Current Literature [pp. 381-392]

I874.] CURRENT Li
was stirring the hearts of men, and the pentup waters needed only guidance to rush forth
as a flood over the lands defiled by the unbeliever. And such guidance was not long
in coming, for both urging and sanction came
from him who held the keys of the kingdom
of heaven, and whose seat was on the rock
of Peter, Prince of the Apostles.
In the year 1095, Pope Urban II. was
present at two monster meetings, one at
Piacenza (Placentia), and the other on the
north of the Alps at Clermont. At Piacenza
the matter of rescuing the Holy Land from
the hand of the unbeliever was touched upon
by the pope with much reserve; but at Clermont the enterprise was fully discussed and
planned. Now it was that Peter the Hermit
came upon the scene and fanned the wrath
of the people into an ungovernable flame by
his preaching. This man, born at Amiens,
in Picardy, had forsaken his wife and laid
aside the sword which he wielded in the
service of the Counts of Boulogne, to follow
the counsel of perfection in silence and solitude. Like others, he felt himself drawn by
an irresistible attraction to the Holy Land,
and there his very heart was stirred by the
sight of things, the mere recital of which had
awakened his wrath at a distance. The murder of many Christian men, the deadly wrongs
done to many Christian women, called aloud
for vengeance, and the hermit made his vow
that, with the help of God, these things
should cease; and, with the patriarchal benediction, Peter hastened to obtain for the
mission which he now saw before him the
sanction of the man who claimed to be at the
head of Eastern and Western Christendom
alike.
Urban II. could not have found a man
better suited to his purposes than the hermit
Peter; his blessing was, therefore, eagerly
bestowed on the fervent enthusiast who undertook to go through the length and breadth
of the land, stirring up the people to the
great work for the love of God and of their
souls. His eloquence may have been as rude
as it was ready; but its deficiencies were
more than made up by his earnestness.
Dwarfish in stature and mean in person, he
was yet filled with a fire which would not
stay, and his fiery appeals carried everything
before them. Wherever he went, rich and
TERA TURE.
poor, aged and young, the knight and the
peasant, thronged round the emaciated stranger, who, with his head and feet bare, rode
on an ass, carrying a huge crucifix. The
form, of which they beheld the bleeding
sign, he had himself seen; nay, he had received from the Saviour a letter which had
fallen down from heaven. He appealed to
every feeling which might stir the heart of
mankind generally, to every motive which
should have special power with all faithful
Christians. The vehemence which choked
his own utterance became contagious; his
sobs and groans called forth the tears and
cries of the vast crowds who hung upon his
words. The excitement of the moment, the
frenzy which, having first unsettled the mind
of the hermit, was by him communicated to
his hearers, threw, we can not doubt, a specious coloring over a degraded mqrality and
a too-much corrupted religion; but as little can we doubt that the whole temper
which stirred up and kept alive the enterprise left behind it a poisoned atmosphere
which could be cleared only by the storms
and tempests of the reformation.
Thus was the die cast for a venture which,
in the eye of a keen-sighted general or a farseeing statesman, should have boded little
good, but which held out irresistible attractions for the mass of the people. For the
feudal chieftain there was the fierce pastime
of war, which formed the main occupation
and perhaps the only delight of his life, with
the wild excitement produced by the thought
that the indulgence of his passions had now
become a solemn act of religion. For the
common herd and those whom gross living
had rendered moral cowards, there was the
offer of a method by which they might wipe
away their guilt without changing their character and disposition. It was, in short, a
new mode of salvation, and they who were
hurrying along the broad road to destruction
now found that the taking of a vow converted it into the narrow and rugged path to
heaven. The cross on the breast set free
from the clutches of his lord the burgher or
peasant attached to the soil, opened the pris on-doors for malefactors of every kind, released the debtor from the obligation of pay ing interest on his debts while he wore the
sacred badge, and placed him beyond the
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