§ 6. The Crusade and the Mortgage of Normandy. November, 1095-March, 1097.
Council of Piacenza. March 7, 1095.
Appeal of the Emperor Alexios.
Council of Clermont. November 18, 1095.
The first Crusade.
We must now for a while again turn our eyes to Normandy,
but to Normandy mainly as affected by the most
stirring scenes in the history of the world. We have
seen Urban at Piacenza; we have heard him there make
his appeal to Western Christendom on behalf of the oppressed
churches and nations of the East. Their cry
came up then, as it has come up in our own ears; and it
was answered in those days as one only among Christian
nations has been found to answer it in ours. In those
days the bulwark and queen of the Eastern lands still
stood untouched. The New Rome had not then to be
won back for Christendom; it had simply to be preserved.
By the prince who still kept on the unbroken
succession of Constantine and Diocletian and Augustus
the appeal was made which stirred the hearts of nations
as the heart of one man. The letters of Alexios had
been read at Piacenza; the great call from the mouth of
the Western Pontiff was made in the ears of a vaster
multitude still in the memorable assembly of Clermont.
But the tale of the first Crusade needs not to be told
here. The writers of the time were naturally called
away from what might seem the smaller affairs of their
own lands to tell of the great struggle of two worlds.
Some of the fullest accounts of the gathering and march
- [Footnote: well perhaps to shorten into Murtagh, we shall hear again. He was King
of Leinster, and Bretwalda, so to speak, of all Ireland, though it seems that he was not acknowledged always and everywhere. He signs the letter to Anselm which appears in Eadmer (Hist. Nov. 36) on behalf of Malchus, which professes to come from the "clerus et populus oppidi Wataferdiæ, cum rege Murchertacho, et episcopo Dofnaldo." There are also two letters of Anselm to him (Ep. iii. 142, 147), chiefly about ecclesiastical reforms in Ireland. Anselm also speaks of a brother Cornelius, whom the Irish king had asked for, but who could not go, because he was taking care of his aged father. This is one of those little personal touches which make us wish to know more.]
