Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/502

440 with sympathy or firing them with indignation, as he recited the sufferings of their brethren at the hands of the infidels, or pictured the profanation of the holy places, polluted by the presence and insults of the unbelievers.

The Councils of Placentia and Clermont.—While Peter the Hermit had been arousing the warriors of the West, the Turks had been making constant advances in the East, and were now threatening Constantinople itself. The Greek emperor (Alexius Comnenus) sent urgent letters to the Pope, asking for aid against the infidels, representing that, unless assistance was extended immediately, the capital with all its holy relics must soon fall into the hands of the barbarians.

Urban called a great council of the Church at Placentia, in Italy, to consider the appeal (1095), but nothing was effected. Later in the same year a new council was convened at Clermont, in France, Urban purposely fixing the place of meeting among the warm-tempered and martial Franks. The Pope himself was one of the chief speakers. He was naturally eloquent, so that the man, the cause, and the occasion all conspired to achieve one of the greatest triumphs of human oratory. He pictured the humiliation and misery of the provinces of Asia; the profanation of the places made sacred by the presence and footsteps of the Son of God; and then he detailed the conquests of the Turks, until now, with all Asia Minor in their possession, they were threatening Europe from the shores of the Hellespont. "When Jesus Christ summons you to his defence," exclaimed the eloquent pontiff, " let no base affection detain you in your homes; whoever will abandon his house, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his children, or his inheritance, for the sake of my name, shall be recompensed a hundred- fold, and possess life eternal."

Here the enthusiasm of the vast assembly burst through every restraint. With one voice they cried, ''Dieu le volt! Dieu le volt!''

"It is the will of God! It is the will of God! "Thousands immediately affixed the cross to their garments, as a pledge of