On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II makes perhaps the most
influential speech of the Middle Ages, giving rise to the Crusades by calling
all Christians in Europe to war against Muslims in order to reclaim the Holy
Land, with a cry of “Deus vult!” or “God wills it!”
Born Odo of Lagery in 1042, Urban was a protege of the great
reformer Pope Gregory VII. Like Gregory, he made internal reform his main
focus, railing against simony (the selling of church offices) and other
clerical abuses prevalent during the Middle Ages. Urban showed himself to be an
adept and powerful cleric, and when he was elected pope in 1088, he applied his
statecraft to weakening support for his rivals, notably Clement III.
By the end of the 11th century, the Holy Land—the area now
commonly referred to as the Middle East—had become a point of conflict for
European Christians. Since the 6th century, Christians frequently made
pilgrimages to the birthplace of their religion, but when the Seljuk Turks took
control of Jerusalem, Christians were barred from the Holy City. When the Turks
then threatened to invade the Byzantine Empire and take Constantinople,
Byzantine Emperor Alexius I made a special appeal to Urban for help. This was
not the first appeal of its kind, but it came at an important time for Urban.
Wanting to reinforce the power of the papacy, Urban seized the opportunity to
unite Christian Europe under him as he fought to take back the Holy Land from
the Turks.
At the Council of Clermont, in France, at which several
hundred clerics and noblemen gathered, Urban delivered a rousing speech
summoning rich and poor alike to stop their in-fighting and embark on a
righteous war to help their fellow Christians in the East and take back
Jerusalem. Urban denigrated the Muslims, exaggerating stories of their
anti-Christian acts, and promised absolution and remission of sins for all who
died in the service of Christ.
Urban’s war cry caught fire, mobilizing clerics to drum up
support throughout Europe for the crusade against the Muslims. All told,
between 60,000 and 100,000 people responded to Urban’s call to march on
Jerusalem. Not all who responded did so out of piety: European nobles were
tempted by the prospect of increased land holdings and riches to be gained from
the conquest. These nobles were responsible for the death of a great many
innocents both on the way to and in the Holy Land, absorbing the riches and
estates of those they conveniently deemed opponents to their cause. Adding to
the death toll was the inexperience and lack of discipline of the Christian
peasants against the trained, professional armies of the Muslims. As a result,
the Christians were initially beaten back, and only through sheer force of
numbers were they eventually able to triumph.
Urban died in 1099, two weeks after the fall of Jerusalem
but before news of the Christian victory made it back to Europe. His was the
first of seven major military campaigns fought over the next two centuries
known as the Crusades, the bloody repercussions of which are still felt today.
Urban was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1881.
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