“God Wills It,” Cries the People
On the Day November 27 1095
Khen Lim
Pope Urban II addresses the people at the Council of Clermont (Image source: skepticism.org)
“This, beloved brethren, we shall say, that we may have you as witness
of our words. More suffering of our brethren and devastation of churches
remains than we can speak of one by one, for we are oppressed by tears and
groans, sighs and sobs. We weep and wail, brethren, alas, like the Psalmist, in
our inmost heart! We are wretched and unhappy, and in us is that prophecy fulfilled:
‘God, the nations are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they
defiled; they have laid Jerusalem in heaps; the dead bodies of Thy servants have
been given food for the birds of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints unto the
beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about
Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.’ Woe unto us, brethren!”
As we neared the end of the
eleventh century, Christendom’s epicentre of conflict was the Holy Land, better
acquainted as the Middle East today. This was a catastrophic piece of affair
for European Christians for different reasons. The pilgrimages to the
birthplace of Christ and their faith had been going on since the sixth century.
Christ’s burial site was now the Holy Sepulchre, an incredibly sacred landmark
revered by Christians and Catholics. The very many places that had been touched
by the life of Jesus were all there in that sliver of land that was by then
under the control of the Seljuk Turks who had also seized Jerusalem, the Holy
City.
And once the Turks were firmly
entrenched, Christians were no longer allowed access. But that wasn’t all, it
was when the Turks threatened to consume the Byzantine Empire – and its
capital, Constantinople – that Christian Europe began to understand the
seriousness of complete destruction by the Muslims. It was at this point in
1095 that the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Komnenos (1056-1118) appealed to Pope Urban II
for aid.
It was an opportunity that Pope
Urban II (c1042-1099) could not look away. With his papacy under threat from
Pope Gregory VII (aka Hildebrand, c1025-1085) and also Henry IV, the Holy Roman
Emperor (1050-1106), it was a chance to tighten his grip and re-consolidate his
authority. All of that made it an ideal time for him to lead and unite
Christian Europe to wrestle back the Holy Land from the Muslim Turks.
Alexius’ appeal to Urban was
military, of course. After all, following the annexation of nearly the whole of
Asia Minor from him meant that the threat from the Seljuk Turks was real. When
Alexius’ envoy arrived with the message of help in March 1095, Urban was at the
Council of Piacenza.
Later the same year, he called the Council of Clermont in Clermont,
France, where he directly addressed the invited bishops and abbots of the
urgent need to come to the aid of the Greeks and expel the Muslims to recover Byzantine
Anatolia.
Pope Urban II in the Council of Clermont, November 1095 (Image source: n-tv.de)
The Council of Clermont began on
November 18 and ended ten days later on November 28 1095. It was attended by
nearly three-hundred mixed clerics and laity from Italy, Burgundy and other
parts of France. Because of the great numbers in attendance, the council was
held in the open air just on the fringe of the city of Clermont.
On the agenda
were various issues including the Cluniac reforms of the Church and the
excommunication of Philip I of France (aka Amorous, 1052-1108) for his adulterous remarriage to Bertrade
of Montfort (1070-1117). But the highlight of the Council was certainly Urban’s sermon
before the great crowd where with great passion, he urged all to take back the
Holy Land and the eastern churches that were ripped away from them by the
Muslims. In hindsight, this was of course the underpinnings of the beginning of
the First Crusade.
He also promoted the concept of ‘Truce
of God’ in which he called upon the people to refrain from domestic violence,
thus limiting private warfare. He reasoned this by relating to the peace of
God, which exempted clergy, women, children and peasants from battles or
invasions.
The Truce of God was declared where Christians were not to engage in
fighting one another on any day of the week so long as it wasn’t a Monday,
Tuesday or a Wednesday. Of course, this was merely a veiled measure introduced
to encourage the people to take up arms to fight the real enemy in the east.
And so on this day, November 27,
nine-hundred and twenty-one years ago, in 1095, Pope Urban II gathered the vast
numbers in an open field, exhorting them to take the fight to the Muslims who
had annexed the Holy Land and were preparing to do the same to the Eastern
Roman Empire. We have no indisputable record of what he said but there are
apparently five accounts alleging to be sources though all differ in some detail.
They were the anonymous Gesta Francorum (tr.
The Deeds of the Franks, c.1100/1101), which was the source of influence for
all other versions except the one by Fulcher
of Chartres, who was the only one confirmed present at the Council. The
other sources included Robert the Monk,
who may or may not have been there, and Baldric,
Archbishop of Dol and Guibert de
Nogent, both of whom weren’t present.
The problem with all of these
accounts was that they were all not written immediately following the Council. Furthermore,
because of their different literary traditions, all of them differ quite broadly
in details.
The Battle of Antioch, one of many surprising victories won by the First Crusade (Image source: adventuresinhistoryland.wordpress.com)
More importantly, the authors used their accounts to add colour based
on what they read of the Gesta Francorum, which was written around six years after
the fact and by doing so, they brought in their personal views of the First
Crusade. While Fulcher of Chartres was certainly at the Council, he also began
to write around the same time, which was 1101. Robert the Monk was alleged to
have been present but his version was even later, in around 1106.
Historians contend that perhaps
Urban’s four letters – one to the Flemish (Dec 1095), one to the Bolognese
(Sept 1096), one to Vallombrosa (Oct 1096) and the last to the counts of
Catalonia (possibly anywhere from 1096 to 1099) – offered a closer and better
view of what he actually said at the Council of Clermont. In his letters more
so than the third-party paraphrased accounts, Urban would have accurately revealed
his thinking behind the launch of the First Crusade. Even so, the five key
sources do offer some glimpses as to what Urban said during the Council.
“On whom therefore is the labour of avenging those
wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon
whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great
courage, bodily activity and strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who
resist you.
“Let the deeds of your ancestors move you and incite your minds to
manly achievements; the glory and greatness of King Charles the Great, and of
his son Louis, and of your other kings, who have destroyed the kingdoms of the
pagans, and have extended in these lands, the territory of the holy church.
“Let
the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord our Saviour, which is possessed by unclean
nations, especially incite you, and the holy places, which are now treated with
ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness. Oh, most valiant
soldiers and descendants of invincible ancestors, be not degenerate, but recall
the valour of your progenitors,” he said according to the account of Fulcher
of Chartres.
Statue of Pope Urban II in Châtillon-sur-Marne, France (Image source: youtube.com)
Urban urged
the Franks to set aside whatever differences they might have towards one
another and instead focus their aggression in avenging the wrongs that were
afflicted on to Christendom. He quoted from Scripture in rebuking those he
feared might consider holding back their efforts, saying that they were not
worthy of Christ in contrast to those who would inherit eternal life because
they chose to crusade in the Holy Land.
“But if you are hindered by love of children,
parents and wives, remember what the Lord says in the Gospel, ‘He that loveth
father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.’ ‘Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for My Name’s sake shall
receive an hundred-fold and shall inherit everlasting life.’
“Hence it is that you murder one another,
that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let
therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease,
and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the
Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race and subject it to
yourselves. That land which as the Scripture says, ‘floweth with milk and
honey,’ was given by God into the possession of the children of Israel,” he
continued.
Urban used
his address at the Council to also ‘promise’ the remission of sins to those who
decided to join in the Crusade to free the Holy Land and the churches.
“…advance boldly, as knights of Christ, and
rush as quickly as you can to the defence of the Eastern Church. For she, it is
from whom the joys of your whole salvation have come forth, who poured into
your mouths, the milk of divine wisdom, who set before you, the holy teachings
of the Gospel. We say this, brethren, that you may restrain your murderous
hands from the destruction of your brothers and in behalf of your relatives in
the faith, oppose yourselves to the Gentiles.
“Under Jesus Christ, our Leader,
may you struggle for your Jerusalem, in Christian battlefield, most invincible
line, even more successfully than did the sons of Jacob of old – struggle that
you may assail and drive out the Turks, more execrable than the Jebusites, who
are in this land, and may you deem it a beautiful thing to die for Christ in
that city in which He died for us,” he added.
Urban’s
address to the people was akin to a magnificent oratorical war cry. It caught
fire. It moved the people. It mobilised the clerics to go drum up support for
the great Christian cause. It became a moral obligation to take up arms against
the Muslims. Swept up by the furore of the very moment, the crowd shouted in
unison, “God wills it! God wills it!” (Deus
vult in Latin) as they rallied one another to an overflowing feverish froth.
The recovery of Jerusalem in the First Crusade (Image source: nocompulsion.com)
And therein
lies the makings of the First Crusade. Urban rallied the people and in turn,
believed it himself that this was all God’s will. God, he believed, proved to
be the unifying force in the war cry and because God Himself had placed this
cry in the bosoms of their hearts, it became their voice of the battle and the symbol
of the cross was embroidered on to the front of their clothes, which gave these
military expeditions the name ‘Crusades.’
Allegedly
between 60,000 and 100,000 people took up Urban’s call to settle the score in
Jerusalem but not all did so for pious reasons for there was much to prosper
from the fortunes of war such as land holdings wrenched by victors lording over
the vanquished and the untold riches from the grounds drenched in blood.
Needless
to say, when enthusiasm met the sharp end of the swords and spears, the death
toll simply became tragic and most of those who perished were the inexperienced
and undisciplined Christian peasants who would have been slaughtered by the
skilled and professionally-trained Turks.
Of the many
crusades that eventually took place, Urban’s First Crusade was the most
successful. Preached and extolled by Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, the Second
Crusade (1147-1149) was disastrous even if it was in response to the Christian defeat
at the Siege of Edessa. Tragically, the failure was borne by Bernard four years
after the defeat. Subsequent Crusades were never enough to regain the lost
territory.
The Children's Crusade (Image source: marimeru.ru)
The notorious Children’s Crusade, involving between 15,000 and
30,000 French children who took to foot and boats to reach and reclaim
Jerusalem in 1212 produced horrible results where most of them either died
along the way or were captured and sold into slavery.
Many modern Christians
view the Crusades as a major mistake but of course, that is easy to do in
hindsight. More historians than not consider them to be unchristian and a complete
waste of time and effort. However while there were those who truly believed
they were fighting for the Lord, there were obviously those who saw them with an
opportunistic glint in their eyes with all the hordes of property and
possessions to be had.
For all that
is said and done, the Crusades brought stigma to Christians that lasted till
today. They also dented the reputation of Christian Europe among the rest of
the non-Christian world. This was made worse when crusading knights pulverised
Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), widening the enmity between Western and
Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Furthermore the enduring effects of the Crusades arguably
laid the groundwork for the eventual enactment of pogroms against God’s Chosen
People, the Jews. This in turn offered modern Muslim fundamentalism the perfect
excuse to seek revenge.
Fourteen
days after Jerusalem returned to Christian hands, on July 29 1099, Pope Urban
II died. Unfortunately he did not live long enough for news of the Christian
victory to reach Europe.
Reference Sources:
Christian
History (1990). 1095 Pope Urban II
Launches the First Crusade in Issue 28: 100 Most Important Events in Church
History. Christianity Today.
(Available at http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-28/1095-pope-urban-ii-launches-first-crusade.html)
Halsall,
Paul, ed. (Dec 1997). Pope Urban II’s
Speech Calling for the First Crusade. Internet Medieval Sourcebook. (New
York: Fordham University). (Available at http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.asp)
Hinson, E. Glenn (June 1995).
The Church Triumphant: A History of
Christianity Up to 1300 (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press) Available
at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Church-Triumphant-History-Christianity-1300/dp/0865544360
Nicholson, Helen J. (2004).
The Crusades (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Publishing Group) Available at https://www.amazon.com/Crusades-Hackett-Classics-Helen-Nicholson/dp/087220619X
Peters, Edward, ed. (Jun
1998). The First Crusade: ‘The Chronicles
of Fulcher of Chartres’ and Other Source Materials. (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press) Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Crusade-Chronicle-Chartres-Materials/dp/0812216563
This Day in
History – Nov 27. 1095 Pope Urban II
Orders First Crusade. History.com. (Available at http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pope-urban-ii-orders-first-crusade)
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