Page:Completecatechis00deharich.djvu/54

 Holy Land or Palestine, had fallen under the power of the Mahometans or Saracens (i. e., Arabians; so called from sara, a desert), and had groaned under their yoke four hundred and forty- two years, when, in 1079, it was conquered, together with the fairest portions of Western Asia, by the Seljukian Turks, a Tartar tribe, who came in 1048 from the Caspian Sea, and had in the eighth century embraced Mahometanism. The latter were the most relentless foes of Christianity. The enormities which they committed in the Holy Land, and the cruel treatment which they inflicted upon the Christian pilgrims who resorted thither from the West, gave rise, about the close of the eleventh century, to the Crusades. Peter of Amiens, a pious hermit, who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, reported to Pope Urban II. how the Holy Places, where our Saviour had lived and suffered, were profaned by the Infidels, and to what outrages the Christians were there exposed. The Pope was so sensibly affected that he resolved to put an end to the insolence and insatiable rapacity of the Mahometans. He summoned the Christian princes and knights to a Council at Clermont in Auvergne (a.d. 1095), called upon them to engage in a military expedition against the Infidels, and excited their enthusiasm to such a pitch that the whole assembly spontaneously exclaimed, ' God wills it! God wills it!' This cry reechoed through the whole West, and shortly after there stood ready a tremendous host of men armed at all points. They wore, as a badge of their engagement, a red cross on their right shoulder, whence originated the name of Crusaders and Crusade. Full of joy and courage, they marched to Palestine. After having endured inexpressible hardships, and fought many a hot battle, they at last took