Peter the Hermit Part 2

Among the Greeks the lowest qualities and the basest acts found justification under the name of policy. Courage in battle was supplanted by the shield and mechanism of bodily safety. They killed the men who tried to rouse them. They had wasted all their inheritance but great memories, and had acquired a truculent and factious spirit. While they were nearing the utter decay of their influence the infant West was found to have grown until all that was n.o.ble in character and all that was true in Christianity, all which could respond in courage and self-sacrifice to the call of Jerusalem for deliverance, was to be found among those whom the Greeks had held to be Barbarians.

[Sidenote: _Papal Ambition_]

[Sidenote: Greatness of Gregory]

The Roman Curia, from its first date of political influence, had never ceased to enhance its authority by the use of the secular arm when it had none of its own, or by its own secular arm when it could command one. The disturbed conditions in the East, together with the decay of Greek influence and the cowardice and helplessness of the Byzantine emperors, had led Michael Ducas to appeal to Pope Gregory for help. The prize offered Gregory was the submission of the Greek to the Roman Church and the removal of all barriers. From the standpoint of ability, Gregory well deserves the t.i.tle "Great." He seems as great in statecraft as in executive ability. The hope of being a universal pope led him to promise aid. He urged the faithful to take up arms against the Mussulmans, and promised to lead them himself. His letters were full of the loftiest ideas. Fifty thousand agreed to follow his lead. But he found the management of Europe more to his taste and perhaps to his need.

The decay of Byzantine power was wisely used for the development of pontifical authority and the spread of the Latin Church. And, again, the Eternal City through its popes, and particularly through Gregory, became the ruler of the world. Gregory summoned all monarchs to derive their authority and their enthronement from him, and endeavored to make laws for every country in which his Church had place. Resisted by some monarchs, his influence widened nevertheless, and while he forgot his pledge to deliver Jerusalem, he prepared the way for a final unity of action which he could not secure in his own lifetime.

In the pontificate of his successor, mingled religious and commercial motives led to a movement against the Saracens, which, while never numbered among the Crusades, almost deserved that name. The acquisition of maritime power by the Saracens had led to interference with Italian commerce.

[Sidenote: _"Christian" Butchery_]

Promising remission of sins to all who fought, Victor besought Christians to take up arms. Christians crossed to Africa and professed to have slain a hundred thousand Saracens; certainly did decorate Italian churches with the spoils of victory, and made a Moorish king pay tribute to the pope.

What kings, emperors, and popes could not do, a pilgrim accomplished. We pa.s.s from the Foreground to the Figure.

CHAPTER II.

THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE.

[Sidenote: _Preparation for Peter_]

The study of the Foreground of the Crusades exhibits the preparation for the man who was to be the great leader and, one might say, originator of these astonishing movements. Whatever part others played, or whatever the measure of the aid given, to Peter the Hermit is to be given the credit of the effective inspiration and active leadership.

The leadership here claimed for Peter is challenged, it is only fair to say, by Von Sybil whose views are, in the main, accepted by Hagenmeyer.

Von Sybil gives credit to the Pope alone for inspiration and direction.

It seems more probable, however, that the Pope utilized and magnified the enthusiasm and influence of Peter; and directed it into channels more likely to permit the movement of the Roman Church Eastward and the growth of Pontifical supremacy. This is the view contained in these pages.

[Sidenote: _Peter's Birth_]

We know where Peter came from. Born in Picardy, the historians are not agreed whether of obscure or n.o.ble family. It makes little difference, since if this were known all their dignity and life in history would proceed from Peter. He was called Peter the Hermit because he was a hermit, and not, as some have maintained, because it was his surname.

The weight of opinion favors his descent from humble parents.

All are agreed that he was of very ordinary appearance; one says "ign.o.ble and vulgar." The sum of the statements of contemporaries as to his personality, is that he was of sharp understanding, energetic, decided; coa.r.s.e and sometimes brutal; enthusiastic; of great imaginative power. If a Picard, then a Frank, and if a Frank, then a fighter, and very ready to fight for religion. His nationality, therefore, gave him access by speech to a most restless, gallant, and adventurous people.

Born with courage, moral intensity, restlessness, and activity, he experimented for satisfaction in every direction.

[Sidenote: _Chooses Hermit's Life_]

[Sidenote: _Effect of Self-confidence_]

It seems that neither celibacy nor marriage, study nor warfare, long attracted him. The conditions about him seemed beyond his remedy, and, like many others, he retired from a sinful world to the harshnesses and austerity of a hermit's life. Fasting did for him what it seems to do for all when excess is reached either by self-will or necessity. He became truly a "visionary." "He saw visions and dreamed dreams." His temperament and his religious exercises made him feel that, better than others he knew the will of G.o.d and that he was chosen to execute it. In this stage a man becomes capable of great things in a poor cause. The world is always impressed by the confident and the courageous. No great movement, however wrong in doctrine, defective in morals, or disastrous in results, has been without such leadership.

Like all orators of the Latin race, his fervor showed itself, not only in his tones, but in his gesticulation and his postures. He was a master of pantomime. If any were beyond his voice, they were not beyond his meaning. If he had lived in our time he would have been counted among the most "magnetic" of preachers. The reputation of his sanct.i.ty showered him with gifts. He kept nothing for himself. All went to the poor, and evil women were dowried by him that they might cease from evil in honorable marriage.

[Sidenote: _Generosity Self-Sacrifice_]

Peter was not stirred alone by the relations of returning pilgrims as to the ignominies heaped alike on the sacred places and on the religious by the Turks. He followed in the wake of the devotees who traversed the long road to the Holy City. That Peter actually made this journey is sufficiently attested by his contemporary, Anna Conmena. She probably met him while tarrying in Constantinople, and could easily know of his presence at the palace of her father, Alexius. From her we learn that he had to flee before the Turks and Saracens, and her narration makes it doubtful if he reached Jerusalem on his first attempt. By so much as he was more enthusiastic than others by nature, by so much was he fired with indignation, which to him was but the just expression of his zeal and his piety.

[Sidenote: _Emotions in Jerusalem_]

He stood with agony on Calvary. He adored with tears the tomb of Christ.

Then he sought speech with the Patriarch of Jerusalem. His name was Simeon, and like another, waited for "the salvation of G.o.d." Who is responsible for the report of this interview we do not know, but one more probable and pathetic is not on record outside the Bible.

[Sidenote: _Patriarch Simeon_]

[Sidenote: _Simeon's and Peter's Hope_]

Simeon had suffered much for his faith as well as for his leadership.

The impatient enthusiasm of Peter was moved to tears by the patient enthusiasm of Simeon. "Is there no remedy?" cried Peter, weeping. And Simeon answered: "Is it not evident that our sins have shut us away from the mercy of the Lord? All Asia is in the power of the Mussulmans; all the East is enslaved; no power on earth can help us." Peter asked, "May not the warriors of the West come to your help?" "Yes," said Simeon, "when our cup is full, G.o.d will soften the princes of the West, and will send them to the help of the Holy City." This was Peter's thought, and, weeping with joy over a great hope, the patriarch and the pilgrim embraced. The patriarch pledged himself to appeal to Europe by letter and Peter by word of mouth.

The plan of Peter was strengthened by his further devotions at the Holy Sepulcher. There are two ways in which men of strong will become sure that their will is the will of G.o.d.

[Sidenote: _Peter's Mental Const.i.tution_]

One is to make a plan, and then submit it to G.o.d in prayer. The other, and the truer, is to ask G.o.d's help in the making of the plan as in its execution. The first, as was probable from Peter's intellectual and moral const.i.tution, seems to have been the way in which he came to certainty as to his life mission. There is no reason to doubt that in his exiled state, moved at once by piety and peril, he saw the vision, though inwardly, which inspired his return. At the Sepulcher he thought he heard the voice of Christ commanding him to proclaim the sorrows of Christ's land and of Christ's people. The best account of this vision and commission is that of the Historia Belli Sacri: "One evening as Peter went to rest the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision, saying, 'Peter, stand up. Go back quickly into the West. Betake thyself to Pope Urban with this commission from Me that he get all My brothers as quickly as possible to hasten to Jerusalem, in order to purge the city of unbelievers. All who do this from love to Me, to them stand open the doors of the kingdom of heaven.'" This became to him a daily commission from on high. Bearing letters from Simeon, he went to Italy by sea, and sought the presence and aid of Urban II, then pope.

[Sidenote: _Pope Urban_]

Urban felt that this call, recognized by his predecessors, was more fully and loudly given to him.

The refusal of Hagenmeyer to credit this vision and its influence on Pope Urban seems to be the result of an ultra critical spirit. When a pope speaks, after argument and urging, he is not likely to think it consonant with his dignity to give credit in allocution or bull to those who urged him. Holding that all men are properly servants of the Holy See, he speaks as if he was the original source of knowledge and impulse. Urban does not, in his famous speech at the Council of Clermont, give Peter's vision or Peter's urgency as a ground for his utterance or action. But he followed Peter on that occasion, and it may well be that if Peter mentioned his vision as the inspiration of his mission, the pope would not speak of its influence on himself.

[Sidenote: _Urban's Emotions_]

The Roman pontiffs, whatever their own ability or lack of it, have always been distinguished for the wise use of enthusiasm. If not able to make the wise direction of it themselves, some one of the Curia has always been at their service to value the force and direct it into channels of wider influence for the Church. There can be little doubt that Urban was moved by a true and generous feeling. It would have been almost impossible for any one to have simulated the grief he manifested at the Council of Clermont.

[Sidenote: _Mixed Motives_]

But there can be as little doubt that, as the proposed movement must inevitably aggrandize Roman Catholicity and make her the leader of the Christian world, Urban was happier and stronger by the coincidence and collaboration of both forces. There was a rival pope, and there were sovereigns who were his enemies. What a G.o.d-given opportunity to humble the Antipope and bring the unfriendly kings to his feet!

[Sidenote: _Peter's Garb_]

The pope gave Peter his commission and sent him forth with his blessing.

Mounting a mule, which soon attained in the thought of the people something of its master's sanct.i.ty, he pa.s.sed through Italy, crossed the Alps, was in every part of France, and stirred the larger part of Europe. With a crucifix in his hand, his body girdled with a rope, clothed in a long ca.s.sock of the coa.r.s.est stuff, and a hermit's hood, he could not have had, from the standpoint of public attention, a better appearance. He kept himself free from monkish evils in habits and conduct, and as he preached the loftiest morality by word as by life, the people honored holiness in him.

[Sidenote: _Ready to Preach Anywhere_]

Like all who have been great reformers, he was indifferent as to where he preached so that he could get a hearing. When the pulpits were open and could reach the mult.i.tude, he was glad to preach in the sacred inclosures; when his mission could reach more minds on the high roads and public squares, he as gladly preached there. He knew how to use apostrophes and personifications, and made the holy places themselves clamor for help. He sometimes showed a letter which he said had fallen from heaven wherein G.o.d called upon all Christendom to drive the heathens out of Jerusalem and possess it forever. His favorite prophecy was "Jerusalem shall be destroyed till the time of the heathen shall be fulfilled." The agonies endured by the Christians of Palestine he described with such accuracy of language and appropriateness of gesture, that his hearers seemed to see them writhe under the lash and to hear them groan in their wounds.

[Sidenote: _Waving his Crucifix_]

When he had exhausted his vocabulary and was exhausted by his emotions, he would wave the image of Christ suffering on the cross before his sobbing and wailing hearers.

The news of such preaching and of such scenes travels fast and far.