2 to battle.* As the clergy were taken from the CHAP. I. people at large, it was natural that they should on many points possess popular feelings and manners. They partook, therefore, of the violent character of the age. Some made robbery a profession; and the voice even of the wisest among them would not have been listened to in national assemblies if they had not been clad in armour. The ecclesiastical writers of the time call their superiors tyrants rather than pastors, and reprehend them for resorting to arms rather than to civil laws and church authority. Yet the clergy did much towards accustoming mankind to prefer the authority of law to the power of the sword. At their instigation private wars ceased for certain periods, and on particular days, and the observance of the Truce of God * The words of Guido, an abbot of Clairville, are remarkable :-Olim non habebant castella et arces ecclesiæ cathedrales, nec incedebant pontifices loricati. Sed nunc propter abundantiam temporalium rerum, flamma, ferro, cæde possessiones ecclesiarum prælati defendunt, quas deberent. pauperibus erogare. Du Cange. Gloss. Lat. art. Advocatus. Bishops often appear in old romances in a military as well as a sacerdotal capacity. The laws, at variance with opinion, prohibited the clergy from bearing arms. They were repeatedly threatened with the loss of ecclesiastical situations if they went to war. Baluzius, Capitularia Regum Francorum, p. 164 and p. 932. CHAP. I. God was guarded by the terrors of excommunication and anathema. Christianity could not immediately and directly change the face of the world; but she mitigated the horrors of the times by infusing herself into warlike institutions. As the investiture of the toga was the first honour conferred on the Roman youth, so the Germans were incited to ideas of personal consequence, by receiving from their lord, their father, or some near relation, in a general assembly, a lance and a shield. Each petty prince was surrounded by many valiant young men, who formed his ornament in peace, his defence in war.+ Military education was common with the German and other conquering nations, both in their original settlements, and in their new acquisitions: and when the tribes of * This benevolent practice was of high origin. Tacitus mentions, as the only remarkable circumstance among the Angles and many other nations, that at particular seasons the symbol of the earth was carried in sacred procession through the countries where the supposed mother of all things was worshipped, and that during this religious journey the voice of foreign wars and domestic broils was hushed. Germania, c. 40. Tacitus calls them comites; and subsequent Latin writers, milites. These words do not convey the idea of obligation to service which are contained in the German word knecht, or the Saxon cniht. of the north had renounced idolatry, and adopt- CHAP. I. ed the religion of the south, the ceremony of creating a soldier became changed from the delivery of a lance and shield to the girding of a sword on the candidate; the church called upon him to swear always to protect her, and christian morality added the obligations of rescuing the oppressed, and preserving peace.* A barrier was thus raised against cruelty and injustice; and objects of desire, distinct from rapine and plunder, were before the eyes of martial youth. The true knight was courteous and humane; stern and ferocious. various duties determined his character. As protector of the weak, his mind was elevated His and * Du Cange, article Militaire. Du Cange shews that religious ceremonies were used in the investiture of knights, before the Crusades. See too Muratori, Antiquitates Italiæ Med. Ævi Dissert. 53. The minute ceremonies of initiation differed in various countries. The order of knighthood, like the priesthood, was called a holy order. The candidate had his sponsors: he confessed his sins, was regenerated in the bath, received the communion, and, in short, every thing was done that could impress a stamp of sanctity upon the society. Religion gave the character and objects of the institution; and war became, in some measure, virtue. Every freeman was qualified to be a cavalier, and as knights, as well as princes, barons and bishops, might create knights, there was no difficulty in acquiring the name of a soldier. 34 HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. CHAP. I. and softened, generous and disinterested. But the enemies of the church, as well as the foes of morals, were the objects of his hatred; he became the judge of opinions as well as of actions, and military spirit prompted him to destroy rather than to convert infidels and heretics. The engrafting of the virtues of humanity and the practical duties of religion on the sanguinary qualities of the warrior, was a circumstance beneficial to the world. But the mixture of the apostle and the soldier was an union which reason abhors. It gave rise to a feeling of violent animosity against the Saracens, and was a strong and active cause of the Crusades. CHAP. II. A HOLY WAR DECREED-MORAL CONVULSION OF Péter the Hermit...... His pilgrimage to Jerusalem ......He resolves to preach a holy war......His wish embraced by Urban II......Policy of that Pope ......Peter's preaching...... Councils of Placentia and of Clermont......Urban's speech at Clermont ......The redemption of the sepulchre resolved upon ......The crusade embraced by Europe......Departure of the European rabble...... First division...... Its destruction in Bulgaria......Second division...... Its disasters and outrages on the road to Greece...... And destruction in Bithynia...... Third division................ Its destruction in Hungary.............. Fourth and last division......Its shocking superstition......Cruelties on the German Jews......Destruction in Hungary. Peter the In times when a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was A. D. 1093. regarded as the duty of every Christian, and Hermit. when war was the occupation and the delight of Europe, Peter, a native of Amiens, in France, kindled that false and fatal zeal which for two centuries spread its devastating and consuming fires. In his youth he performed feudal military service under the banners of Eustace de Bouillon, |