77 Chapter 3: Call to the Faithful

For there is nothing which Almighty God, who wishes that all men should be saved and that no man should perish, more approves in our conduct, than that a man should first love God and then fellow men ... Most certainly you and we ought to love each other in this way more than other races of men, because we believe and confess one God, albeit in different ways, whom each day we praise and reverence as the creator of all ages and the governor of this world. For, as the Apostle says: "He our peace, who hath made both.’”

-Letter from Pope Gregory VII to al-Nasir, Sultan of Béjaïa, 1076

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…You should shudder, brethren, you should shudder at raising a violent hand against Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens. It is the only warfare that is righteous, for it is charity to risk your life for your brothers. That you may not be troubled about the concerns of tomorrow, know that those who fear God want nothing, nor those who cherish Him in truth. The possessions of the enemy, too, will be yours, since you will make spoil of their treasures and return victorious to your own; or empurpled with your own blood, you will have gained everlasting glory.

-Speech of Urban II at the Council of Clermont according to Archbishop Balderic of Dol

[Quotes read by The History of Georgia Saqartvelo]

Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 27 says that God created man in his own image. Not in the physical sense but spiritually. People share God’s greatest attributes: they have consciousness and they can create out of thought and word. Humans do not have the ability to create matter, but they can use their thoughts to create ideas which form the basis for our actions and even ourselves. In this way humans have a remarkable ability to create their own reality.

Perhaps it is strange to compare God’s ability to create elements, laws of physics and energy to human ideas. It may be that the two are categorically different. Yet, humanity is governed by ideas as well as matter and its laws. Languages, nations, classes, cultures, races and all manners of identity do not exist outside of our imagination. When it comes to language, the sounds that we make exist, but the meanings behind them are entirely artificial constructions. Nations are also ideas; there is no law in nature that says that France exists. French culture is not a fundamental part of the universe, despite what some people might think. Groups of humans possess unique phenotypes, which some use to claim there is significant difference among humans. But ‘race,’ as it is so often used, has virtually nothing to do with actual science and instead is a product of identification based on mutual interest.

Just because something does not exist does not mean that it is not real. Language, nation, class, culture, race and identity have no physical substance yet each of these has had a colossal influence on humanity and planet Earth. How are non-existent things sustained and proliferated? If thought is the foundation of an idea, then habit is its structure. If I were the only person in the world who thought that water falling from the sky should be called ‘rain’ that idea would die with me. The fact that people around the world consistently use the word ‘rain,’ and agree upon its meaning, ensures that the word can be used consistently. If enough people regularly use the word and agree upon its meaning then it develops a level of reality to the point where it can outlive most people who said it.

Thus, ideas are innate thoughts which gain form through the repetition of specific actions. A king only exercises power because people believe that he has power and act accordingly. A kingdom exists only because people believe that their chosen monarch has authority over an agreed-upon parcel of land and submit to his will inside that territory. Every day humans have thousands of thoughts which lead them to perform thousands of actions which reaffirm and spread the ideas which govern our being; ideas which were created long ago. In this manner, each individual is far more an effect of historical happenstance than a mover within it.

When Pope Urban II called the faithful of France to Crusade he was not making a simple declaration of war. This novel act was his attempt to remake reality. Urban II saw a faith that suffered political corruption and called to remake the relation between religious and secular powers. He saw a religion that was torn into two factions because both sides believed that their theological differences were greater than their similarities and he wanted to change their thinking. Urban II oversaw a divided Western church with one side recognizing him as pope, another following his rival and worked to affirm his supremacy in the minds of the faithful. He saw a Europe divided by regionalism and preached that such divisions were less important than a common Christian identity.

It is no coincidence that the First Crusade had such a profound impact on Europe. While the holy war did not belong to any one man, it was born out of Pope Urban II’s conscious attempt to recreate Christendom through the creation of a shared Christian identity and papal supremacy which would both unify the church and protect it from secular influence.

Europe in the 11thcentury experienced numerous crises, though unlike Byzantium it did not face the threat of invasion by a group representing a non-Christian religion. Quite the opposite; Norman mercenaries successfully conquered the largely-Islamic island of Sicily and mercenaries from France and beyond traveled to northern Iberia to seize territory from the divided Taifas. After centuries of raiding the Continent, Scandinavians accepted Christianity, ending the Viking Age.

While the large countries of Europe were increasingly secured from external threats, internal problems proliferated, none moreso than in France. Unlike in the Holy Roman Empire, the replacement of the Carolingian House with a new dynasty did not result in strong, centralized rule. When Hugues Capet took the throne of France he ruled as little more than a northern regional lord. King in name, he and his descendants held little influence over Aquitaine, Gascony and Provence. Even in the north the Capetians struggled against their powerful vassals in Vermandois, Anjou and Normandy. The Dukes of Normandy were arguably more powerful than the King of France following Guillaume’s capture of the English throne.

In the absence of central authority local lords exerted power over the countryside, often abusing the peasantry. Warfare between villages, towns or entire regions was constant. Blood feuds guaranteed violence between individuals and their families. Bandits harangued the roads. Murder and robbery were common. Strife marred the great and populous kingdom as its people regularly fought against each other.

Is it any wonder that some French believed that they lived in the end of days? The situation was so dire that there existed those who openly welcomed the apocalypse, thinking that the world’s climax would at least bring about the return of Christ and an end to their suffering. Though many held that France ached from a lack of Christian morality, not everyone believed that the end was nigh. These led knights and nobles to swear to refrain from violence under the Peace of God and Truce of God movements.

Another conflict that wracked Europe was the disputation of authority over churches. Church and state were not separate entities in the medieval period. Far from it; churches served as one of the primary institutions of the state. They oversaw education and poor relief. Bishops acted as secular lords who ruled over vast landholdings. As such, bishops collected a fair amount of taxes and could raise their own knights. Secular lords naturally wanted to control these institutions and claim their land, wealth and religious power for themselves. Kings and lords fought for the right to appoint loyalists as bishops, abbots and other religious leaders. In fairness, it was often the nobles who raised money to build churches and monasteries, sometimes in the wake of a Viking raid. Aristocrats regularly saw church-building as a transaction, not some free gift. Still, secular interference angered many church officials who feared a corrupting influence, particularly since some wealthy nobles bought their religious positions, in an act known as simony.

No country exercised such complete power over its church as the Holy Roman Empire, whose leaders appointed bishops and even the pope himself! Then, in 1058 the 6-year-old Heinrich IV became King of Germany and Italy. Reformist Italian cardinals took advantage of the lack of leadership in the Holy Roman Empire and appointed their own pope, Nicholas II. For decades reformist popes sought to cleanse the church of outside influence even as the Germans sought to reassert their power over Rome in a conflict known as the Investiture Controversy. The reformers survived by allying with the Normans who ruled southern Italy to repel the northern powers.

In complete contrast to Germany’s strong central authority, the French monarchy’s weakness meant that far more of its religious sites exercised independence from secular interference. Of all the great French churches, none was more powerful or influential than Cluny Abbey. According to historian Thomas Asbridge, “By the end of the 11th century 11,000 monks and 2,000 religious communities joined the Cluniac movement.” Among other things, the Cluniacs demanded freedom from aristocratic meddling and claimed protection under the power of the papacy. As the former Grand Prior of Cluny, Urban II worked to spread the French model of church authority to the rest of Europe.

When Urban II became pope in 1088 he bemoaned that Christianity was not following Christ’s instructions to form a united community living in harmony with each other. In 1054 the Patriarch of Constantinople and Pope had excommunicated each other, dividing the faith between the Western Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. The Latin Church was further divided between those countries who recognized Urban II as the rightful pope and those who supported the Holy Roman Emperor’s choice, Clement III. While England, France, northern Spain and southern Italy followed Urban II, the city of Rome, much of northern Italy and the Holy Roman Empire supported Clement III.

Far from being a strong pope, Urban II did not even have access to his own church, Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Recognizing that he needed allies, Urban II turned to the Byzantine Empire. Shortly after becoming Pope, he sent envoys to Constantinople with the aim of reconciling Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The patriarch of Constantinople, Nicholas III Grammatikos welcomed the pope’s overtures. The beleaguered Emperor Alexios I was even more enthusiastic: he suggested that Latin and Greek clergy assemble in Constantinople for a great council and decide dogma, personally promising he would abide by whatever decisions were made. While the Greeks dealt with Urban II, they snubbed Clement III’s overtures, a move which strengthened the former’s claim to legitimacy.

By the 1090s events rapidly moved in Urban II’s favor. Many German clients, frustrated by Emperor Heinrich IV’s heavy-handed rule, turned against their lord, including his wife, Empress Eupraxia of Kyiv, and his son, Conrad. The Pope responded to these high-profile defections by declaring that a great council would be held in March 1095 at Piacenza, in northern Italy, which had just recently been loyal to Heinrich IV. The assembled bishops denounced Clement III and offered amnesty for all clergy who would renounce their loyalty to the antipope. Not long after, Conrad and Urban II made a deal: Urban II would recognize Conrad as the rightful emperor and in exchange Conrad would acknowledge him as pope. They then sealed their agreement with a marriage alliance…not with each other, Urban II was sworn to celibacy, but between Conrad and Matilde, daughter of Robert Guiscard, the pope’s Norman ally in the south.

Despite all of these victories Urban II was not the undisputed leader of the Catholic Church. The heart of Catholicism, Saint Peter’s Basilica and the City of Rome, remained in the hands of his enemy. All of the Pope’s maneuvering and grand gestures still fell short of this final goal. Then, in the midst of the Council of Piacenza, Byzantine envoys arrived with dire news: Anatolia had fallen and the empire was on the point of collapse. Their message proved both a catastrophe and an opportunity. Urban II dreamed of being the man to accomplish the glorious task of ending the strife that plagued Christianity, reuniting the divided Western Church and ending the Schism with the East. Moreover, his legitimacy rested in part on his entente with the Orthodox. If Byzantium fell, his own power would diminish with it. Yet, if Urban II could rouse Western Christians to save the empire he would legitimize himself as the one true and indisputable leader of the church in the West. Meanwhile, the Easterners would be so indebted to the West that it would make healing the schism that much easier. For Urban II, Byzantium’s crisis was part of God’s plan to bring about the salvation of Christendom. Not long after the Greeks arrived in Italy, pleading for aid, did Urban II decide that all of his and Christendom’s religious and political problems could be solved through a holy war so large in size and with such great purpose that it would crush all petty differences and unite the faithful.

Yes, a holy war would accomplish everything that His Holiness desired. If Urban II could raise a major force it would affirm him as the one true pope. Moreover, if a pope could raise an army greater than even kings and emperors could muster then Christians would have to recognize the centrality of the pope as the master of the Catholic world. As a French Christian steeped in the theology of the Peace of God and Truce of God, Urban II wanted to end inter-Christian violence and unite believers as believers. Urban II hoped to turn internecine violence against a mutual foe, bringing war to an enemy and peace to Europe.

A great holy war would have the further benefit of saving the sacred in the east. Three of the five holiest churches in Christendom, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, had fallen to Islamic powers, as had many relics. For a man who believed that divine power dwelt within physical spaces and objects, the reconquest of these places would mark God’s divine favor for his people. Of all prizes, none were greater than Jerusalem, the holy city where Jesus was crucified, resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Finally, Urban II may have even believed that such a holy war would bring about the end of the world, as described in the final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelations. The late 10thand early 11th centuries were a time of great anxiety, with many in France claiming to witness miracles, magic, demons and signs in the heavens. As a scholar from Cluny, Urban II would rank among the skeptical. Yet, even he was probably affected by the many stories and possible signs of the end times. It is possible that Urban II hoped that should Christians retake Jerusalem it would signal the return of Christ, the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom and the ultimate end of the world. As Urban II looked at the sad state of Christendom he reasoned that only a holy war could give Christians a common ground to remake their society religiously, politically and culturally.

Urban II was not the first pope to envision a holy war in the east. Gregory VII had called for a campaign of Western soldiers to aid the Byzantines in 1074, one which he had planned to personally lead all the way to Jerusalem. Yet, Gregory VII’s plans never took root. He had made the mistake of asserting himself as its leader to the chagrin of the warrior-nobles who adamantly refused to submit to the secular authority of a pope at a time when even his spiritual authority was in question. Urban II learned from his predecessor’s mistake: rather than claim leadership of such an endeavor, he gave his blessing to any who would fight for the Christian cause in the east.

Shortly after the council at Piacenza, Urban II declared to Italians his desire for a war to save Byzantium and retake the Holy Land. The people of the Italian peninsula largely ignored the pope’s call to arms. They had their own problems to deal with. Many worried that if they left their lands then they would be attacked by Germans from the north, Normans from the south or even just a small, neighboring territory. Moreover, many Italians remained loyal to Clement III. For these and other reasons very few Italians went to fight in the East. Yet, Urban II was not dismayed. When the Italians failed him he moved to his homeland of France.

Even before the Pope crossed the Alps, Emperor Alexios I had done much of the work preparing the French for war. For over a decade Alexios I had propagandized to the French, encouraging them to serve as mercenaries in the Byzantine army. The Byzantines had a strong infantry, but these were ineffective against the mounted Turks and Pechenegs. Meanwhile, the French and Normans were perhaps the greatest horsemen in all of Europe. While the Byzantines primarily courted cavalry, French and Norman foot-soldiers also had a reputation as peerless fighters. Despite all of Byzantium’s problems with rebellious mercenaries, Alexios I believed that he needed these Western soldiers to counter his new eastern foes.

The propaganda war that Alexios I waged on France anticipated most of Urban II’s own appeals that he was soon to make. First, Greeks travelling west countered accusations that the Catholics and Orthodox were too far different, arguing that all Christians were part of a spiritual family. These claims found root in France due to the Peace of God and Truce of God movements, which emphasized a mutual Christian identity over regionalism.

In addition to promoting Christian solidarity, the Byzantines tempted the French with promises of relics with great spiritual value. According to historian Peter Frankopen, Alexios I “drew attention to Constantinople’s collection of relics, which included the most holy and significant objects relating to Christ’s life, such as the pillar to which Jesus was bound before being submitted to the scourge, as well as the lash itself; the scarlet robe in which Christ was arrayed; the crown of thorns; garments from the Crucifixion, as well as most of the Holy Cross and the nails that had fastened him to it; linen cloths from the tomb; the twelve baskets with remainders of the five loaves and two fish which had fed the 5,000; and relics and bones belonging to any number of the Apostles, martyrs and prophets.” While these treasures enticed the Western faithful, one particular incident led to great confusion. In one communication the Byzantines mentioned their possession of the head of Saint John the Baptist. This was puzzling to the church of Angers, which claimed that it had the sacred head, prompting one French cleric to jokingly write that either there had to be two John the Baptists or the saint was one man with two heads. Nevertheless, relics proved a useful lure for Alexios I, who probably gifted some to French churches, including Cluny Abbey.

Alexios I also appealed to the French by catering to their sense of pilgrimage, with a special emphasis placed on Jerusalem. Pilgrimage was particularly important for those who lived far away from the sacred sites mentioned in the Bible. While the French had made treks to the Holy Land for hundreds of years, by the 11th century increased wealth allowed for regular travel from West to East. The Byzantine Emperor claimed that pilgrims were increasingly harassed by Muslims who controlled the Holy Land and appealed to Christians to join his armies and fight to secure the east. To be sure, the Turkish conquests of Anatolia and the Holy Land disrupted pilgrimage routes, but in general the Muslim rulers were tolerant of their Christian subjects. Ironically enough, Muslims were often more violent towards each other than their non-Muslim subjects. When the Sunni Seljuks took Jerusalem they fought bitterly with the local Shi’a population, even as the city’s Christians and Jews were largely spared from the violence. However, Alexios I was not going to let reality get in the way of his messaging.

Finally, Alexios I spread tales of atrocities committed by Muslims in the east. Greek messengers told of mass rape of Christian women, sodomy performed on Christian men and the destruction of ancient churches. There were kernels of truth in these stories. By the 1090s the Turkish governors of Antioch and Jerusalem gained a reputation for cruelty. Likewise, in the year 1009 the fundamentalist Fatimid Caliph destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as an affront to Islamic sensibilities. However, such acts were the exception, not the norm. In fact, a later Caliph allowed the Byzantines to rebuild the most holy church where Christ was crucified in 1048, as part of a goodwill gesture to the Byzantine Empire and the Caliph’s own Christian subjects. Nevertheless, Alexios I’s propaganda of Muslims as violent savages struck at the heart of French historical honor and identity. Charles Martel’s defeat of Islamic forces at the Battle of Poitiers was heralded as one of the greatest of Frankish triumphs, as was Charlemagne’s forays into northern Iberia, which was recounted in tales that eventually became the epic poem The Song of Roland. Later French knights led the reconquest of Provence from the mujahadeen of Fraxinetum, who regularly harassed pilgrims and sacked monasteries. For a people to be good there has to be an evil opposite; for the Christian French, Muslims filled that role.

Despite all the exaggerations and outright falsehoods perpetuated by Alexios I’s agents, Byzantine propaganda reverberated throughout France. The call for Christian identity above all else appealed to a country wracked by regionalism, desperate for something to bring about peace and fraternity. Bereft of ancient churches and Biblical holy sites, Gallo-Romans, Franks and French had created their own holiness through the reverence of relics. Alexios I’s offer of the faith’s most sacred items was a natural draw for the Western faithful. The surge in French pilgrimage during the early 11th century and its decline due to upheaval in the east in the 1070s-onward was a direct threat to their ability to connect on a spiritual level with their own religion. Finally, Alexios I masterfully played upon French belief that it was their divinely-appointed role to shield Christendom from a heretical Islamic threat, as they had done at Poitiers and in Provence. While Urban II knew how to appeal to his fellow Frenchmen, the ground he would soon walk on had been well-conditioned by the constant cries of help from the Byzantines and their appeals to French honor and martial glory in the defense of their faith.

Urban II crossed the Alps in mid-summer 1095. From Valence he traveled to Le Puy, where he met with its bishop Adhemar and called for a council at Clermont. While word spread, the pope traveled through Lyon, much of the south and even revisited Cluny Abbey. Urban II purposefully avoided the north and King Philippe I, who His Holiness had excommunicated for unlawful divorce. It’s always awkward to run into someone who you’ve condemned to eternal damnation.

On 18 November 1095 the Council of Clermont opened. Twelve archbishops, 80 bishops and 90 abbots attended what was then the largest gathering of clergy Urban II had ever hosted. For over a week the congregated discussed issues in France. They debated how best to implement Clunaic reform. They also renewed the excommunication of King Philippe I. Then, on 27 November, Urban II led the assembled out of the church and to a nearby field. Flanked by the great lava dome Puy-de-Dôme, Urban II gazed upon the hundreds of faithful. There he delivered one of the most impactful speeches in history.

We do not know exactly what His Holiness said on that cold Fall day. There exist six accounts of the speech, each wildly different from the other, some written by those who were not present and well after even the First Crusade. Still, by comparing these speeches and by examining Urban II’s letters before and after Clermont we can get a gist of what he said.

With remarkable passion and energy the pope decried the violence and division that tore apart his homeland. He grieved that Christians slew their fellows, embraced sin and had strayed so far from God. Then he declared that as wicked as France had become there was still a worse evil in the world. Urban II bellowed that Anatolia and the Holy Land itself had fallen to heathens who preached the words of a false prophet. He denounced the Turks as a scornful race who delighted in wickedness, abusing the helpless faithful and desecrating the oldest and most sacred churches. These men harangued innocent pilgrims, stopping them from following their faith and walking the ground where their Lord and Savior stepped. After painting such a bleak picture Urban II offered his remedy: he called upon professional soldiers to journey east as armed pilgrims. He declared that if the faithful of France put aside their earthly differences and took up the cross then they would form an insurmountable host capable of marching across Anatolia and into the Holy Land where they would seize Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher itself. Urban II then declared that all those who joined the pilgrimage out of devotion to God, rather than for glory or money, would be cleansed of all sin and receive immediate salvation upon death.

The gathered crowd responded with a fevered call of, “Dieu le veut!” or some variant, meaning: “God wills it!” Urban II heard their shouts and responded that this should be their battle cry. He then decreed that every man who made the journey should sew a cross onto their clothing to mark them as holy warriors. It is from this that we get the term ‘crusade,’ from the French ‘croisée,’ meaning ‘marked by the Cross.’ However, these men did not call themselves Crusaders; that word came centuries later. These men named themselves exercitus Dei, ‘the army of God,’ or exercitus Domini, ‘the Army of the Lord.’ Their war was not a ‘Crusade’ but Via Dei, ‘the Way of God,’ and they were each pilgrims on that road.

Bishop Adhemar du Puy was so moved that he begged Urban II for permission to join the holy war, despite not being a soldier. Urban II granted his request, naming him apostolic legate who would serve as the armies’ moral leader.

From Clermont the gathered clergy scattered in all directions, spreading news to every city, town and village that an all-cleansing holy war had come. Urban II raced from one French locale to the next, preaching to feverishly energetic faithful. Each time he visited a major church he bestowed and blessed its altar with a splinter from the True Cross, gifted by Emperor Alexios I. These small chippings, taken from the holiest relic in Christendom, drew awe and reverence from the faithful. Finally, the pope declared the Truce of God was in effect across France; thus those who wished to join the armed pilgrimage could do so without fear of their property and family being abused in their absence.

While His Holiness was the most important proselytizer for the war he was hardly alone. Adhemar and other high-ranking bishops traveled throughout the kingdom with emphatic appeals to fight and die for Christ. Lower-ranking clergy like Jarento, abbot of Sainte-Bénigne of Dijon, spoke throughout Normandy and England. Itinerant preachers moved with an almost frenzied sense of spiritual energy as they roamed from village to village, preaching holy war. The most famous of these was the hermit Robert de Arbrissel, who Pope Urban II brought out from his life in the wilderness and set to evangelizing the war in the Loire Valley, to great effect. Then there were others who were little more than mystics, folk healers and outright cranks who bordered or even crossed the line into heretical beliefs who formed their own bands and headed towards Byzantium.

While men of the cloth stirred people’s hearts, powerful aristocrats raised their soldiers. Robert, Count of Flanders, who had maintained a long-standing relationship with the Byzantine Emperor, rode through his domains gathering men-at-arms. Along the northern coasts, Robert II, duke of Normandy, called up his vassals and made preparations for him and thousands more. Rather than sell or mortgage lands to the church for the necessary funds, Robert II asked his brother Guillaume II, King of England, for 10,000 marks. This might seem like an odd request given that the two had literally warred against each other for their father’s domains, but Guillaume II was happy to get rid of his older sibling and paid him a fortune to go fight halfway across the known world. Godefroy de Bouillon did not have the luxury of having such wealthy siblings and so he turned to the church to raise money for his own force. In the process he sold the county of Verdun alongside three castles to its bishop. Another great northern lord, Hugues, Count of Vermandois, conscripted his own army which would defend the honor of House Capet even as his brother Philippe I, King of France, was forbidden from joining the pilgrimage due to his excommunication. Joining them was the last of the great northern lords to take up the cross, Étienne, Count of Blois.

While most of the great lords of the holy war came from the north, its single most powerful leader came from the south. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was the wealthiest man in all of France, even more than its king, with bountiful lands in Provence. He was also profusely devout, something which Urban II well-knew when he paid him a personal visit during his tour de France. Finally, Raymond was old. While the other great lords were in their late thirties or forties, Raymond was in his mid-fifties in 1095. At 54 he was well-past his prime and had outlived so many other noble men who died of violence or disease. When Raymond received Urban II and heard his message he decided that he had been called to die fighting for the cross; though he would not die alone, and he raised the largest of all the armies. As he prepared to leave he paid a team of priests to perform Mass, pray for him and keep a candle permanently lit to the Virgin Mary in his absence.

The five northern lords, Robert of Flanders, Robert II Duke of Normandy, Godefroy Count of Bouillon, Hugues Count of Vermandois and Étienne, Count of Blois and the Provençal Raymond Count of Toulouse, each oversaw their own armies and formed six of the seven leaders of the First Crusade. The last great magnate, Bohemond, the dispossessed son of the Norman lord of southern Italy, Robert Guiscard, was even then stewing over his failure to conquer Byzantium from the Greeks and southern Italy from his relatives. When he learned of the holy war he would form the smallest, but perhaps most-skilled, army to join the expedition.

Urban II’s call to arms had a greater effect than even he had anticipated. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands prepared to journey east. Local churches doled out fortunes as knights traded land for the money needed to travel. Urban II was overjoyed that such incredible numbers prepared to do battle with the heathen. Yet, he soon realized that too many were joining the great movement. Soon, Urban II was writing letters forbidding those knights in Tarragona from abandoning northern Iberia to Muslim dominance, imploring them to consider the war in Spain on par with that in the east. He also wrote to monasteries advising punishment for any clergy outside his handpicked representatives from travelling with the soldiers. Despite his interdiction on non-combatants joining the war, more than one hundred thousand commoners, among them women, children, elderly, disabled and infirm, armed with farming equipment, clubs, crude weapons and makeshift spears began the eastward trek. Urban II had asked for a war unlike any that had come before and France had answered.

The pope had believed that Christendom had fallen so far that only an apocalyptic expedition could deliver it from its wickedness. Furthermore, this show of strength was enough to make him the dominant voice in Catholicism. Urban II’s travelling ministry, impassioned preaching and ability to raise a force greater than any king or emperor could muster meant that popes gained all-new status as masters of the church, not just in name, but in practice. At the beginning of the century many priests acted without any message from the pope. Following the council of Clermont papal supremacy was assured. Finally, Urban II’s ability to conscript so many great lords and their vassals fatally undermined antipope Clement III’s claims to authority. His Holiness had succeeded in using spiritual fervor to secure his immediate religious and political ambitions. Yet, once the hosts passed into Byzantium the force that he had unleashed was beyond his control. His words would remake the world, though not as he had imagined.