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Pope Urban II orders first Crusade 1095
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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