Peter the Hermit | Page 8

God-given opportunity to humble the Antipope and bring the unfriendly kings to his feet!
[Sidenote: Peter's Garb]
The pope gave Peter his commission and sent him forth with his blessing. Mounting a mule, which soon attained in the thought of the people something of its master's sanctity, he passed through Italy, crossed the Alps, was in every part of France, and stirred the larger part of Europe. With a crucifix in his hand, his body girdled with a rope, clothed in a long cassock of the coarsest stuff, and a hermit's hood, he could not have had, from the standpoint of public attention, a better appearance. He kept himself free from monkish evils in habits and conduct, and as he preached the loftiest morality by word as by life, the people honored holiness in him.
[Sidenote: Ready to Preach Anywhere]
Like all who have been great reformers, he was indifferent as to where he preached so that he could get a hearing. When the pulpits were open and could reach the multitude, he was glad to preach in the sacred inclosures; when his mission could reach more minds on the high roads and public squares, he as gladly preached there. He knew how to use apostrophes and personifications, and made the holy places themselves clamor for help. He sometimes showed a letter which he said had fallen from heaven wherein God called upon all Christendom to drive the heathens out of Jerusalem and possess it forever. His favorite prophecy was "Jerusalem shall be destroyed till the time of the heathen shall be fulfilled." The agonies endured by the Christians of Palestine he described with such accuracy of language and appropriateness of gesture, that his hearers seemed to see them writhe under the lash and to hear them groan in their wounds.
[Sidenote: Waving his Crucifix]
When he had exhausted his vocabulary and was exhausted by his emotions, he would wave the image of Christ suffering on the cross before his sobbing and wailing hearers.
The news of such preaching and of such scenes travels fast and far. Wherever the Hermit went he was received as a saint, and if the people could not obtain a thread of his garment they contented themselves with a hair from the tail of his mule!
[Sidenote: Effect of His Preaching]
Whatever the modern mind may see of credulity among the people or of fanaticism in Peter, contemporary annals show that his preaching was followed by the results promised to the Gospel. Michaud says: "Differences in families were reconciled, the poor were comforted, the debauched blushed at their errors. His discourses were repeated by those who heard to those who did not. His austerities and his miracles were widely known and credited. When Peter found those who had been in Palestine, or confessed to have been there, he used them as living examples, and made their rags speak of the barbarities they had suffered, or claimed to have suffered, at Turkish hands."
[Sidenote: Constantinople in Peril]
Additional strength was given to the cry for relief from Palestine by the perils of Constantinople. This city, under nominally Christian emperors, had become a museum of sacred relics. Alexius Comnena threatened by the same warriors who had subjected the Holy City, offered his sacred treasures and his secular riches to the leaders who would rescue his capital. The poor esteem in which the haughty but, when in danger, servile Greek held the Franks, as to everything but warlike power, is indicated by his promising the Frank warriors the beauty of the Greek women. As if these warriors were of the same tastes as the Turks! To pass under the Mussulman yoke was infinitely more degrading than to hand his scepter to the Latins.
[Sidenote: Urban Concentrates Opinion]
Urban now found it a suitable time to attempt to concentrate opinion and prepare for action by summoning a Council at Plaisance. There was a great response to the papal summons. Two hundred bishops and archbishops, four thousand ecclesiastics, thirty thousand of the laity came to the Council which had to meet, on account of its size, outside the city wall.
[Sidenote: Ambassadors of Alexius Humble]
The tone of the Eastern emperors had long been so haughty that the presence of their ambassadors at a Latin Council was a sufficient proof of their humiliation. The pope seconded their requests and prayers with all the force of speech and authority; yet the Council concluded nothing. It seems probable that the astute pope passed the word that no conclusion should be formulated, as he was not yet ready to indicate all that was in his mind. It may well be that the danger to Constantinople was not yet so evident to Alexius and to all as to indicate the hour for absolute submission to the Roman authority.
[Sidenote: Italy not yet Roused]
[Sidenote: Opening of the Council]
It is more probable,