The other phase of Christian opposition to Mohammedanism is also the greatest event of the 11th century, the first Crusade. Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the Arab Moham medans shortly after the death of Mohammed in the 7th century. This Semitic race shared in the Christian reverence for the Holy Places and permitted the Christian pilgrims who came in large numbers during the Middle Ages to pursue their devotions without molestation. In the 11th century, however, the Seljukian Turks, re conquered long before by the caliphs, now in vaded the caliphate as the Germans the Roman Empire, replaced the Arabs as the rulers of Jerusalem and at once initiated a very different policy toward the Christians. Great hardships were inflicted upon the pilgrims, and the stories of the cruel ties imposed aroused the feelings of Europe. The Seljuks, continuing their victo rious career, defeated the Eastern Empire in 1071 and thus became rulers of Asia Minor. They took possession of Nicea, just across the straits from Constantinople, and Europe itself was menaced. Pope Urban II, whose training as a churchman had come under Pope Gregory VII, after six years of wandering from the time of his election had, in 1094, at last suc ceeded in gaining entrance to Rome and set himself to the task of unifying Christendom. In spite of rather serious breaks with the Em peror Henry and King Philip of France who had repudiated their wives, Urban devoted him self to the great problems of arousing Chris tianity against the Turks.
The first incentive to the Crusades has often been attributed to Peter the Hermit, but it really came from Pope Gregory VII and was popularized by the address of Pope Urban at the Council of Clermont (in Auvergne). After excommunicating Philip of France for adultery in having taken to wife Bertrada, the wife of Fulk of Anjou, the urgent question of the East was taken up. The Council had attracted im mense crowds of all classes, but particularly of the nobility and knights. 'The Pope's address asking for an army to be sent to redeem the Holy Places aroused great enthusiasm, and all present exclaimed with one voice "It is the will of God.'" The Pope declared that this should be their rallying cry, and all were to wear a cross as a sign of their acceptance of whatever hardships might be involved. It is from this cross that the word crusade is de rived. Each participant was °crossed?' Pope Urban suggested that particularly those who were in the midst of contentions with brethren and relatives might thus find a holy vocation. Most of those who took up the cross did so out of the highest motives of pure devotion. It would be idle to think that in so great a mass of men there should have been no hypo crites, but they must have been surprisingly few.
In his great-heartedness the Pope proposed that those who had been robbers .and brigands might now become soldiers of Christ with the feeling that here was a chance for the redemption of such men from evil ways, though doubtless also with the conviction that no matter what their motives they could work less harm in the army than at home, and that at any rate all should have their chance in the great cause.
Many privileges were granted to the Cru saders by the Church, and these have sometimes seemed to modern historians violations of jus tice. The payment of debts for instance could
be put off, and the Crusaders were even freed from the payment of interest upon their debts and permitted to mortgage their property for the purposes of the Crusade without the con sent of their feudal lords, though this was re quired by the laws of the time. We in our time who have seen another great World War with its moratoria, its prorogation of rents and notes, its shutting up of stock exchanges and its taking over of the resources of coun tries, are not likely to misunderstand similar events of the Crusade. Crusaders' wives and children and property were taken under the direct protection of the Church and those who disturbed them found that they had to do with the ecclesiastical authorities. The youth of all the country gave themselves unstintedly to the cause quite as they have in our time and have always done for idealistic purposes. Within a year after the great wave of enthusiasm which had begun at Clermont had spread through Eu rope there was, according to the Pope himself, some 300,000 soldiers collected under the leader ship of the great nobles of the time. If it is recalled that at this period the European coun tries whose census of population we had much less than one-tenth as many inhabitants as in our time, the immensity of the effort thus put forth will be properly appreciated. The important leaders were Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin, from Brabant, with Count Raymond of Toulouse who led a great army from Provence. The French troops were not led by Philip, who was in disgrace, but were joined with those of the Normans from south ern Italy under the command of Bohemund, the son of Robert Guiscard, and his cousin Tancred who was the son of Otto the Good and of Emma, the sister of Robert Guiscard. Tancred came to be the rival in the later legends of the Crusades even of Godfrey of Bouillon and to be the centre of romances for centuries in modern European life.
After many hardships the army of the Cru saders succeeded in finding its way to Constan tinople only to discover that the Greeks ex pected to turn the great Christian expedition into a military campaign for the benefit of the empire. The Crusaders encamped in the sub urbs of the capital not only were not welcomed, but were actually declared enemies because they refused to take the oath of homage to the em peror. Contemporary documents which show the complaints of traitorous cruelty on both sides used to be held up as flagrant testimony to the essential barbarity of the people of the time, but recent experiences have demonstrated that the trait thus disclosed is human and not merely medieval. The emperor's daughter Anna, writing a history of the times, has made a docurnent ahnost as bitter in denunciation of the Crusaders as any that appeared on either side in our own great war. The Crusaders did not hesitate to call the Greeks traitors, cowards, liars and worse, but above all to deprecate their cruelty toward small parties of Crusaders un able to defend themselves. The Byzantines replied with accusations of attacks upon women and children and thieving depredations of vari ous kinds.