CHAP. II. father of Godfrey VI. duke of Lorraine: but he did not long aspire after the honours of a hero. He became the husband of a lady of the noble family of Roussy, but as she was old, poor, and ugly, his vanity and his ambition were not gratified by the marriage. His next characters were those of a priest and an anchorite;* and since in his subsequent life he was usually clad in the weeds of a solitary, his cotemporaries surnamed him the Hermit. As the last means of expiating some errors of his early days, he resolved to undergo the pains and perils of a journey to the holy land. When he started from the shade of obscurity, his small and mean person was macerated by austerities; his face was thin and care-worn; but his eye spoke thought and feeling, and atoned for the general insignificance of his appearance. His imagination was sanguine, but his judgment was weak: and therefore his long continued speculations upon religion in the cloister and cell, ended in dreams of rapture. He fancied himself invested with divine authority, and what in truth was but the vision of a heated mind, he believed to be a communication from heaven.†

He

* Petrarch, in his treatise, De Vita Solit. lib. ii. sec. iv. c. 1, celebrates Peter as a great example of solitary livers. + On the person and character of Peter, thus writes the

archbishop

mage to

He accomplished his journey to Palestine; CHAP. II. and, on his arrival at Jerusalem, went through His pilgri the usual course of prayers and processions. Jerusalem. The sacrilegious and inhuman barbarities of the Turks had excited the indignation of every pilgrim, and affected in the strongest manner the ardent fancy of Peter. With his host, a Latin Christian, he conversed on the subjects of the existing distresses of the faithful, the triumph of infidelity, and the ancient grandeur and modern degradation of the holy city. In the patriarch Symeon, too, the hermit found a kindred spirit; and, by means of an interpreter, they communicated their opinions and feelings. The churchman's account of the afflictions of the people of God were met not only with tears, but the reiterated question, whether no way could be discovered to soften and to terminate them. Symeon declared that these misfortunes were the

D 3

archbishop of Tyre:-Sacerdos quidam, Petrus nomine, de regno Francorum, de episcopatu Ambianensi, qui et re et nomine cognominabatur Heremita, eodem fervore tractus, Hierosolymam pervenit. Erat autem hic idem staturâ pusillus, et quantum ad exteriorem hominem, personæ contemptibilis. Sed major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus. Vivacis enim ingenii erat, et oculum habens perspicacem, gratumque, et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium. P. 637. See, too, the collection of passages from the original writers in Du Cange's note on the Alexiad, p. 79, Venice edition.

CHAP. II. the consequences of sin; that the remedy and redress could not be found among the Greeks,

to preach a holy war.

66

who had already lost half their empire, but among the great nations of the west, whose He resolves strength was unimpaired The hermit replied, that if the people of Europe had certain evidence of these facts, they would provide a remedy. "Write therefore," he continued, " both to the "Pope and the Romish church, and to all the "Latin Christians: and affix to your letter the "seal of your office. As a penance for my sins, "I will travel over Europe; I will describe to princes and people the degraded state of the "church, and will urge them to repair it."* Possessed of his credentials, but principally by Urban trusting in the virtue of his cause, Peter returned to Europe, and repaired to Pope Urban II., who was disputing with Guibert, the friend of the emperor, for the pontificate. The tale was eagerly listened to by the Pope. Urban was religious in the sense in which his age understood religion, and he therefore lamented the direful state of Jerusalem: he was humane, and his tears flowed for the insulted and distressed pilgrims. He had been patronized by Gregory VII. through all the course of ecclesiastical dignities, and had succeeded to the ambition, as well as to the power

His wish embraced

*Archb. of Tyre, 637.

of

that Pope.

of his master.* But his religious sympathy and CHAP. II. lofty desires were not unmingled with selfish Policy of feelings, for it appears from the authority of an excellent witness,† that the Pope conferred upon the subject of Peter's message with Bohemond, prince of Tarentum ; and that it was by the advice of this Norman freebooter, that he resolved to direct the martial energies of Europe to foreign ends. It was thought, that if his holiness could kindle the flame of war, auxiliaries might be easily engaged, by whose means he would be able to fix himself in the Vatican, and Bohemond could recover those Grecian territories which for awhile had been in the possession of the Normans.§

preaching.

It might have been supposed, that when the Peter's head of Christendom had adopted the cause of the pilgrims, individual exertion would have been useless. But, devoted to his object, and swelled in self-importance by his influence with D 4

the

*Fulcher, 381. Archb. of Tyre, 638. Martenne, Vet. Script. Amp. Coll. V. 516, and the Life of Urban, by P. Pisanus, in the fourth vol. of Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. p. 352.

+ William of Malmsbury, p. 407.

For the family history of this prince, and its connection with Constantinople, see note B.

§ William of Malmsbury, p. 407.

CHAP. II. the Pope, Peter resolved to preach the deliverance of the sepulchre. He accordingly traversed Italy and France. His dress expressed selfabasement and mortification: it was only a coarse woollen shirt, and a hermit's mantle.* His mode of living was abstemious; but his qualities did not consist of those selfish penances which are the usual virtues of the recluse. He

distributed among the poor those gifts which gratitude showered upon himself; he reclaimed the sinner; terminated disputes, and sowed the germs of virtue. He was every where hailed and considered as the man of God, and even the hairs which fell from his mule were treasured by the people as relics. His exhortations to vengeance on the Turks were heard with rapture, because they reflected the religious sentiments of the day. The love also of romantic adventure,

and

* Lanea tunica ad purum, cucullo super, utrisque talaribus, byrrho desuper induebatur; brachis minime, nudipes autem. Guibert, lib. i ii. cap. 8.

+ Guibert, 482. Archb. of Tyre, 638. Museum Italicum, vol. 1, p. 131.

+ Quidquid agebat namque, seu loquebatur, quasi quiddam subdivinum videbatur, præsertim cum etiam de ejus mulo pili pro reliquiis raperentur. Guibert, p. 482. The original historians, seldom backward in ascribing speeches to the great characters of the crusades, have not reported any of the sermons of Peter.