1095
The Council of Clermont Will Summon the First Crusade
On this date Pope Urban II opened the Council of Clermont to which he summoned the leading churchmen and nobles of France. The chief order of business was to respond to a request for military aid made by the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus, whose country has been overrun by Seljuk Turks. What Alexius wanted was help recruiting some mercenary cavalry; what he got was a massive armed pilgrimage we know as the First Crusade.
Summoning the princes of the West to aid the Eastern Roman Empire served a number of purposes for Urban. It would give substance to his claim to the leader of Christendom. It would help to heal the damage done by the mutual excommunications of 1054 which had alienated the Eastern Church in Constantinople (and which would come to be known as the Great Schism). Best of all, it would turn the violence of the feudal knights against Islam instead of fellow Christians. The papacy of the eleventh century had been doing its best to civilize the baronial class with the Peace of God and Truce of God movements and a crusade would sanctify the brutal passions of these mail-clad warriors.
The kings of the West would ignore Urban’s plea but the cross would be taken up by a number of French and Norman dukes and counts who would lead their armies into Asia Minor and the Levant and recapture Jerusalem for the faith in 1099.
Although, O sons of God, you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do. Freshly quickened by the divine correction, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to another matter which concerns you as well as God. For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of [the Byzantines] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.