotion of pilgrimages, whatever may be the opinion of an enlightened philosophy, has been received, and even encouraged, in all religions. It belongs, too, to a sentiment natural to man. If the sight of a land once inhabited by heroes and sages awakens in us touching and noble remembrances; if the soul of the philosopher finds itself agitated at the sight of the ruins of Palmyra, Babylon, or Athens; what lively emotions must not the Christians have felt on beholding places which God had sanctified by his presence and his blessings?

The Christians of the West, almost all unhappy in their own countries, and who often lost the sense of their evils in long voyages, appeared to be only employed in seeking upon earth the traces of a consoling and helpful divinity, or of some holy personage. There existed no province without its martyr or its apostle, whose support they went to implore; there was no city or secluded spot which did not preserve the tradition of a miracle, or had not a chapel open to pilgrims. The most guilty of sinners, or the most fervent of the faithful, exposed themselves to the greatest perils, and repaired to the most distant places. Sometimes they directed their steps to Apulia and Calabria, they visited Mount Gargan, celebrated by the apparition of St. Michael, or Mount Cassin, rendered famous by the miracles of St. Benedict; sometimes they traversed the Pyrenees, and, in a country given up to the Saracens, esteemed themselves happy in praying before the relics of St. Jago, the patron saint of Galicia. Some, like King Robert, went to Rome, and prostrated themselves on the tombs of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul; others travelled as far as Egypt, where Christ had passed his infancy, and penetrated to the solitudes of Scete and Memphis, inhabited by the disciples of Anthony and Paul.

A great number of pilgrims undertook the voyage to Palestine; they entered Jerusalem by the gate of Ephraim where they paid a tribute to the Saracens. After having prepared themselves by fasting and prayer, they presented themselves in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, covered with a funeral cloth or robe, which they preserved with care during the remainder of their lives, and in which they were buried after their death. They viewed with holy respect Mount Sion, the Mount of Olives, and the Valley of Jehoshaphat; they quitted Jerusalem to visit Bethlehem, where the Saviour of the world was born; Mount Tabor, rendered sacred by the transfiguration; and all the places memorable for his miracles. The pilgrims next bathed in the waters of the Jordan,[23] and gathered in the territory of Jericho palms which they bore back as evidences and relics to the West.

Such were the devotion and spirit of the tenth and eleventh centuries, that the greater part of the Christians would have thought themselves wanting in the duties of religion if they had not performed some pilgrimage. He who had escaped from a danger, or triumphed over his enemies, assumed the pilgrim’s staff, and took the road to the holy places; he who had obtained by his prayers the preservation of a father or of a son, went to return his thanks to heaven far from his domestic hearth, in places rendered holy by religious traditions. A father often devoted his child in the cradle to a pilgrimage, and the first duty of an affectionate and obedient son, when past the age of childhood, was to accomplish the vow of his parents. More than once a dream, a vision in the midst of sleep, imposed upon a Christian the obligation of performing a pilgrimage. Thus, the idea of these pious journeys mixed itself up with all the affections of the heart, and with all the prejudices of the human mind.

Pilgrims were welcomed everywhere, and in return for the hospitality they received, they were only asked for their prayers; often, indeed, the only treasure they carried with them. One of them, desirous to embark at Alexandria for Palestine, presented himself with his scrip and staff on board a ship, and offered a book of the holy Evangelists in payment for his passage. Pilgrims, on their route, had no other defence against the attacks of the wicked but the cross of Christ, and no other guides but those angels whom God has told “to watch over his children, and to direct them in all their ways.”

The greatest merit in the eyes of the faithful, next to that of pilgrimage, was to devote themselves to the service of the pilgrims. Hospitals were built upon the banks of rivers, upon the heights of mountains, in the midst of cities, and in desert places, for the reception of these travellers. In the ninth century, the pilgrims who left Burgundy to repair to Italy, were received in a monastery built upon Mount Cenis. In the following century, two monasteries, in which were received travellers who had strayed from their way, occupied the places of the temples of idolatry on Montes Jovis,[24] and thence lost the name they had received from Paganism, and took that of their pious founder, St. Bernard de Menton. Christians who travelled to Judea, found on the frontiers of Hungary, and in the provinces of Asia Minor, a great number of asylums raised by charity.

Christians established at Jerusalem went to meet the pilgrims, and often exposed themselves to a thousand dangers whilst conducting them on their route. The holy city contained hospitals for the reception of all travellers. In one of these hospitals the women who performed the pilgrimage to Palestine, were received by religious females devoted to the offices of charity. The merchants of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa, the richest among the pilgrims, and several princes of the West, furnished, by their benevolence, the means of keeping these houses open for all poor travellers.[25] Every year monks from the East came into Europe to collect the self-imposed tribute of the piety of the Christians. A pilgrim was a privileged being among the faithful. When he had completed his journey, he acquired the reputation of particular sanctity, and his departure and his return were celebrated by religious ceremonies. When about to set out, a priest presented to him his scrip and staff, together with a gown marked with a cross; he sprinkled holy water over his vestments, and accompanied him, at the head of a procession, as far as the boundaries of the next parish. On his return to his country, the pilgrim gave thanks to God, and presented to the priest a palm-branch, to be deposited on the altar of the church, as an evidence of his undertaking being happily terminated.

The poor, in their pilgrimages, found certain resources against misery; when coming back to their country, they received abundant alms. Vanity sometimes induced the rich to undertake these long voyages, which made the monk Glaber say, that many Christians went to Jerusalem to make themselves admired, and to be enabled, on their return, to relate the wonders they had seen. Many were influenced by the love of idleness and change, others by curiosity and an inclination to see various countries. It was by no means rare to meet with Christians who had spent their lives in holy pilgrimages, and had visited Jerusalem several times.

Every pilgrim was obliged to carry with him a letter from his prince or his bishop, a precaution which must have prevented many disorders. History does not record a single act of violence committed by one of the travellers who absolutely covered the route to the East. A Mussulman governor, who had seen a vast number of them pass to Emessa, said: “They have not left their homes with any bad design; they only seek to fulfil their law.”[26]

Every year, at the period of the festivals of Easter, numberless troops of pilgrims arrived in Judea to celebrate the mystery of the Redemption, and to behold the miracle of the sacred fire, which a superstitious multitude believed they saw descend from heaven upon the lamps of the holy sepulchre. There existed no crime that might not be expiated by the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and acts of devotion at the tomb of Christ. We find in the “Acts of the Saints,” that, in the time of Lothaire, this opinion was established among the Franks. An old relation, preserved by a monk of Redon, informs us that a powerful lord of the duchy of Brittany, named Frotmonde, the murderer of his uncle and his brother, presented himself in the habit of a penitent before the king of France and an assembly of bishops. The monarch and the prelates, as an expiation for the blood he had shed, caused him to be tightly bound with chains of iron, and ordered him to visit the holy places, his brow marked with ashes, and his body clothed in a winding-sheet. Frotmonde, accompanied by his servants and the accomplices of his crime, set out for Palestine; after having for some time sojourned at Jerusalem, he crossed the desert, went to the banks of the Nile, traversed a part of Africa, proceeded as far as Carthage, and came back to Rome, where Pope Benedict III. advised him to commence a new pilgrimage, to complete his penance and obtain an entire remission of his sins. Frotmonde saw Palestine a second time, penetrated as far as the shores of the Red Sea, remained three years on Mount Sinai, and went into Armenia, to visit the mountain on which the ark of Noah had rested after the deluge. On his return to his country he was received as a saint; he shut himself up in the monastery of Redon,[27] and died regretted by the cenobites whom he had edified by the relation of his pilgrimages.

Many years after the death of Frotmonde, Centius, prefect of Rome, who had used violence to the Pope in the church of St. Mary the Great, who had dragged him from the altar, and placed him in a dungeon, needed nothing more to expiate this sacrilege than to perform the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Foulque-Nerra, count of Anjou, charged with crimes, and stained with blood, thought to efface all his cruelties by a voyage to Jerusalem. His brother, whom he had caused to perish in a dungeon, presented himself wherever he went, before his eyes; it appeared to him that the numerous victims sacrificed to his ambition in unjust wars issued from their tombs to disturb his sleep, and reproach him for his barbarity. Pursued everywhere by these frightful images, Foulque left his states, and repaired to Palestine, in the garb of a pilgrim. When he arrived at Jerusalem, he passed through the streets of the holy city with a cord about his neck, beaten with rods by his domestics, repeating in a loud voice these words: “Lord, have pity on a perjured and fugitive Christian.” During his abode in Palestine,[28] he bestowed numerous benefactions, comforted the miseries of the pilgrims, and left everywhere testimonials of his devotion and charity. He returned to his duchy, bringing with him a portion of the true cross, and the stone upon which he had knelt when he prayed before the tomb of Christ.

Foulque, on returning to his dominions, was desirous of having always under his eyes an image of the places he had visited, and caused to be built, near the castle of Loches, a monastery and a church, which bore the name of the Holy Sepulchre. In the midst of the remembrances of his pilgrimage, he still heard the voice of remorse, and set off a second time for Jerusalem. He once more edified the Christians of the holy city by the expressions of his repentance and the austerities of his penance. As he was returning to his duchy, in passing through Italy, he delivered the Roman state from a brigand who plundered the towns and villages, and made war upon all merchants and pilgrims. The pope praised his zeal and his bravery, gave him absolution for his sins, and permitted him to bear about with him the relics of two holy martyrs. When he left Rome, he was conducted in triumph by the people and the clergy, who proclaimed him their liberator. On his arrival in Anjou, he re-established peace in his dominions, which had been in great confusion during his absence. Restored to his country, his family, and his subjects, who had forgotten his cruelties; reconciled with the Church, which declared him its benefactor, he appeared to have no more crimes to expiate, or wishes to form for his old age; but neither the absolution of the pope, nor the peace of his states, nor the blessings of the people—nothing could calm his soul, for ever torn with remorse. He could not escape from the image of his brother, which pursued him still, and recalled to his mind the crimes with which he had stained himself. Without cessation he was before him, pale, disfigured, dragging his chains, and invoking heaven to take vengeance on the fratricide. Foulque resolved to make a third pilgrimage to Jerusalem; he returned into Palestine, watered anew the tomb of Christ with his tears, and made the holy places resound with his groans. After having visited the Holy Land, and recommended his soul to the prayers of the anchorites charged to receive and console pilgrims, he quitted Jerusalem to return to his country, which he was doomed never to see again. He fell sick, and died at Metz. His body was transported to Loches, and buried in the monastery of the Holy Sepulchre, which he had caused to be built. His heart was deposited in a church at Metz, where was shown, for many ages after his death, a mausoleum, which was called the tomb of Foulque, count of Anjou.

At the same period, towards the middle of the eleventh century, Robert-le-Frison, count of Flanders, and Berenger II., count of Barcelona, resolved likewise to expiate their sins by the voyage to the Holy Land. The latter died in Asia, not being able to support the rigorous penances he had imposed upon himself. Robert came back to his dominions, where his pilgrimage caused him to find grace in the eyes of the clergy, whom he had wished to plunder. These two princes had been preceded in their pilgrimage by Frederick, count of Verdun.[29] Frederick was of the illustrious family which was one day to reckon among its heroes Godfrey de Bouillon. On setting out for Asia, he renounced earthly grandeur, and gave up his county to the bishop of Verdun. Returned into Europe, he resolved to terminate his days in a monastery, and died prior of the abbey of St. Wast, near Arras.

The weak and timid sex was not deterred by the difficulties and the perils of a long voyage. Helena, born of a noble family of Sweden, quitted her country, which was buried in idolatry, and travelled on foot into the East. When, after having visited the holy places, she returned to her country, she was sacrificed to the resentment of her relations and her compatriots, and gathered, says an old legend, the palm of martyrdom.[30] A few of the faithful, touched with her piety, raised a chapel to her memory in the isle of Zealand, near a fountain, which is still called the Fountain of St. Helena. The Christians of the North for a long time went in pilgrimage to this island, where they contemplated a grotto which Helena had inhabited before her departure for Jerusalem.

Among the celebrated pilgrims of this age, we observe the name of Robert II., duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror. History accuses him of having caused his brother Richard to be poisoned. Remorse urged him to make the pilgrimage to Palestine; and he set out accompanied by a great number of knights and barons, bearing the scrip and staff, walking barefoot, and clothed in the sack of penitence. He attached, he said, more value to the pains he suffered for Christ’s sake than to the richest city of his dukedom. On his arrival at Constantinople, he despised the luxury and the presents of the emperor, and appeared at court in the guise of the humblest of the pilgrims. Having fallen sick in Asia Minor, he refused the services of the Christians of his suite, and caused himself to be carried in a litter by Saracens. Meeting a pilgrim from Normandy, the latter asked him if he had any message that he could deliver for him to his country. “Go and tell my people,” said the duke, “that you have seen a Christian prince being carried to Paradise by devils.” When he arrived at Jerusalem, he found a crowd of pilgrims, who, not having the means of paying the tribute to the infidels, awaited the arrival of some rich lord who might deign, by his charity, to open for them the gates of the holy city. Robert paid a piece of gold for each of them, and followed them into Jerusalem amidst the acclamations of the Christians. During his sojourn here he caused himself to be remarked for his devotion, and still more for his charity, which he extended even to the infidels. As he was returning into Europe, he died at Nicea, in Bithynia, regarding only the relics he had brought with him from Palestine, and regretting that he had not finished his days in the holy city.

The greatest blessing for the pilgrims, and that which they demanded of Heaven as a reward for their labours and fatigues, was to die, like Jesus Christ, in the holy city. When they presented themselves before the holy sepulchre, they were accustomed to offer up this prayer: “Thou who died for us, and wast buried in this holy spot, take pity of our misery, and withdraw us at once from this valley of tears.” History tells of a Christian, born in the territory of Autun, who, on his arrival at Jerusalem, sought death in the excess of his fastings and mortifications. One day he remained a long time in prayer on the Mount of Olives, with his eyes and his hands raised towards heaven, whither God seemed to call him. On his return to the hospital of the pilgrims, he cried three times, “Glory to thee, oh God!”[31] and died suddenly in the sight of his companions, who envied him his fate, and believed themselves witnesses of a miracle.

The inclination to acquire holiness by the journey to Jerusalem became at length so general, that the troops of pilgrims alarmed by their numbers the countries through which they passed, and although they came not as soldiers, they were designated “the armies of the Lord.” In the year 1054, Litbert, bishop of Cambrai, set out for the Holy Land, followed by more than three thousand pilgrims from the provinces of Picardy and Flanders.[32] When he began his march, the people and the clergy accompanied him three leagues from the city, and with eyes bathed in tears, implored of God the happy return of their bishop and their brethren. The pilgrims traversed Germany without encountering any enemies, but on reaching Bulgaria, they found none but men who inhabited the forests and subsisted upon plunder. Many were massacred by these barbarous people, and some perished with hunger in the midst of the deserts. Litbert arrived with much difficulty at Laodicea, embarked with those who followed him, and was cast upon the coast of Cyprus by a tempest. He had seen the greater part of his companions perish, and the remainder were nearly sinking under their various miseries. Returned to Laodicea, they learnt that still greater dangers awaited them on the route to Jerusalem. The bishop of Cambrai felt his courage abandon him, and believed that God himself was opposed to his pilgrimage. He returned through a thousand dangers to his diocese, where he built a church in honour of the holy sepulchre, which he had never seen.

Ten years after the voyage of Litbert, seven thousand Christians, among whom were the archbishop of Mayence, and the bishops of Spires, Cologne, Bamberg, and Utrecht, set out together from the banks of the Rhine, to repair to Palestine. This numerous caravan, which was the forerunner of the Crusades,[33] crossed Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was welcomed at Constantinople by the emperor Constantine Ducas. After having visited the churches of Byzantium, and the numerous relics which were the objects of the veneration of the Greeks, the pilgrims of the West traversed Asia Minor and Syria without danger; but when they approached Jerusalem, the sight of their riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs, undisciplined hordes, who had neither country nor settled abode, and who had rendered themselves formidable in the civil wars of the East. The Arabs attacked the pilgrims of the West, and compelled them to sustain a siege in an abandoned village; and this was on a Good Friday. On such a sacred day, the pilgrims even who had arms employed them with much hesitation and scruple. Enclosed within the ruins of an old castle, they resisted for a time, but on the third day famine compelled them to capitulate. When they came to the arrangement of the conditions of the peace, there arose a violent quarrel, which was near leading to the massacre of all the Christians by the Arabs. The emir of Ramala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their rescue, delivered them from the death with which they were threatened, and permitted them to continue their journey. As the report of their combats and their perils had preceded them, their arrival created a great sensation in Jerusalem. They were received in triumph by the patriarch, and conducted, to the sound of timbrels and by the light of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. During their abode at Jerusalem, the misery into which they were fallen excited the pity of the Christians. They could not visit the banks of the Jordan, or the places most renowned in Judea, as these were all now infested by the Arabs and exposed to their incursions. After having lost more than three thousand of their companions, they returned to Europe, to relate their tragical adventures, and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[34]

New perils and the most violent persecutions at this period threatened both the pilgrims of the West and the Christians of Palestine. Asia was about once again to change masters, and tremble beneath a fresh tyranny. During several centuries, the rich countries of the East had been subject to continual invasions from the wild hordes of Tartary. As fast as the victorious tribes became effeminated by luxury and prosperity, they were replaced by others retaining all the barbarism of the deserts. The Turks issuing from countries situated beyond the Oxus, had rendered themselves masters of Persia, where the uncalculating policy of Mamouh had received and encouraged their wandering tribes. The son of Mamouh fought a battle with them, in which he performed prodigies of valour; “but fortune,” says Feristha, “had declared herself unpropitious to his arms; he looked around during the fight, and except the body which he immediately commanded, his whole army had devoured the paths of flight.” Upon the very theatre of their victory the Turks proceeded to the election of a king. A large number of arrows were collected into a bundle. Upon each of these arrows was inscribed the name of a tribe, of a family, and of a warrior. A child drew three of the arrows in the presence of the whole army, and chance assigned the throne to Togrul-Beg, grandson of Seldjouc. Togrul-Beg, whose ambition equalled his courage, embraced, together with his soldiers, the faith of Mahomet, and soon joined to the title of conqueror that of protector of the Mussulman religion.

The banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates were then troubled by the revolt of the emirs, who shared the spoils of the caliphs of Bagdad: the caliph Cayem implored the assistance of Togrul, and promised the conquest of Asia to the new master of Persia. Togrul, whom he had named his temporal vicar, marched at the head of an army, dispersed the factious and the rebellious, ravaged the provinces, and entered Bagdad, to prostrate himself at the feet of the caliph, who proclaimed the triumph of his liberators and their sacred claims to the empire. In the midst of an imposing ceremony, Togrul was successively clothed with seven robes of honour; and seven slaves born in the seven climates of Arabia were presented to him. Two crowns were placed upon his head, and, as an emblem of his dominion over the East and the West, they girded him with two scimitars. This ceremony rendered the usurpation of the Turks legitimate in the eyes of the Mussulmans. The empire which the vicar of Mahomet pointed out to their ambition was speedily conquered by their arms. Under the reign of Alp-Arsland, and that of Malek-Scha, the successors of Togrul, the seven branches of the dynasty of Seldjouc shared amongst them the largest kingdoms of Asia. Thirty years had scarcely passed away since the Tartars conquered Persia, and already their military and pastoral colonies extended from the Oxus to the Euphrates, and from the Indus to the Hellespont.

One of the lieutenants of Malek-Scha carried the terror of his arms to the banks of the Nile, and wrested Syria from the hands of the Fatimite caliphs. Palestine yielded to the power of the Turks, and the black flag of the Abassides floated triumphantly over the walls of Jerusalem. The conquerors spared neither the Christians nor the children of Aly, whom the caliph of Bagdad represented to be the enemies of God. The Egyptian garrison was massacred, and the mosques and the churches were delivered up to pillage. The holy city was flooded with the blood of Christians and Mussulmans.

The possession of Jerusalem in no degree arrested the barbarous fury of the Turks. As their empire was recent and ill-established, as they were threatened with the armies of Cairo, and even with those of the West, their tyranny became restless, jealous, and violent. The Christians trembled under the hardest and most humiliating subjugation; they were despoiled of their property, and reduced to the most frightful degree of misery. They underwent much greater evils than they had suffered during the reign of Hakim.

A great number of those who had quitted their families and their country to visit the tomb of Christ, lost their lives before they were able to enjoy the felicity of saluting the holy city; and they who arrived at Jerusalem after having escaped a thousand dangers, found themselves exposed to the insults and cruelties of the new masters of Judea. The pilgrims of the Latin Church who returned into Europe, related all that they had suffered in their voyage, and told, with groans, of the outrages committed upon the religion of Christ. They had seen the holy sepulchre profaned, and the ceremonies of the Christians become the sport of the infidels; they had seen the patriarchs of Jerusalem and the venerable guardians of the holy places dragged from their sanctuary and cast ignominiously into dungeons. These recitals, exaggerated by repetition, flew from mouth to mouth, and drew tears from the eyes of the faithful.

Whilst the Turks, under the command of Toutousch and Ortock, were desolating Syria and Palestine, other tribes of that nation, led by Soliman, nephew of Malek-Scha, had penetrated into Asia Minor. They took possession of all the provinces through which pilgrims were accustomed to pass on their way to Jerusalem. These countries, in which the Christian religion had first shone forth, and the greater part of the Greek cities whose names were conspicuous in the annals of the primitive church, sunk under the yoke of the infidels. The standard of the prophet floated over the walls of Edessa, Iconium, Tarsus, and Antioch. Nicea had become the seat of a Mussulman empire, and the divinity of Christ was insulted in that city wherein the first œcumenic council had declared it to be an article of faith. The modesty of the virgins had been sacrificed to the brutal lust of the conquerors. Thousands of children had been circumcised.[35] Everywhere the laws of the Koran took place of those of the Evangelists and of Greece. The black or white tents of the Turks covered the plains and the mountains of Bithynia and Cappadocia, and their flocks pastured among the ruins of the monasteries and churches.

The Greeks had never had to contend against more cruel and terrible enemies than the Turks. Whilst the court of Alp-Arslan and Malek-Scha blazed with magnificence and cultivated the knowledge and intelligence of the ancient Persians, the rest of the people remained in a state of barbarism, and preserved, amidst the conquered nations, all the ferocious and savage manners of Tartary. The children of Seldjouc loved better to abide under their tents than in the walls of cities; they lived upon the milk of their flocks, disdaining both agriculture and commerce, in the conviction that war would supply all their wants. For themselves, their home was every region in which their arms could prevail and their flocks find rich pastures. When they passed from one country into another, all the members of the same family marched together; they took with them all that they loved, and all that they possessed. A constantly wandering life, and frequent quarrels among themselves and with their neighbours, kept up their military spirit. Every warrior carried his name inscribed upon his javelin, and swore to make it respected by his enemies. So eager were the Turks for battle, that it was quite sufficient if a chief sent his bow or his arrows among his tribe, to make them all instantly fly to arms.

The patience with which they supported hunger, thirst, and fatigue, rendered them invincible. No nation of the East surpassed them in horsemanship, or in skill with the bow; nothing could exceed the impetuosity of their attack, and they were at the same time redoubtable in flight, and implacable in victory. They were not guided in their expeditions by a desire for glory or a sense of honour, but simply by a love of destruction and pillage.

The report of their invasions had spread among the nations of Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and new migrations appeared to arrive every day to strengthen their armies. As they were docile in war, and turbulent and rebellious in peace, it was the policy of their chiefs to lead them constantly on to new conquests. Malek-Scha, with a view to get rid of his lieutenants rather than to reward them, had given them permission to attempt the conquest of the lands of the Greeks and Egyptians. It was an easy matter to raise armies, to which were promised the spoils of the enemies of the prophet and his legitimate vicar. All who had not shared in the booty of preceding wars flocked to the standards, and the wealth of Greece soon became the prey of Turkish horsemen, who had but recently issued from their deserts with woollen caps and stirrups of wood. Of all the hordes subject to the dynasty of Seldjouc the troops that invaded Syria and Asia Minor were the poorest, the most wild, and the most intrepid.

In the depth of their misery, the Greeks of the conquered provinces scarcely dared to lift their eyes to the sovereigns of Byzantium, who had not had the courage to defend them, and therefore left them no hope that they would assist them in their troubles. In the midst of revolutions and civil wars, the Greek empire was hastening to its fall. Since the reign of Heraclius, Constantinople had seen eleven of its emperors put to death in their own palace. Six of these masters of the world had terminated their days in the obscurity of cloisters; several had been mutilated, deprived of sight, and sent into exile; the purple, stained and degraded by so many revolutions, decorated only wicked and contemptible princes, or men without character or virtue. Their whole employment was their own personal safety; and they were compelled to share their power with the accomplices of their crimes, of whom they lived in a constant state of dread. They frequently sacrificed cities and provinces, to purchase from their enemies a few moments of security, and appeared to have nothing to ask of fortune beyond the existence of the empire during their own worthless lives.

The Greeks still cherished great names and great remembrances, of which they were proud, but which only served to show their present weakness and degradation. In the midst of the luxury of Asia and the monuments of Greece and Rome, they were scarcely less barbarous than other nations. In their theological disputes they had lost the true spirit of the Evangelists; among them everything was corrupted, even religion. A universal bigotry, says Montesquieu, depressed their courage and paralyzed the whole empire. They neglected the dangers of their country, and became zealots for a relic or for a sect. In war, superstition pointed out to the Greeks lucky and unlucky days, in which a general ought or ought not to give battle; and as religion inspired in them nothing beyond an apathetic resignation in reverses, they consoled themselves for the loss of provinces by accusing their inhabitants of heresy.

Among the Greeks, stratagem and perfidy were decorated with the name of policy, and received the same encomiums as valour; they esteemed it as glorious to deceive their enemies as to conquer them. Their soldiers were followed to the seat of war by light chariots, which carried their arms; and they had perfected every machine which could supply the place of courage in either sieges or battles. Their armies displayed great military pomp, but were deficient in soldiers. The only thing they inherited from their ancestors was a turbulent and seditious spirit, which mixed itself with their effeminated manners, and was sure to break out when their country was threatened with danger. Discord unceasingly reigned among both the army and the people; and they continued madly to dispute the right to an empire whose very existence was menaced, and blindly gave up its defence to barbarians and strangers. In short, the corruption of the Greeks was so great, that they could neither have endured a good prince nor good laws. Nicephorus Phocas, who had formed the project of re-establishing discipline, died assassinated. Zimisces had also paid with his life for his efforts to rouse the Greeks from their pusillanimous degradation. When the emperor Romanus-Diogenes was made prisoner by the Turks, his misfortunes were the signal for a fresh revolt against his person. Sent back with honours by the sultan of Persia, he met with nothing but executioners in an empire he had endeavoured to defend, and died with misery and despair in a desert island of the Propontis.

Whilst the empire of the East approached near to its fall, and appeared sapped by time and corruption, the institutions of the West were in their infancy. The empire and the laws of Charlemagne no longer existed. Nations had no relations with each other, and mistaking their political interests, made wars without considering their consequences or their dangers, and concluded peace, without being at all aware whether it was advantageous or not. Royal authority was nowhere sufficiently strong to arrest the progress of anarchy and the abuses of feudalism. At the same time that Europe was full of soldiers, and covered with strong castles, the states themselves were without support against their enemies, and had not an army to defend them. In the midst of general confusion, there was no security but in camps and fortresses, by turns the safeguards and the terror of the towns and the country. The largest cities held out no asylum to liberty, and the life of man was reckoned so trifling an object, that impunity for murder could be purchased with a few pieces of money. Frequently, to detect crime, the judges had recourse to water, fire, and iron; upon the blind and dumb evidence of the elements, victims were condemned to death; it was sword in hand that justice was invoked; it was by the sword that the reparation of wrongs and injuries was to be obtained. No one would then have been understood who would have spoken of the rights of nature, or the rights of man; the language of the barons and the lords comprised only such words as treated of war; war was the only science, the only policy of either princes or states.

Nevertheless, this barbarism of the nations of the West did not at all resemble that of the Turks, whose religion and manners repelled every species of civilization or cultivation, nor that of the Greeks, who were nothing but a corrupted and degenerated people. Whilst the one exhibited all the vices of a state almost savage, and the other all the corruption of decay; something heroical and generous was mingled with the barbarous manners of the Franks, which resembled the passions of youth, and gave promise of a better future. The Turks were governed by a gross barbarism, which made them despise all that was noble or great; the Greeks were possessed by a learned and polished barbarism, which filled them with disdain for heroism or the military virtues. The Franks were as brave as the Turks, and set a higher value on glory than any other people. The principle of honour, which gave birth to chivalry in Europe, directed their bravery, and sometimes assumed the guise of justice and virtue.

The Christian religion, which the Greeks had reduced to little formulæ and the vain practices of superstition, was, with them, incapable of inspiring either great designs or noble thoughts. Among the nations of the West, as they were yet unacquainted with the disputed dogmas of Christianity, it had more empire over their minds, it disposed their hearts more to enthusiasm, and formed amongst them, at once, both saints and heroes.

Although religion might not always preach its doctrines with success, and its influence was subject to abuse, it had a tendency to soften the manners of the barbarous people that had invaded Europe; it afforded a holy authority to the weak; it inspired a salutary fear in the strong, and frequently corrected the injustice of human laws.

In the midst of the darkness which covered Europe, the Christian religion alone preserved the memory of times past, and kept up some degree of emulation among men. It preserved, also, for happier days, the language of the royal people, the only one capable of expressing the grand and noble ideas of moral virtue, in which the genius of legislation had elevated its most splendid monuments. Whilst despotism and anarchy pervaded the cities and the kingdoms of the West, the people invoked religion against tyranny, and the princes called in its aid against license and revolt. Often, mid the troubles of states, the title of Christian inspired more respect, and awakened more enthusiasm than did the name of citizen in ancient Rome. As the Christian religion had preceded all the then existing institutions, it naturally remained for a long time surrounded by the veneration and love of the people. Under more than one relation the nations appeared to recognise no other legislators than the fathers of the councils, no other code than that of the gospel and the holy Scriptures. Europe might be considered as a religious society, wherein the preservation of the faith was the principal interest, and in which men belonged more to the church than to the country. In such a state of things it was easy to inflame the minds of the people, by showing them that the cause of religion and of Christians stood in need of defence.

Ten years before the invasion of Asia Minor by the Turks, Michael Ducas, the successor of Romanus-Diogenes, had implored the assistance of the pope and the princes of the West. He had promised to remove all the barriers which separated the Greek from the Roman Church, if the Latins would take up arms against the infidels. Gregory VII. then filled the chair of St. Peter, and his talents, his knowledge, his activity, his boldness, together with the inflexibility of his character, rendered him capable of the greatest undertakings. The hope of extending the religion and the empire of the Holy See into the East, made him receive kindly the humble supplications of Michael Ducas. He exhorted the faithful to take up arms against the Mussulmans, and engaged to lead them himself into Asia. The misfortunes of the Christians of the East, said he, in his letters, had moved him even to feel a contempt for death; he would rather expose his life to deliver the holy places, than live to command the entire universe. Excited by his discourses, fifty thousand pilgrims agreed to follow Gregory to Constantinople, and thence to Syria; but he kept not the promise he had made, and the affairs of Europe, in which the ambition of the pontiff was more interested than in those of Asia, suspended the execution of his projects.

Every day the power of the popes was augmented by the progress of Christianity, and by the ever-increasing influence of the Latin clergy. Rome was become a second time the capital of the world, and appeared to have resumed, under the monk Hildebrand, the empire it had enjoyed under the Cæsars. Armed with the two-edged sword of Peter, Gregory loudly proclaimed that all the kingdoms of the earth were under the dominion of the Holy See, and that his authority ought to be as universal as the church of which he was the head. These dangerous pretensions, fostered by the opinions of his age, engaged him immediately in violent disputes with the emperor of Germany. He desired also to dictate laws to France, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and England; and thinking of nothing but making himself acknowledged as the great arbiter of states, he launched his anathemas even against the throne of Constantinople, which he had undertaken to defend, and gave no more attention to the deliverance of Jerusalem.

After the death of Gregory, Victor III., although he pursued the policy of his predecessor, and had at the same time to contend against the emperor of Germany and the party of the anti-pope Guibert, did not neglect the opportunity of making war against the Mussulmans. The Saracens, inhabiting Africa,[36] disturbed the navigation of the Mediterranean, and threatened the coast of Italy. Victor invited the Christians to take arms, and promised them the remission of all their sins if they went to fight against the infidels. The inhabitants of Pisa, Genoa, and several other cities, urged by their zeal for religion, and their desire to defend their commerce, equipped fleets, levied troops, and made a descent upon the coasts of Africa, where, if we are to believe the chronicles of the time, they cut in pieces an army of one hundred thousand Saracens. That we may not doubt, says Baronius, that God interested himself in the cause of the Christians, on the very day on which the Italians triumphed over the enemies of Christ, the news of the victory was carried miraculously beyond the seas. After having given up to the flames two cities, Al-Mahadia and Sibila,[37] built within the territories of ancient Carthage, and forced a king of Mauritania to pay a tribute to the Holy See, the Genoese and the Pisans returned to Italy, where the spoils of the conquered were employed in ornamenting the churches.

The pope Victor, however, died without realizing his promise of attacking the infidels in Asia. The glory of delivering Jerusalem belonged to a simple pilgrim, possessed of no other power than the influence of his character and his genius. Some assign an obscure origin to Peter the Hermit; others say he was descended from a noble family of Picardy; but all agree that he had an ignoble and vulgar exterior. Born with a restless, active spirit, he sought, in all conditions of life, for an object which he could meet with in none. The study of letters, bearing arms, celibacy, marriage, the ecclesiastical state, offered nothing to him that could fill his heart or satisfy his ardent mind. Disgusted with the world and mankind, he retired amongst the most austere cenobites. Fasting, prayer, meditation, the silence of solitude, exalted his imagination. In his visions he kept up an habitual commerce with heaven, and believed himself the instrument of its designs, and the depositary of its will. He possessed the fervour of an apostle, with the courage of a martyr. His zeal gave way to no obstacle, and all that he desired seemed easy of attainment. When he spoke, the passions with which he was agitated animated his gestures and his words, and communicated themselves to his auditors.[38] Such was the extraordinary man who gave the signal to the Crusaders, and who, without fortune and without name, by the ascendancy of his tears and prayers alone, succeeded in moving the West to precipitate itself in a mass upon Asia.

The fame of the pilgrimages to the East drew Peter from his retreat, and he followed into Palestine the crowd of Christians who went to visit the holy places. The sight of Jerusalem excited him much more than any of the other pilgrims, for it created in his ardent mind a thousand conflicting sentiments. In the city, which exhibited everywhere marks of the mercy and the auger of God, all objects inflamed his piety, irritated his devotion and his zeal, and filled him by turns with respect, terror, and indignation. After having followed his brethren to Calvary and the tomb of Christ, he repaired to the patriarch of Jerusalem. The white hairs of Simeon, his venerable figure, and, above all, the persecution which he had undergone, bespoke the full confidence of Peter, and they wept together over the ills of the Christians. The hermit, his heart torn, his face bathed in tears, asked if there was no termination to be looked for, no remedy to be devised, for so many calamities? “Oh, most faithful of Christians!” replied the patriarch, “is it not plain that our iniquities have shut us out from all access to the mercy of the Lord? All Asia is in the power of the Mussulmans, all the East is sunk into a state of slavery; no power on earth can assist us.” At these words Peter interrupted Simeon, and pointed out to him the hope that the warriors of the West might one day be the liberators of Jerusalem. “Yes, without doubt,” replied the patriarch, “when the measure of our afflictions shall be full, when God will be moved by our miseries, he will soften the hearts of the princes of the West, and will send them to the succour of the holy city.” At these words Peter and Simeon felt their hearts expand with hope, and embraced each other, shedding tears of joy. The patriarch resolved to implore, by his letters, the help of the pope and the princes of Europe, and the hermit swore to be the interpreter of the Christians of the East, and to rouse the West to take arms for their deliverance.

After this interview, the enthusiasm of Peter knew no bounds; he was persuaded that Heaven itself called upon him to avenge its cause. One day, whilst prostrated before the holy sepulchre, he believed that he heard the voice of Christ, which said to him, “Peter, arise! hasten to proclaim the tribulations of my people; it is time that my servants should receive help, and that the holy places should be delivered.” Full of the spirit of these words, which sounded unceasingly in his ears, and charged with letters from the patriarch, he quitted Palestine, crossed the seas, landed on the coast of Italy, and hastened to cast himself at the feet of the pope. The chair of St. Peter was then occupied by Urban II., who had been the disciple and confidant of both Gregory and Victor. Urban embraced with ardour a project which had been entertained by his predecessors; he received Peter as a prophet, applauded his design, and bade him go forth and announce the approaching deliverance of Jerusalem.

Peter the Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, visited all parts of France, and the greatest portion of Europe, inflaming all hearts with the same zeal that consumed his own. He travelled mounted on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girded with a thick cord, covered with a long frock, and a hermit’s hood of the coarsest stuff. The singularity of his appearance was a spectacle for the people, whilst the austerity of his manners, his charity, and the moral doctrines that he preached, caused him to be revered as a saint wherever he came.

He went from city to city, from province to province, working upon the courage of some, and upon the piety of others; sometimes haranguing from the pulpits of the churches, sometimes preaching in the high roads or public places. His eloquence was animated and impressive, and filled with those vehement apostrophes which produce such effects upon an uncultivated multitude. He described the profanation of the holy places, and the blood of the Christians shed in torrents in the streets of Jerusalem. He invoked, by turns, Heaven, the saints, the angels, whom he called upon to bear witness to the truth of what he told them. He apostrophized Mount Sion, the rock of Calvary, and the Mount of Olives, which he made to resound with sobs and groans. When he had exhausted speech in painting the miseries of the faithful, he showed the spectators the crucifix which he carried with him; sometimes striking his breast and wounding his flesh, sometimes shedding torrents of tears.

The people followed the steps of Peter in crowds. The preacher of the holy war was received everywhere as a messenger from God. They who could touch his vestments esteemed themselves happy, and a portion of hair pulled from the mule he rode was preserved as a holy relic. At the sound of his voice, differences in families were reconciled, the poor were comforted, the debauched blushed at their errors, nothing was talked of but the virtues of the eloquent cenobite; his austerities and his miracles were described, and his discourses were repeated to those who had not heard him, and been edified by his presence.

He often met, in his journeys, with Christians from the East, who had been banished from their country, and wandered over Europe, subsisting on charity. Peter the Hermit presented them to the people, as living evidences of the barbarity of the infidels; and pointing to the rags with which they were clothed, he burst into torrents of invectives against their oppressors and persecutors. At the sight of these miserable wretches, the faithful felt, by turns, the most lively emotions of pity, and the fury of vengeance; all deploring in their hearts the miseries and the disgrace of Jerusalem. The people raised their voices towards heaven, to entreat God to deign to cast a look of pity upon his beloved city; some offering their riches, others their prayers, but all promising to lay down their lives for the deliverance of the holy places.

In the midst of this general excitement, Alexius Comnena, who was threatened by the Turks, sent ambassadors to the pope, to solicit the assistance of the Latins. Some time before this embassy he had addressed letters to the princes of the West, in which he had described to them, in a most lamentable manner, the conquests of the Turks in Asia Minor. These savage hordes, in their debauches and in the intoxication of victory, had outraged both nature and humanity.[39] They were now at the gates of Byzantium, and, without the prompt assistance of all the Christian states, Constantinople must fall under the most frightful domination of the Turks. Alexius reminded the princes of Christianity of the holy relics preserved in Constantinople, and conjured them to save so sacred an assemblage of venerated objects from the profanation of the infidels. After having set forth the splendour and the riches of his capital, he exhorted the knights and barons to come and defend them; he offered them his treasures as the reward of their valour, and painted in glowing colours the beauty of the Greek women, whose love would repay the exploits of his liberators. Thus, nothing was spared that could flatter the passions, or arouse the enthusiasm of the warriors of the West. The invasion of the Turks was, in the eyes of Alexius, the greatest misfortune that the chief of a Christian kingdom had to dread; and to avert such a danger, everything appeared to him just and allowable. He could support the idea of losing his crown, but not the shame of seeing his states subjected to the laws of Mahomet: if he was doomed one day to lose his empire, he could console himself for that loss, provided Greece escaped the Mussulman yoke, and became the prize of the Latins.

In compliance with the prayers of Alexius and the wishes of the faithful, the sovereign pontiff convoked a council at Plaisance, in order there to expose the dangers of the Greek and Latin Churches in the East. The preachings of Peter had so prepared the minds and animated the zeal of the faithful, that more than two hundred bishops and archbishops, four thousand ecclesiastics, and thirty thousand of the laity obeyed the invitation of the Holy See. The council was so numerous that it was obliged to be held in a plain in the neighbourhood of the city.

At this assembly all eyes were turned upon the ambassadors of Alexius; their presence in the midst of a Latin council, announced sufficiently plainly the disastrous condition of the East. When they had exhorted the princes and the warriors to save Constantinople and Jerusalem, Urban supported their discourse and their prayers with all the reasons which the interests of Christianity and the cause of religion could furnish. The council of Plaisance, however, came to no determination upon the war against the infidels. The deliverance of the Holy Land was far from being the only object of this council: the declarations of the empress Adelaide, who came to reveal her own shame, and that of her husband, anathemas against the emperor of Germany and the anti-pope, Guibert, occupied, during several days, the attention of Urban and the assembled fathers.

It must be added, too, that among the states of Italy, in which country this council was held, the spirit of commerce and liberty began to weaken the enthusiasm of religion. The greater part of the cities only thought of the advantages that might accrue to them from the troubles; some entertaining hopes they would increase their wealth, others looking to them as a means of securing their independence, and none yielding so freely as other nations to the influence of the popes. Whilst the Christian world revered in Urban the formidable successor of Gregory, the Italians, whose charity he had frequently implored, were best acquainted with his disgraces and misfortunes: his presence did not in any degree warm their zeal, and his decrees were not always laws for them, who had seen him, from the depths of misery and in exile, launch his thunders against the thrones of the West.

The prudent Urban avoided trying to arouse the ardour of the Italians; he did not think their example at all likely to lead on other nations. In order to take a decided part in the civil war, and to interest all Europe in its success, he resolved to assemble a second synod, in the bosom of a warlike nation, which, from the most distant times, had been accustomed to give impulsion to Europe. The new council assembled at Clermont, in Auvergne, was neither less numerous nor respectable than that of Plaisance; the most renowned holy men and learned doctors came to honour it with their presence, and enlighten it with their counsels. The city of Clermont was scarcely able to contain within its walls all the princes, ambassadors, and prelates who had repaired to the council; “so that,” says an ancient chronicle,[40] “towards the middle of the month of November, the cities and villages of the neighbourhood were so filled with people, that they were compelled to erect tents and pavilions in the fields and meadows, although the season and the country were extremely cold.”

Before it gave up its attention to the holy war, the council at first considered the reform of the clergy and ecclesiastical discipline; and it then occupied itself in placing a restraint upon the license of wars among individuals. In these barbarous times even simple knights never thought of redressing their injuries by any other means than arms. It was not an uncommon thing to see families, for the slightest causes, commence a war against each other that would last during several generations; Europe was distracted with troubles occasioned by these hostilities. In the impotence of the laws and the governments, the Church often exerted its salutary influence to restore tranquillity: several councils had placed their interdict upon private wars during four days of the week, and their decrees had invoked the vengeance of Heaven against disturbers of the public peace. The council of Clermont renewed the truce of God, and threatened all who refused “to accept peace and justice” with the thunders of the Church. One of its decrees placed widows, orphans, merchants, and labourers under the safeguard of religion. They declared, as they had already done in other councils, that the churches should be so many inviolable sanctuaries, and that crosses, even, placed upon the high roads should become points of refuge against violence.

Humanity and reason must applaud such salutary decrees; but the sovereign pontiff, although he presented himself as the defender of the sanctity of marriage, did not merit the same praises when he pronounced in this council an anathema against Philip I.: but such was then the general infatuation, that no one was astonished that a king of France should be excommunicated in the very bosom of his own kingdom. The sentence of Urban could not divert attention from an object that seemed much more imposing, and the excommunication of Philip scarcely holds a place in the history of the council of Clermont. The faithful, gathered from all the provinces, had but one single thought; they spoke of nothing but the evils the Christians endured in Palestine, and saw nothing but the war which was about to be declared against the infidels. Enthusiasm and fanaticism, which always increase in large assemblies, were carried to their full height. Urban at length satisfied the impatience of the faithful, impatience which he, perhaps, had adroitly excited, and which was the surest guarantee of success.

The council held its tenth sitting in the great square or place of Clermont, which was soon filled by an immense crowd. Followed by his cardinals, the pope ascended a species of throne which had been prepared for him; at his side was Peter the Hermit, clad in that whimsical and uncouth garb which had everywhere drawn upon him the attention and the respect of the multitude. The apostle of the holy war spoke first of the outrages committed against the religion of Christ; he reverted to the profanations and the sacrileges of which he had been a witness; he pictured the torments and persecutions which a people, enemies to God and man, had caused those to suffer who had been led by religion to visit the holy places. He had seen, he said, Christians loaded with irons, dragged into slavery, or harnessed to the yoke, like the vilest animals; he had seen the oppressors of Jerusalem sell to the children of Christ permission to salute the temple of their God, tear from them even the bread of their misery, and torment their poverty itself to obtain their tribute; he had seen the ministers of God dragged from their sanctuaries, beaten with rods, and condemned to an ignominious death. Whilst describing the misfortunes and degradation of the Christians, the countenance of Peter was cast down, and exhibited feelings of consternation and horror; his voice was choked with sobs; his lively emotion penetrated every heart.

Urban, who spoke after Peter, represented, as he had done, the holy places as profaned by the domination of the infidels. That land, consecrated by the presence of the Saviour, that mountain whereon he expiated our sins by his sufferings,—that tomb in which he deigned to be enclosed as a victim to death, had all become the heritage of the impious. The altars of false prophets were raised within those walls which had contained the august assembly of the apostles. God had no longer a sanctuary in his own city; the East, the cradle of the Christian religion, now witnessed nothing but sacrilegious pomps; impiety had spread its darkness over all the richest countries of Asia. Antioch, Ephesus, Nicea, had become Mussulman cities; the Turks had carried their ravages and their odious dominion even to the Straits of the Hellespont, to the very gates of Constantinople, and from thence they threatened the West.

The sovereign pontiff[41] addressed himself to all the nations that were represented at the council, and particularly to the French, who formed the majority: “Nation beloved by God,” said he, “it is in your courage that the Christian church has placed its hope; it is because I am well acquainted with your piety and your bravery, that I have crossed the Alps, and am come to preach the word of God in these countries. You have not forgotten that the land you inhabit has been invaded by the Saracens, and that but for the exploits of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, France would have received the laws of Mahomet. Recall, without ceasing, to your minds the danger and the glory of your fathers; led by heroes whose names should never die, they delivered your country, they saved the West from shameful slavery. More noble triumphs await you, under the guidance of the God of armies; you will deliver Europe and Asia; you will save the city of Jesus Christ,—that Jerusalem which was chosen by the Lord, and from whence the law is come to us.”

As Urban proceeded, the sentiments by which he was animated penetrated to the very souls of his auditors. When he spoke of the captivity and the misfortunes of Jerusalem, the whole assembly was dissolved in tears; when he described the tyranny and the perfidy of the infidels, the warriors who listened to him clutched their swords, and swore in their hearts to avenge the cause of the Christians. Urban redoubled their enthusiasm by announcing that God had chosen them to accomplish his designs, and exhorted them to turn those arms against the Mussulmans which they now bore in conflict against their brothers. They were not now called upon to revenge the injuries of men, but injuries offered to divinity; it was now not the conquest of a town or a castle that was offered to them as the reward of their valour, but the riches of Asia, the possession of a land in which, according to the promises of the Scriptures, flowed streams of milk and honey.

The pontiff sought to awaken in their minds, by turns, ambition, the love of glory, religious enthusiasm, and pity for their Christian brethren. “There scarcely exists,” said he, “a Christian family into which the Mussulmans have not brought mourning and despair. How many Christians every year leave the West, to find in Asia nothing but slavery or death! Bishops have been delivered over to the executioner; the virgins of the Lord have been outraged; holy places have been despoiled of their ornaments; the offerings of piety have become the booty of the enemies of God; the children of the faithful have forgotten in bondage the faith of their fathers, and bear upon their bodies the impression of their opprobrium. Witnesses of so many calamities, the Christians of Jerusalem would long since have left the holy city, if they had not imposed upon themselves the obligation of succouring and consoling pilgrims, if they had not feared to leave without priests, without altars, without worshippers, a land where still smokes the blood of Jesus Christ.

“I will not seek to dry the tears which images so painful for a Christian, for a minister of religion, for the common father of the faithful, must draw from you. Let us weep, my brethren, let us weep over the errors which have armed the anger of God against us; let us weep over the captivity of the holy city! But evil be to us, if, in our sterile pity, we longer leave the heritage of the Lord in the hands of the impious! Why should we taste here a moment’s repose whilst the children of Jesus Christ live in the midst of torments, and the queen of cities groans in chains?

“Christian warriors, who seek without end for vain pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have to-day found true ones. You, who have been so often the terror of your fellow-citizens, go and fight against the barbarians, go and fight for the deliverance of the holy places; you who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Machabees, go and merit an eternal reward. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdoms of the East will be your heritage; if you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will not forget that he shall have found you in his holy ranks. This is the moment to prove that you are animated by a true courage; this is the moment in which you may expiate so many violences committed in the bosom of peace, so many victories purchased at the expense of justice and humanity. If you must have blood, bathe your hands in the blood of the infidels. I speak to you with harshness, because my ministry obliges me to do so: SOLDIERS OF HELL, BECOME SOLDIERS OF THE LIVING GOD! When Jesus Christ summons you to his defence, let no base affections detain you in your homes; see nothing but the shame and the evils of the Christians; listen to nothing but the groans of Jerusalem, and remember well what the Lord has said to you: ‘He who loves his father and his mother more than me, is not worthy of me; whoever will abandon his house, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his children, or his inheritance, for the sake of my name, shall be recompensed a hundredfold, and possess life eternal.’”

At these words the auditors of Urban displayed an enthusiasm that human eloquence had never before inspired. The assembly arose in one mass as one man, and answered him with a unanimous cry, “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”[42] “Yes, without doubt, it is the will of God,” continued the eloquent Urban; “you to-day see the accomplishment of the word of our Saviour, who promised to be in the midst of the faithful, when assembled in his name; it is He who has dictated to you the words that I have heard. Let them be your war-cry, and let them announce everywhere the presence of the God of armies.” On finishing these words, the pontiff exhibited to the assembled Christians, the sign of their redemption. “It is Christ himself,” said he to them, “who issues from his tomb, and presents to you his cross: it will be the sign raised among the nations, which is to gather together again the dispersed children of Israel. Wear it upon your shoulders and upon your breasts; let it shine upon your arms and upon your standards; it will be to you the surety of victory or the palm of martyrdom; it will unceasingly remind you that Christ died for you, and that it is your duty to die for him.”

When Urban had ceased to speak, loud acclamations burst from the multitude. Pity, indignation, despair, at the same time agitated the tumultuous assembly of the faithful: some shed tears over Jerusalem and the fate of the Christians; others swore to exterminate the race of the Mussulmans; but, all at once, at a signal from the sovereign pontiff, the most profound silence prevailed. Cardinal Gregory, who afterwards occupied the chair of St. Peter under the name of Innocent II., pronounced, in a loud voice, a form of general confession, the assembly all fell upon their knees, beat their breasts, and received absolution for their sins.

Adhémar de Monteil, bishop of Puy, demanded to be first allowed to enter into the way of God, and took the cross from the hands of the pope; several other bishops following his example. Raymond, count of Thoulouse, excused himself by his ambassadors for not being able to be present at the council of Clermont; he had already, he said, fought against the Saracens in Spain, and he promised to go and fight against them in Asia, followed by the bravest and most faithful of his warriors. The barons and knights who had heard the exhortations of Urban, all took a solemn oath to revenge the cause of Jesus Christ; they forgot their private quarrels, and even they who were at actual war had no longer any enemies than the Mussulmans. All the faithful promised to respect the decrees of the council, and decorated their garments with a red cross. From that time, all who engaged to combat the infidels were termed “Bearers of the Cross,”[43] and the holy war took the name of Crusade. The faithful solicited Urban to place himself at their head; but the pontiff, who had not yet triumphed over the anti-pope Guibert, who was dealing out at the same time his anathemas against the king of France and the emperor of Germany, could not quit Europe without compromising the power and the policy of the Holy See. He refused to be chief of the crusade, and named the bishop of Puy apostolic legate with the army of the Christians.

He promised to all who assumed the cross, the entire remission of their sins. Their persons, their families, their property, were all placed under the protection of the Church, and of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. The council declared that every violence exercised upon the soldiers of Christ should be punished by anathema, and recommended its decrees in favour of the bearers of the cross to the watchful care of all bishops and priests. It regulated the discipline and the departure of those who had enrolled themselves in the holy ranks, and for fear reflection might deter any from leaving their homes, it threatened with excommunication all those who did not fulfil their vows.

Fame soon spread everywhere the war that had just been declared against the infidels. When the bishops returned to their dioceses, they still continued to bestow their blessings upon the crosses of the crowds of Christians that required to be led to the conquest of the Holy Land. Urban went through several provinces of France, to finish the work he had so happily begun. In the cities of Rouen, Tours, and Nîmes he held councils, in which he deplored the fate of the Christians of the East: everywhere the people and the great, the nobles and the clergy, obeyed the pressing exhortations of the pontiff, and promised to take arms against the Mussulmans.

It might be said that the French had no longer any other country than the Holy Land, and that to it they were bound to sacrifice their ease, their property, and their lives. This enthusiasm, which had no bounds, was not long in extending itself to the other Christian nations; the flame which consumed France was communicated to England, still disturbed by the recent conquest of the Normans; to Germany, troubled by the anathemas of Gregory and Urban; to Italy, agitated by its factions; to Spain even, although it had to combat the Saracens on its own territory. Such was the ascendancy of the religion outraged by the infidels, such was the influence of the example given by the French, that all Christian nations seemed to forget, at once, the objects of their ambition or their fears, and furnished, for the crusade, soldiers that they absolutely required to defend themselves. The entire West resounded with these words: “He who will not take up his cross and come with me, is not worthy of me.”

The devotion for pilgrimages, which had been increasing during several centuries, became a passion and an imperative want for most Christians; every one was eager to march to Jerusalem, and to take part in the crusade, which was, in all respects, an armed pilgrimage. The situation in which Europe was then placed, no doubt contributed to increase the number of pilgrims: “all things were in such disorder,” says William of Tyre, “that the world appeared to be approaching to its end, and was ready to fall again into the confusion of chaos.” Everywhere the people, as I have already said, groaned under a horrible servitude; a frightful scarcity of provisions, which had, during several years, desolated France and the greater part of the kingdoms of the West, had given birth to all sorts of brigandage and violence; and these proving the destruction of agriculture and commerce, increased still further the horrors of the famine. Villages, towns even, became void of inhabitants, and sank into ruins. The people abandoned a land which no longer nourished them, or could offer them either repose or security: the standard of the cross appeared to them a certain asylum against misery and oppression. According to the decrees of the council of Clermont, the Crusaders were freed from all imposts, and could not be pursued for debts during their voyage. At the name of the cross, the very laws suspended their menaces, tyranny could not seek its victims, nor justice even the guilty, amidst those whom the Church adopted for its defenders. The assurance of impunity, the hope of a better fate, the love of license, and a desire to shake off the most sacred ties, actuated a vast proportion of the multitude which flocked to the banners of the crusade.

Many nobles who had not at first taken the cross, and who saw their vassals set out, without having the power to prevent them, determined to follow them as military chiefs, in order to preserve some portion of their authority. The greater part of the counts and barons had no hesitation in quitting Europe, which the council had declared to be in a state of peace, as it no longer afforded them an opportunity of distinguishing themselves by their valour; they had all many crimes to expiate; “they were promised,” says Montesquieu, “expiation in the indulgence of their dominant passion,—they took up, therefore, the cross and arms.”

The clergy themselves set the example. Many of the bishops, who bore the titles of counts and barons, and who were accustomed to make war in defence of the rights of their bishoprics, thought it their duty to arm for the cause of Jesus Christ. The priests, to give greater weight to their exhortations, themselves assumed the cross; a great number of pastors resolved to follow their flocks to Jerusalem; not a few of them, as we shall see hereafter, having in their minds the rich bishoprics of Asia, and allowing themselves to be led by the hope of some day occupying the most celebrated sees of the Eastern church.

In the midst of the anarchy and troubles which had desolated Europe since the reign of Charlemagne, there had arisen an association of noble knights, who wandered over the world in search of adventures; they had taken an oath to protect innocence, to fight against infidels, and, by a singular contrast, called themselves the Champions of God and of Beauty. The religion which had consecrated their institution and blessed their sword, called them to its defence, and the order of chivalry, which owes a great part of its splendour and progress to the holy wars, saw its warriors hasten to range themselves under the banners of the cross.

Ambition was, perhaps, not foreign to the devotion for the cause of Christ. If religion promised its rewards to those who were going to fight for it, fortune promised them, likewise, riches and the thrones of the earth. All who returned from the East, spoke with enthusiasm of the wonders they had seen, and of the rich provinces they had traversed. It was known that two or three hundred Norman pilgrims had conquered Apulia and Sicily from the Saracens. The lands occupied by the infidels appeared to be heritages promised to knights whose whole wealth consisted in their birth, their valour, and their sword.[44]

We should nevertheless deceive ourselves if we did not believe that religion was the principle which acted most powerfully upon the greater number of the Crusaders. In ordinary times men follow their natural inclinations, and only obey the voice of their own interest; but in the times of the Crusades, religious fever was a blind passion, which spoke louder than all others. Religion permitted not any other glory, any other felicity to be seen by its ardent defenders, but those which she presented to their heated imagination. Love of country, family ties, the most tender affections of the heart, were all sacrificed to the ideas and the opinions which then possessed the whole of Europe. Moderation was cowardice, indifference treason, opposition a sacrilegious interference. The power of the laws was reckoned as nothing amongst men who believed they were fighting in the cause of God. Subjects scarcely acknowledged the authority of princes or lords in anything which concerned the holy war; the master and the slave had no other title than that of Christian, no other duty to perform than that of defending his religion, sword in hand.

They whom age or condition appeared to detain in Europe, and whom the council had exempted from the labours and perils of the crusade, caused the heaven which called them to the holy war to speak aloud.[45] Women and children imprinted crosses upon their delicate and weak limbs, to show the will of God.[46] Monks deserted the cloisters in which they had sworn to die, believing themselves led by a divine inspiration; hermits and anchorites issued from forests and deserts, and mingled with the crowd of Crusaders. What is still more difficult to believe, thieves and robbers, quitting their secret retreats, came to confess their crimes, and promised, whilst receiving the cross, to go and expiate them in Palestine.

Europe appeared to be a land of exile, which every one was eager to quit. Artisans, traders, labourers, abandoned the occupations by which they subsisted; barons and lords even renounced the domains of their fathers. The lands, the cities, the castles for which they had but of late been at war, all at once lost their value in the eyes of their possessors, and were given up, for small sums, to those whom the grace of God had not touched, and who were not called to the happiness of visiting the holy places and conquering the East.

Contemporary authors relate several miracles which assisted in heating the minds of the multitude. Stars fell from the firmament; traces of blood were seen in the heavens; cities, armies, and knights decorated with the cross, were pictured in the clouds. The monk Robert asserts that on the very day on which the council of Clermont determined on the holy war, that decision was proclaimed beyond the seas. “This news,” adds he, “raised the courage of the Christians in the East, and caused despair among the nations of Arabia.” As the most effective of prodigies, saints and kings of preceding ages were said to have issued from their tombs, and many Frenchmen declared they had seen the shade of Charlemagne exhorting the Christians to fight against the Mussulmans.

We will not relate all the other miracles reported by historians, which were believed in an age in which nothing was more common than prodigies, in which, according to the remark of Fleury, the taste for the wonderful prevailed greatly over that for the true. The readers of this history will find quite enough of extraordinary things in the description of so many great events, for which the moral world, and even nature herself seemed to have interrupted their laws. What prodigy, in fact, can more astonish the philosopher, than to see Europe, which may be said to have been agitated to its very foundations, move all at once, and like a single man, march in arms towards the East?

The council of Clermont, which was held in the month of November, 1095, had fixed the departure of the Crusaders for the festival of the Assumption of the following year. During the winter nothing was thought of but preparations for the voyage to the Holy Land; every other care, every other labour was suspended in the cities and the plains. In the midst of the general excitement, the religion, which animated all hearts, watched over public order. All at once there was no more robbery or brigandage heard of.[47] The West was silent, to employ an expression from the Scripture, and Europe enjoyed during several months a peace that it had never before known.

They who had taken the cross encouraged each other, and addressed letters and sent ambassadors to hasten their departure. The benedictions of the heavens appeared to be promised to those who should be first ready to march to Jerusalem. Men even, who at the first had found fault with the delirium of the crusade, accused themselves of indifference for the cause of religion, and showed no less fervour than those who had given the example. All were eager to sell their possessions, but could find no purchasers. The Crusaders despised everything they could not carry with them; the productions of the earth were sold at a low price, which all at once brought back abundance even in the midst of scarcity.

As soon as the spring appeared, nothing could restrain the impatience of the Crusaders, and they set forward on their march to the places at which they were to assemble. The greater number went on foot; some horsemen appeared amongst the multitude; a great many travelled in cars; they were clothed in a variety of manners, and armed, in the same way, with lances, swords, javelins, iron clubs, &c. &c. The crowd of Crusaders presented a whimsical and confused mixture of all ranks and all conditions; women appeared in arms in the midst of warriors, prostitution not being forgotten among the austerities of penitence. Old age was to be seen with infancy, opulence next to misery; the helmet was confounded with the frock, the mitre with the sword. Around cities, around fortresses, in the plains, upon the mountains, were raised tents and pavilions; everywhere was displayed a preparation for war and festivity. Here was heard the sound of arms or the braying of trumpets; whilst at a short distance the air was filled with psalms and spiritual songs. From the Tiber to the ocean, and from the Rhine to the other side of the Pyrenees, nothing was to be seen but troops of men marked with the cross, who swore to exterminate the Saracens, and were chanting their songs of conquest beforehand. On all parts resounded the war-cry of the Crusaders “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”

Fathers themselves conducted their children, and made them swear to conquer or die for Jesus Christ. Warriors tore themselves from the arms of their wives and from their families, promising to return victorious. Women or old men, whose weakness was left without support, accompanied their sons or their husbands to the nearest city, and there, not being able to separate themselves from the objects of their affections, determined to follow them to Jerusalem. They who remained in Europe envied the fate of the Crusaders, and could not restrain their tears; they who went to seek death in Asia where full of hope and joy.[48] Families, whole villages set out for Palestine, and drew into their ranks all they met with on their passage. They marched on without forethought, and would not believe that he who nourishes the sparrow would leave pilgrims clothed with the holy cross to perish with want. Their ignorance added to their illusion, and lent an air of enchantment to everything they saw; they believed at every moment they were approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The children of the villagers, when they saw a city or a castle, asked if that was Jerusalem?[49] Many of the great lords, who had passed their lives in their rustic donjons, knew very little more on this head than their vassals; they took with them their hunting and fishing appointments, and marched with their falcons on their wrists, preceded by their hounds. They expected to reach Jerusalem, enjoying themselves on the road, and to exhibit to Asia the rude luxury of their castles.

In the midst of the general delirium, no sage caused the voice of reason to be heard; nobody was then astonished at that which now creates so much surprise. These scenes so strange, in which every one was an actor, could only be a spectacle for posterity.