for the wise use of enthusiasm. If not able to
make the wise direction of it themselves, some one of the Curia has
always been at their service to value the force and direct it into
channels of wider influence for the Church. There can be little doubt
that Urban was moved by a true and generous feeling. It would have
been almost impossible for any one to have simulated the grief he
manifested at the Council of Clermont.
[Sidenote: Mixed Motives]
But there can be as little doubt that, as the proposed movement must
inevitably aggrandize Roman Catholicity and make her the leader of
the Christian world, Urban was happier and stronger by the coincidence
and collaboration of both forces. There was a rival pope, and there were
sovereigns who were his enemies. What a 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
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