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Handout #116 |
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The Council of Clermont (1095 A.D.) |
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Pope Urban II gave a moving description, with many details, of the
desolation of Christianity in the East and expounded the atrocious suffering
and oppression which Saracens were inflicting on the Christians. In his
pious allocution the orator, who was moved almost to tears, equally stressed
the way in which Jerusalem and the Holy Places where the Son of God had
lived in the flesh, with his most holy companions, were trampled underfoot.
He also reduced many of his audience to tears; they shared his deep emotion
and his pious compassion for their brothers. With the eloquence of the one
who sows the word of truth, he delivered to the assembly a long and very
persuasive discourse. He called on the great men of the West and their
companions-at-arms to respect the peace scrupulously in all their dealings,
to hang the sign of the saving cross from their right shoulder and to prove
themselves the elite and famous soldiers that they were by military valor
against the pagans.
There was a prodigious desire among rich and poor, women, monks and clergy, country dwellers and city folk, to go to Jerusalem or to help those who were going. The husbands decided to leave their dear wives at home; however, these, with tears, wanted to follow their husbands on pilgrimage and abandon their children and all their riches. Lands which hitherto had been costly were now sold cheaply, and arms were bought so that divine vengeance should be exacted on the friends of Allah. Thieves, pirates and other criminals rose from the depths of wickedness; touched by the Spirit of God, they confessed their crimes and, repudiating them, took pail in the crusade to make satisfaction to God for their sins. However the pope, a prudent man, summoned to war against the enemy of God all those who were capable of bearing arms and, by virtue of the authority which he holds from God, absolved from all their sins all the penitents from the moment that they took up the cross of Christ, mercifully also dispensing them from all the troubles that arise from fasts and other macerations of the flesh...Ordericus Vitalis, a Norman monk, History of the Church. (1135) |