The History of Chivalry. G. P. R. James

remote corners of the earth had made an effort, at the same moment, to produce from the bosom of barbarism and confusion a great and intelligent monarch—an Alfred, a Haroun, and a Charlemagne. The likeness seemed to be felt by the two great emperors of the east and the west; and a reciprocation of courtesy[77] and friendship appears to have taken place between them, most rare in that remote age. Various presents were transmitted from one to the other; and the most precious offering that the Christian monarch could receive, the keys of the Holy City, were sent from Bagdad to Aix, together with a standard, which has been supposed to imply the sovereignty of Jerusalem resigned by Haroun to his great contemporary. Nothing could afford a nobler proof of a great, a liberal, and a delicate mind, than the choice evinced by the calif in his gift. Charlemagne took advantage so far of Haroun’s liberality,[78] as to establish an hospital and a library for the Latin pilgrims.

      The successors of Haroun, and more particularly Monstacer Billah, continued to yield tolerance at least, if not protection, to the Christians of Jerusalem. The pilgrims also were more or less protected during the reigns that followed, both from motives of liberal feeling and of interest, as the great influx of travellers, especially from Italy, brought much wealth and commerce into Syria.

      Under the califs of the Fatemite race several persecutions took place; and when at length the invasion of the Turkish hordes had brought the whole of Palestine under the dominion of a wild and barbarous race, Jerusalem was taken and sacked; and while the Christian inhabitants were treated with every sort of brutal cruelty, the pilgrims were subject to taxation[79] on their arrival, as well as liable to plunder by the way.

      A piece of gold was exacted for permission to enter the Holy City; and at that time, when the value of the precious metals was infinitely higher than in the present day, few, if any, of the pilgrims on their arrival possessed sufficient to pay the cruel demand.

      Thus, after having suffered toils unheard of—hunger, thirst, the parching influence of a burning sky, sickness, danger, and often robbery, and wounds; when the weary wanderer arrived at the very entrance of the city, with the bourn of all his long pilgrimage before him, the enthusiastic object of all his hopes in sight, the place of refuge and repose for which he had longed and prayed within his reach—unless he could pay the stipulated sum, he was driven by the barbarians from the gates, and was forced to tread back all his heavy way unfurnished with any means, and unsupported by any hope, or to die by the roadside of want, weariness, and despair.

      The pilgrimages nevertheless continued with unremitting zeal; and the number of devotees increased greatly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the tenth, indeed, the custom of pilgrimage became almost universal, from a misinterpretation[80] of a prophecy in the Apocalypse. A general belief prevailed that at the end of the tenth century, the thousand years being concluded, the world was to be judged; and crowds of men and women, in the frantic hope of expiating their sins by the long and painful journey to the Holy Land, flocked from all parts of Europe towards Jerusalem.

      Many of the more clear-sighted and sensible of the Christian prelates had from time to time attempted to dissuade the people from these dangerous and fatal pilgrimages; but the principle of bodily infliction being received as a mark of internal penitence and a means of obtaining absolution, had been so long inculcated by the church of Rome, that the current of popular opinion had received its impulse, and it was no longer possible to turn it from its course. No penance could be more painful or more consistent with the prejudices of the multitude, than a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; and thus the priests continued often to enforce the act, while the heads of the church themselves, as religion became corrupted, learned to see this sort of penitence in the same light as the people, and encouraged its execution. They found the great efficacy of external excitements in stimulating the populace to that superstitious obedience on which they were fast building up the authority of the Roman church, and probably also were not without a share in the bigoted enthusiasm which they taught. Thus in the tenth century the pilgrimages which fear lest the day of judgment should be approaching induced many to undertake in expiation of their sins, met but little opposition; while various meteoric phenomena, of a somewhat awful nature, earthquakes, hurricanes, &c., contributed to increase the general alarm.

      When these had passed by, and the dreaded epoch had brought forth nothing, the current still continued to flow on in the course that it had taken; and during the eleventh century several circumstances tended to increase it. Among others the terror spread through France by the Papal Interdict, called forth by the refractory adherence of Robert I. to his queen[81] Bertha, brought more pilgrims than usual from that country.

      Of many thousands who passed into Asia,[82] a few isolated individuals only returned; but these every day, as they passed through the different countries of Europe on their journey back, spread indignation and horror by their account of the dreadful sufferings of the Christians in Judea. Various[83] letters are reported as having been sent by the emperors of the east to the different princes of Europe, soliciting aid to repel the encroachments of the infidel; and if but a very small portion of the crimes and cruelty attributed to the Turks by these epistles were believed by the Christians, it is not at all astonishing that wrath and horror took possession of every chivalrous bosom. Pope Sylvester II. had made an ineffectual appeal to Christendom towards the end of the tenth century, bringing forward the first idea of a crusade;[84] but the age was not then ripe for a project that required a fuller developement of chivalrous feelings. Gregory VII. revived the idea, and made it the subject of a very pompous epistle; but he himself was one of the first to forget the miseries of his fellow-christians in Palestine, in the pursuit of his own aggrandizement.

      Still, the persecution of the Christians in Palestine, and the murder and pillage of the pilgrims continued; still the indignation of Europe was fed and renewed by repeated tales of cruel barbarity committed in the Holy Land—sufferings of the church—insults to religion—and merciless massacres of countrymen and relations: still, also, the spirit of Chivalry was each day spreading further and rising more powerfully, so that all was preparing for some great and general movement. The lightning of the crusade was in the people’s hearts, and it wanted but one electric touch to make it flash forth upon the world.

      At this time a man, of whose early days we have little authentic knowledge, but that he was born at Amiens, and from a soldier had become a priest,[85] after living for some time the life of a hermit, became seized with the desire of visiting Jerusalem. He was, according to all accounts,[86] small in stature and mean in person; but his eyes possessed a peculiar fire and intelligence, and his eloquence was powerful and flowing. The fullest account of his manners and conduct is to be found in Robert the Monk, who was present at the council of Clermont, and in Guibert of Nogent, who speaks in the tone of one who has beheld what he relates.

      The first of these authors describes Peter the Hermit,[87] of whom we speak, as esteemed among those who best understand the things of earth, and superior in piety to all the bishops or abbots of the day. He fed upon neither flesh nor bread, says the same writer, though he permitted himself wine and other aliments, finding nevertheless his pleasure in the greatest abstinence.

      Guibert, or Gilbert, of Nogent, speaks still more fully of his public conduct.[88] “He set out,” says the writer, “from whence I know not, nor with what design; but we saw him at that time passing through the towns and villages, preaching every where, and the people surrounding him in crowds, loading him with presents, and celebrating his sanctity with such high eulogiums, that I never remember to have seen such honours rendered to any other person. He showed himself very generous, however, in the distribution of the things given to him. He brought back to their homes the women that had abandoned their husbands, not without adding gifts of his own, and re-established peace between those who lived unhappily, with wonderful authority. In every thing he said or did, it seemed as if there was something of divine; so much so, that people went to pluck some of the hairs from his mule, which they kept afterward as relics; which I mention here not that they really were so, but merely served to satisfy the public love of any thing extraordinary. While out of doors he wore ordinarily a woollen tunic, with a brown mantle, which fell down to his heels. He had his arms and his feet bare, eat little or no bread, and lived upon fish and wine.”

      Such was his appearance after his return: prior to that period it is probable that this hermit had made himself remarkable for