Read Online Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 by John Julius Norwich - Free Book Online

the Turkish tide, the presence of the infidel armies at the very gates of Constantinople and the appalling danger they represented, not only to the Empire of the East but to all Christendom. The listening delegates were impressed -none more, perhaps, than Pope Urban himself. From Piacenza he travelled to Cremona to receive the homage of Conrad, Henry IV's rebellious son, and thence across the Alps to his native France; and, as his long and arduous journey progressed, a scheme gradually took shape in his mind - a scheme far more ambitious than any that Alexius Comnenus had ever dreamed of: for nothing less than a Holy War, in which the combined forces of Europe would march against the Saracen.
    Piacenza, he had decided, was only a prelude. When he arrived in France he called another council, larger and far more important, to meet at Clermont 1 on 1 8 November. It would last for ten days, most of which would be taken up with routine Church business; on Tuesday, 27 November, however, there would be a public session open to everyone, at which, it was announced, the Pope would make a statement of immense significance to all Christendom. This promise had precisely the effect that Urban had intended. So great were the crowds that poured into the little town to hear the Pontiff speak that the cathedral was abandoned, and the papal throne was erected instead on a high platform set in an open field outside the eastern gate. 2
    The text of Urban's speech has not come down to us, and the four contemporary reports that have are different enough to make it clear that none of them has any serious claims to accuracy. The Pope seems to have begun by repeating the points made by Alexius's delegates at
    1 Clermont — which merged with its neighbour Montferrand in 1650 and has been known ever since as Clermont-Ferrand - appears at first sight to be depressingly industrialized and is consequently ignored by most tourists. This is a pity, since it boasts a magnificent thirteenth-century cathedral of the local black lava (the whole town is built over an extinct volcano) and a supe rb romanesquc church, Notre-Dame -du-Port, two hundred years older still.
    2 The site is now occupied by the Place Delille.
    Piacenza, developing their arguments and endorsing their appeal; unlike the Byzantines, however, he then turned to the plight of Jerusalem, 1 where Christian pilgrims were being regularly robbed and persecuted by the city's Turkish overlords. Such a state of affairs, he declared, could no longer continue; it was the duty of Western Christendom to march to the rescue of the Christian East. All those who agreed to do so 'from devotion only, not from advantage of honour or gain', would die absolved, their sins remitted. There must be the minimum of delay: the great Crusading army must be ready to march by the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1096.
    The response to his impassioned appeal was more enthusiastic than Urban can have dared to hope. Led by Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, several hundred people - priests and monks, noblemen and peasants together - knelt before his throne and pledged themselves to take the Cross. The First Crusade was under way.
    Alexius Comnenus on the other hand, when he heard of the proceedings at Clermont, was appalled. A crusade such as Urban had preached was the last thing he had had in mind. To him as to his subjects, there was nothing new or exciting about a war with the infidel; Byzantium had been waging one, on and off, for the best part of five hundred years. As for Jerusalem, it had formerly been part of his Empire - to which, so far as he was concerned, it still properly belonged - and he fully intended to win it back if he could; but that was a task for his imperial army, not an obligation on Christendom in general. Now at last the Anatolian horizons were brightening and there seemed to be a real chance of regaining his lost territory; but instead of being allowed to do so in his own way, and in his own time, he was