Speech at Clermont 1095

Pope Urban II's call to Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095 was one of the seminal moments of medieval Christendom. Though recorded only after the fact by contemporaries, and known today only through fragments, the speech captured much of the ethos of the period, directed as it was toward social ideals as they were interpreted by each of the classes of society.

Essentially, the Pope's address concerned a call to Christians to put aside their internal differences and come to the rescue of Christians and Christian sites in the Holy Land. Under continued assault from the Muslim Turks, the re-capture of the Holy Land, and its being made safe for Christian pilgrims, would represent a coming together of Europeans in the name of the highest ideals of the Church. Western Europeans of every rank and nationality responded enthusiastically to the Pontiff's appeal. Yet, their motives may not always have been wholly selfless or purely religious. The Crusade inspired varied emotions, many of them remarkably selfish. On one level, the proposed Crusade could be seen as an assertion of Christian European culture, values, and temporal power against an opposed Islamic Civilization. Many sought remittance of their own private sins, while still others hoped to gain in wealth, prestige, or influence. Personal reward fused with religious zeal, and the notion of a fight to the death between different peoples appears curiously similar to the ideals of many of today's Islamic jihadists, and the reaction of many of their "enemies" in the West.

For the truly religiously-minded, the Crusades offered two possible motivations, one altruistic and the other self-centered. Many knights and clerics viewed the fight as a battle against the forces of the infidel, an attempt to retrieve Christian lands and holy places that had been seized by the Turks. Religious fanaticism was a powerful and rapidly growing force in Eleventh Century Europe. The war against Islam represented a real-life fulfillment of the religious duties of Christian love and charity; that love being given its fullest expression by strangely opposite act of murdering the enemies of the Faith.

The Knight was a man of war, but he was also supposed to be a good Christian, by combating the warriors of Islam, he proved his commitment to the full range of Chivalric values. Similarly, the monks and other religious who stirred up public passions against the Muslims could be viewed as preaching the Faith in the broadest and most complete way possible. Like their counterparts on the frontiers of Christendom in Europe, they were helping to spread the gospel and convert new lands and peoples to Christianity, while at the same time, extirpating the evil of false beliefs and safeguarding the faithful at home. On a very different level, many of all classes took the Cross as a means of achieving forgiveness for their own sins. According to the indulgence promised by Urban II, the suffering and tribulation experienced by the Crusaders would be sufficient not only to wipe away such sins as had not been forgiven, but also to make up for any sins that had been insufficiently forgiven in the past - for any penances that had not been completely fulfilled.

The Crusade; therefore, would be an act of personal salvation.

On a more worldly level, the campaign against the Muslim infidel could be seen as but an extension of typical mundane goals of personal or family enrichment and social advancement. Knights hoped to gain glory for themselves, and importantly, large swaths of territory. The Crusader states that were set up in the aftermath of the First Crusade represent the achievement of these aims, and the expansion of the Western feudal system into the East. Military orders such as the Knights Hospitallers early combined the idea of religious objectives with the acquisition of landed estates. The Order was already acquiring extensive lands in Europe itself by the early Twelfth Century.

The creation of Crusader states in the Holy Land also amounted to the direct physical expansion of Latin Christendom. The rulers of these states were directly tied to the ruling houses of the West. Resident in their new domains they acquired a taste for the more luxuriant lifestyle of Islamic lands. High-quality metal goods, fine glass, enamels, and even simple souvenirs of the East, were in increasing demand in the West.