CHAP. VI.

PILGRIMAGES CONTINUE.

227

danger of

once it had been the field of battle to contending parties; and in the year 1010 there was a fierce persecu- Increasing tion of the Christians by Hakim, the fanatic Sultan pilgrimages. of Egypt. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and other Christian buildings in Jerusalem and the neighbourhood, were razed to the ground. The persecution of the Christians in Palestine led to a furious persecution of the Jews in France. Rumours spread abroad that the Jews of Orleans had sent intelligence to Sultan Hakim of a meditated invasion of the Holy Land by the Christians ; and this had stirred up his slumbering fanaticism. It was an awful omen to the Jews, perhaps had some effect in producing those more terrible calamities which awaited them at the commencement of the actual Crusades. Hakim, however, himself repented or grew weary of the persecution, or perhaps dreaded the vengeance of the maritime powers of Italy, now becoming formidable to all the coasts of the Mediterranean. The pilgrims were permitted to resume their interrupted devotions; they had no great peril to encounter and no degrading indignity to undergo, except the payment of a toll on the entrance to Jerusalem, established soon after this time by the Mahommedan rulers. This might sometimes be a grievous affliction to the poorer pilgrims, but it gave an opportunity for the more wealthy to display their pious munificence by defraying the cost of their admission.

Throughout the earlier half of the century men of all ranks, princes like Robert of Normandy, lordly bishops like those of Germany, headed pilgrimages. Humble monks and even peasants found their way to the Holy Land, and returned to awaken the spirit of religions adventure by the account of their difficulties and perils—the passionate enthusiasm by the wonders of the Holy Land.

Now, however, the splendid, polished, and more tolerant Mahommedanism of the earlier Caliphs had sunk before the savage yet no less warlike Turks. This race of the Mongol stock had embraced all that was enterprising, barbarous, and aggressive, rejecting all that was humane or tending to a higher civilisation in Mahommedanism. They were more fanatic Islamites than the followers of the Prophet, than the Prophet himself. The

Seljukians became masters of Jerusalem, and from that time the Christians of Palestine, from tributary subjects became despised slaves; the pilgrims, from respected guests, intruders whose hateful presence polluted the atmosphere of pure Islamism. But neither the tyranny nor the outrages perpetrated by these new lords of Jerusalem arrested the unexhausted passion for pilgrimage, which became to some even a more praiseworthy and noble act of devotion from its perils. The pilgrim might become a martyr. Year after year came back the few survivors of a long train of pilgrims, no longer radiant with pious pride at the accomplishment of their holy purpose, rich in precious reliques, or even the more costly treasures of the East; but stealing home, famished, wounded, mutilated, with lamentable tales of their own sufferings and of those who had died of the ill-usage of the barbarous unbelievers.

At length the afflictions of the Christians found a voice which woke indignant Europe-an apostle who could rouse warlike Latin Christendom to encounter with equal fanaticism this new outburst of the fanaticism of Islam. This was the mission of the hermit Peter.

of Crusades.

Latin Christendom was already in some degree prepared for this great confederacy. A league of the whole Earlier schemes Christian world against the Mahomme dans had expanded before Gerbert, Silvester II. The Cæsar of the West, his master Otho III., was to add at least Palestine to the great Christian realm. It was among the bold visions which had floated before the imagination of Gregory VII. His strong sagacity, aided no doubt by good intelligence, had discerned the revolution in the spirit of Mahommedanism from the Turkish superiority. Hildebrand's more immediate object, however, was not the recovery of the Holy Land, but the defence of the Greek Empire, which was now threatened by the

Lambert the historian performed a furtive pilgrimage. He was much alarmed lest his abbot (of Herzfeld), without whose permission he set forth, should die without having forgiven him. He speaks of having incurred extreme peril, and of having returned to his monastery, quasi ex impiis redivivus. We

should have been glad to have heard his own perils described by so powerful a writer.-Sub ann. 1059.

g Gerbert's letter in the name of Jerusalem. In Murat. R. I. S. iii. 400.

Compare Gregory's Regesta, i. 30, i. 49, ii. 31.

CHAP. VI.

SCHEMES OF GREGORY VII.

229

advance of the irresistible Seljukians into Asia Minor. The repression of Mahommedanism on all sides, in Italy especially, where it had more than once menaced Rome itself, conspired with the one paramount object of Hildebrand, the subjugation of Christendom to the See of Rome, the unity of the Church under the supremacy of the Pope, to whom all temporal powers were to own their subordination. The Greek Empire was to render its allegiance to the Pontiff as the price of its protection from the Turks; it was to become an integral and essential part of the spiritual Empire. Gregory had intimated his design of placing himself at the head of this Crusade, which was at once to consolidate and secure from foreign and infidel aggression the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West. But the deliverance of the decrepit, unrespected, and often hostile Empire of the East would have awakened no powerful movement in Latin Christendom: the fall of Constantinople would have startled too late the tardy fears and sympathies of the West. The ambassadors of Alexius Comnenus at Piacenza were received with decent respect, but with no passionate impulse. The letters from the East, imploring aid, had no power to hush and suspend the hostilities which distracted the West. If not heard with indifference, they left but superficial and evanescent impressions on the minds even of those who had most reason to dread the progress of the Mahommedan arms.

For the conquest of the Holy Land a zealous Pope might alone in favourable times have raised a great Christian army; he might have enlisted numbers of warlike and adventurous nobles, even sovereigns, in the cause. But humbler and more active instruments were wanting for a popular and general insurrection in favour of the oppressed and afflicted pilgrims, for the restoration of the Holy Land to the dominion of the Cross. All great convulsions of society are from below.

Peter the Hermit is supposed, but only supposed, to have been of gentle birth. He was of ignoble Peter the stature, but with a quick and flashing eye; his Hermit. spare, sharp person seemed instinct with the fire which worked within his restless soul. He was a Frank (of

The

Amiens in Picardy), and therefore spoke most familiarly the language of that people, ever ready for adventurous warfare, especially warfare in the cause of religion. Peter had exhausted, without satisfying the cravings of his religious zeal, all the ordinary excitements, the studies, the austerities and mortifications, the fasts and prayers of a devout life. Still yearning for more powerful emotions, he had retired into the solitude of the strictest and severest cloister. There his undoubting faith beheld in the visions of his disturbed and enthralled imagination revelations from heaven. In those days such a man could not but undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, more especially in times when martyrdom might be his reward. deeper his feelings at visiting the holy places, the more strong would be his sorrow and indignation at their desecration by their rude and cruel masters. Peter saw with a bleeding heart the sufferings and degradation of his brethren; his blood turned to fire; the martial Frank was not extinct within him. In an interview with Simeon, the persecuted patriarch, he ventured to rebuke his despondency. When Simeon deplored the hopeless weakness of the Byzantine Empire, the natural lords and protectors of the Christians in Syria, Peter fearlessly promised him the succour of Western Christendom. His vow seemed to obtain the ratification of God. Prostrate in the temple he heard, as it were, the voice of our Lord himself, "Rise, Peter, go forth to make known the tribulations of my people; the hour is come for the delivery of my servants, for the recovery of the holy places!" Peter fully believed in his own mission, and was therefore believed by others. He landed in Italy, he hastened to Rome. The Pope, Urban, was kindled by his fervour, acknowledged him as a Prophet, and gave full sanction to his announcement of the immediate deliverance of Jerusalem.

A.D. 1094.

The Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, with indefatigable restlessness went from province to province, from city to city. His appearance commanded attention, his austerity respect, his language instantaneous and vehement sympathy. He rode on a mule, with a crucifix in his hand, his head and feet bare; his dress was a long

CHAP. VI.

PETER THE HERMIT.

231

robe girt with a cord, and a hermit's cloak of the coarsest stuff. He preached in the pulpits, in the roads, in the market-places. His eloquence was that which stirs the heart of the people, for it came from his own, brief, figurative, full of bold apostrophes; it was mingled with his own tears, with his own groans; he beat his breast; the contagion spread throughout his audience. His preaching appealed to every passion: to valour and shame, to indignation and pity, to the pride of the warrior, the compassion of the man, the religion of the Christian, to the love of the Brethren, to the hatred of the Unbeliever, aggravated by his insulting tyranny, to reverence for the Redeemer and the Saints, to the desire of expiating sin, to the hope of eternal life. Sometimes he found persons who, like himself, had visited the Holy Land; he brought them forth before the people, and made them bear witness to what they had seen or what they had suffered. He appealed to them as having beheld Christian blood poured out wantonly as water, the foulest indignities perpetrated on the sacred places in Jerusalem. He invoked the Holy Angels, the Saints in Heaven, the Mother of God, the Lord himself, to bear witness to his truth. He called on the holy places-on Sion, on Calvary, on the Holy Sepulchre, to lift up their voices and implore their deliverance from sacrilegious profanation: he held up the Crucifix, as if Christ himself were imploring their succour.

upon

His influence was extraordinary, even beyond the immediate object of his mission. Old enemies came to be reconciled; the worldliest to forswear the world; prelates to entreat the hermit's intercession. Gifts showered him; he gave them all to the poor, cr as dowries for loose women, whom he provided with husbands. His wonders were repeated from mouth to mouth; all ages, both sexes, crowded to touch his garments; the very hairs which dropped from his mule were caught and treasured as reliques.

Western Christendom, particularly France, was thus prepared for the outburst of militant religion. Nothing Council of was wanted but a plan, leaders, and organisation. Clermont. Such was the state of things when Pope Urban presented himself to the Council of Clermont, in Auvergne.

Where all the motives which stir the mind and heart,