In March 1095, a council was summoned to meet Urban at Placentia, to consult about the holy war and other important matters. Two hundred bishops, four thousand clergy, and thirty thousand laity appeared; and, as no building was large enough to contain the vast multitude, the greater sessions were held in a plain near the city. Besides the project of the holy war, the pope embraced the favorable opportunity to confirm the laws and assert the principles of Gregory. And while at Placentia the final sanction was given to the two strongest characteristics in the doctrines and in the discipline of the Roman church—namely, transubstantiation and the celibacy of the clergy.
In November of the same year, another council was summoned to meet the pope at Clermont in Auvergne. The citations to this council were urgent, and the clergy were charged to stir up the laity in the cause of the crusade. A vast assemblage of archbishops, bishops, abbots, etc., were drawn together; the towns and neighboring villages were filled with strangers, while numbers were obliged to lodge in tents. The session lasted ten days; the usual canons being passed in condemnation of simony, etc., Urban ventured to advance a step beyond Gregory, by forbidding not only the practice of lay investiture, but that any ecclesiastic should swear fealty to a temporal lord—a prohibition which was intended entirely to do away with all dependence of the church on the secular power. Thus we see the crafty pope taking every advantage of his extreme popularity, and when the minds of all were engrossed with the greater subject of the holy crusade. No moment could be more favorable for the advancement of the great papal object of ambition, the acknowledged supremacy over Latin Christendom; or for the elevation of Urban himself over the rival Pope Clement, and the temporal sovereigns who supported him.
At the sixth session the crusade was proposed. Urban ascended a high pulpit in the market-place, and addressed the assembled multitudes. His speech was long and exciting. He dwelt on the ancient glories of Palestine, where every foot of ground had been hallowed by the presence of the Savior, of His Virgin Mother, and other saints. He enlarged on the present condition of the sacred territory—possessed as it was by a godless people, the children of the Egyptian handmaid; on the indignities, the outrages, the tyranny, which they inflicted on Christians redeemed by Christ's blood. Nor did he forget to speak of the progressive encroachments of the Turks on Christendom. "Cast out the bondwoman and her son," he cried. "Let all the faithful arm. Go forth, and God shall be with you. Redeem your sins—your rapine, your burnings, your bloodshed—by obedience. Let the famous nation of the Franks display their valor in a cause where death is the assurance of blessedness. Count it joy to die for Christ where Christ died for you. Think not of kindred or home; you owe to God a higher love; for a Christian every place is exile, every place is home and country." There was no passion which the self-seeking pope left unstirred. But his real design and one grand object was to dispose of unruly barons and obstinate monarchs by engaging them in a distant and ruinous expedition; and, in their absence, gather up into his own hand all the threads of this great movement and consolidate the lofty schemes of his predecessor and teacher, Hildebrand.
In conclusion, the blasphemous pope offered absolution for all sins—the sins of murder, adultery, robbery, arson—and that without penance to all who would take up arms in this sacred cause. He promised eternal life to all who should suffer the glorious calamity of death in the Holy Land, or even on the way to it. The Crusader passed at once into paradise. The great battle of the Cross and the Crescent was to be decided forever on the soil of the Holy Land. For himself, he said, he must remain at home: the care of the church detained him. Should circumstances permit, he would follow; but, like Moses, while they were slaughtering the Amalekites, he would be perpetually engaged in fervent and prevailing prayer for their success.
The pope's speech was here interrupted by an enthusiastic exclamation from the whole assemblage, "God wills it—God wills it!" words which afterward became the war cry of the Crusaders; and the whole assembly declared itself the army of God. The contagious frenzy spread with a rapidity inconceivable. "Never, perhaps," says one, "did a single speech of man ever work such extraordinary and lasting results as that of Urban II. at the Council of Clermont." "It was the first blast of fanaticism," says another, "which shook the whole fabric of society from the extremities of the West even to the heart of Asia, for above two centuries."
Having now stated as clearly and as concisely as possible the ostensible causes of the Crusades, or rather the motives of the papacy, we need do little more than give the dates and a few particulars of each expedition.