The Impact of the Crusades 111
against the turks and to liberate the Holy Land and in particular Jerusalem, thereby
bringing together ideas of pilgrimage and holy war which together formed the
theological and ideological basis for future crusading.47
we have a number of contemporary and near contemporary sources which
record Urban II’s speech: the Gesta Francorum Jerusalem Expugnantium of Fulcher of
Chartres, the Historia Hierosolymitana Gesta Francorum of robert the Monk,
Balderic of dol’s, Historia Hierosolymitana Libri IV and guibert of Nogent’s Historia
quae dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos.48 Hence we know that Urban journeyed through
France with a large entourage from Italy. One in a long line of eleventh-century
reforming popes, Urban saw it as a principal duty of his pontificate to reform the
French Church, so he was at pains to stop en route to dedicate cathedrals, churches,
and altars, and to preside over ecclesiastical councils before preaching his first public
crusade sermon at Clermont.49 That seems to have been a carefully stage-managed
event in which the crowd responded fervently to a sermon by the bishop and papal
legate Adhémar of le Monteil and where monks were on hand to act as recruiting
agents for the crusade.50
In responding to an appeal for assistance from the Byzantine Alexius I Comnenus
(1048/56–1118), and calling for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the Seljuk
turks, Urban seems to have hoped to achieve both the shorter-term goal of freeing
the holy places for Christian pilgrims and the longer-term goal of uniting the greek
and Latin churches. Certainly all the accounts agree that his aims for the crusade
included liberation: of the Holy Sepulchre, of the eastern churches, and of Christianity
itself from the Muslims.51 In his appeal to save his Byzantine brethren from the
Muslim infidel, Urban deliberately introduced the Cross as a distinctive symbol of
the vow of commitment and drew on Scriptural passages from Matthew 16: 24 and
from Luke 12: 27—‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me’. No account suggests that he said anything specific about the
infidel Jew—protective or otherwise—to those about to take the Cross.
Nevertheless, we know that dreadful pogroms against Jews soon broke out, per-
petrated not by the knightly classes whom Urban’s speech had targeted—including
an impressive list of the foremost nobility of western Europe—but rather from
those involved in the ‘peasants Crusade’ led by peter the Hermit. According to
popular legend peter had been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, had been mal-
treated by Seljuk turks and on his return to Europe had subsequently persuaded
Urban to call the First Crusade.52 Although the story proved unfounded, neverthe-
less the preaching of the crusade took several months and brought an unexpected
response from the poor who—incited by peter and other clergy and preachers such
as walter the penniless, the priests gottschalk and volkmar, and Count Emicho of
47 Carl Erdmann, Die Enstehung des Kreuzzugs Gedankens (Stuttgart, 1935), The Origin of the Idea
of Crusade, trans. M. w. Baldwin, w. goffart (princeton, 1977), p.333.
48 riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, pp.60–1.
49 riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pp.54–5.
50 riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, p.58.
51 For discussion of the idea of ‘liberation’, see Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade,
pp.355–71.
52 riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, p.56.