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

and his ascetic severity. Great and extraordinary men are often long before opportunity gives scope for the display of the particular spirit whose efforts are destined to distinguish them. I mean not to class Peter the Hermit among great men; but certainly he deserves the character of one of the most extraordinary men that Europe ever produced, if it were but for the circumstance of having convulsed a world—led one continent to combat to extermination against another, and yet left historians in doubt whether he was madman or prophet, fool or politician.

      Peter, however, accomplished in safety his pilgrimage to Jerusalem,[89] paid the piece of gold demanded at the gates, and took up his lodging in the house of one of the pious Christians of the Holy City. Here his first emotion[90] seems to have been indignant horror at the barbarous and sacrilegious brutality of the Turks. The venerable prelate of Tyre represents him as conferring eagerly with his host upon the enormous cruelties of the infidels, even before visiting the general objects of devotion. Doubtless the ardent, passionate, enthusiastic mind of Peter had been wrought upon at every step he took in the Holy Land, by the miserable state of his brethren, till his feelings and imagination became excited to almost frantic vehemence. After performing the duties of the pilgrimage, visiting each object of reputed holiness,[91] and praying in those churches which had the fame of peculiar sanctity, Peter, with his heart wrung at beholding the objects of his deepest veneration in the hands of the church’s enemies, demanded an audience of the patriarch, to whom some Latin friend presented him.

      Simeon the patriarch, though a Greek, and consequently in the eyes of Peter a heretic, was still a Christian, suffering in common with the rest of the faithful in the Holy Land, and the hermit saw in him that character alone. The union—the overflowing confidence with which the hermit and the prelate appear to have treated each other—raises them both in our estimation; but it also throws an historical light upon the character of Peter, which places him in a more elevated situation than modern historians have been willing to concede to him. The patriarch Simeon, a man as famous for his good sense as for his piety, would not, surely, have opened his inmost thoughts to a wandering pilgrim like Peter, and intrusted to him a paper sealed with his own seal, which, if taken by the Turks, would have ensured death to himself and destruction to Christianity in Palestine, had he not recognised in the hermit “a man,”[92] to use the words of William of Tyre, “full of prudence and experience in the things of this world.”

      This, however, was the case; and after long conversations, wherein many a tear was shed over the hapless state of the Holy Land, it was determined, at the suggestion of Peter, that the patriarch should write to the pope and the princes of the west, setting forth the miseries of Jerusalem and of the faithful people of the Holy City, and praying for aid and protection against the merciless sword of the Saracen. Peter, on his part, promised to seek out each individual prince, and to show, with his whole powers of language, the ills of the Christians of Palestine.

      From these conversations Peter went again and again to pray in the church of the Resurrection, petitioning ardently for aid in the great undertaking before him. On one of these occasions it is said that he fell asleep,[93] and beheld the Saviour in a vision, who exhorted him to hasten on his journey, and persevere in his design.

      Without searching for any thing preternatural, the vision is not at all difficult to believe, though the place of its occurrence seems to have been fictitious. Nothing could be more natural than for Peter the Hermit, with his mind full of the mission he was about to undertake, to dream that the Being in whose cause he believed himself engaged appeared to encourage him, and to hasten his enterprise; and it is easy to conceive that, with full confidence in this manifestation of heavenly favour, he should set forth upon his journey with enthusiastic zeal.

      Bearing the letter of the patriarch, Peter now returned in haste to Italy, and sought out the pope, to declare the miseries of the church in the Holy Land, and to propose the means of its deliverance. Urban II., who then occupied the apostolic chair, had inherited from Gregory wars and contestations with the emperor Henry IV., and was at the same time embroiled with the weak and luxurious Philip I. of France, on the subject of that king’s adulterous intercourse with Bertrade. He, as well as Gregory, had taken refuge in Apulia and Calabria, and had thrown himself upon the protection of the famous Robert Guiscard, who readily granted him the aid of that powerful mind which made the utmost parts of the earth tremble.[94]

      It does not correctly appear at what place Urban sojourned at the time of Peter’s arrival in Italy.[95] His whole support was, evidently, still in the family of Guiscard; and it seems that with Boemond, Prince of Tarentum, the gallant and chivalrous son of Robert, he first held council upon the hermit’s[96] great and interesting proposal, before he determined on the line of conduct to be pursued.

      One of the historians of the crusades,[97] attributing perhaps somewhat too much the spirit of modern politics to an age whose genius was of very different quality, supposes that the course determined on by the pope and his ally was, in fact, principally a shrewd plot to fix Urban firmly in the Vatican, and to forward Boemond’s ambitious views in Greece. It seems to me, however, that such a supposition is perfectly irreconcilable with the subsequent conduct of either. The pope shortly after threw himself into the midst of his enemies, to hold a council on the subject of the crusades; and Boemond abandoned every thing in Europe to carry on the holy war in Palestine. It is much more natural to imagine that the spirit of their age governed both the prelate and the warrior—the enthusiasm of religion the one, and the enthusiasm of Chivalry the other.

      However that may be, Peter the Hermit met with a most encouraging reception from the pope. The sufferings of his fellow-christians brought tears from the prelate’s eyes; the general scheme of the crusade was sanctioned[98] instantly by his authority; and, promising his quick and active concurrence, he sent him on, the pilgrim to preach the deliverance of the Holy Land through all the countries of Europe. Peter wanted neither zeal nor activity[99]—from town to town, from province to province, from country to country, he spread the cry of vengeance on the Turks, and deliverance to Jerusalem! The warlike spirit of the people was at its height; the genius of Chivalry was in the vigour of its early youth; the enthusiasm of religion had now a great and terrible object before it, and all the gates of the human heart were open to the eloquence of the preacher. That eloquence was not exerted in vain; nations rose at his word and grasped the spear; and it only wanted some one to direct and point the great enterprise that was already determined.

      In the mean time the pope did not forget his promise; and while Peter the Hermit spread the inspiration throughout Europe,[100] Urban called together a council at Placentia, to which deputies were admitted from the emperor of Constantinople, who displayed the progress of the Turks, and set forth the danger to all Christendom of suffering their arms to advance unopposed. The opinion of the assembly was universally favourable to the crusade; and trusting to the popularity of the measure, and the indications of support which he had already met with, the pope determined to cross the Alps and to hold a second council in the heart of Gaul.

      The ostensible object of this council was to regulate the state of the church, and to correct abuses; but the great object was, in fact, the crusade. It is useless to investigate the motives which gave Urban II. courage to summon a council, destined, among other things, to solemnly reprobate the dissolute conduct of Philip of France, in the midst of dominions, if not absolutely feudatory to the crown[101] of that monarch, at least bound to it by friendship and alliance. Whether it arose from fortitude of a just cause, or from reliance on political calculation, the prelate’s judgment was proved by the event to be right. After one or two changes in regard to the place of meeting, the council was assembled at Clermont, in Auvergne,[102] and was composed of an unheard-of multitude of priests, princes, and nobles, both of France and Germany, all willing and eager to receive the pope’s injunctions with reverence and obedience. After having terminated the less important affairs which formed the apparent business of the meeting, and which occupied the deliberation of seven days, Urban, one of the most eloquent men of the age, came forth from the church[103] in which the principal ecclesiastics were assembled, and addressed the immense concourse which had been gathered into one of the great squares, no building being large enough to contain the number.

      The prelate[104] then, with the language best calculated to win the hearts of all his hearers, displayed the miseries of the Christians in the Holy Land.