THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES. 



By DANA C. MUNRO, L.HD. 



(Read April zj, /g/6. ) 



The First Crusade was the work of Pope Urban H., whose won- 

 derful speech at the Council of Clermont led thousands to take the 

 cross. From that time the Popes always felt that the crusades were 

 peculiarly their task and under their inspiration, even if some of 

 the expeditions, like the one against Constantinople, escaped from 

 their direction. For they believed that the crusades were God's 

 work and that they were His agents. According to Fulk of 

 Chartres, Urban at Clermont used the following words : 



" I speak to those who are present, I shall proclaim it to the absent, but 

 it is Christ who commands. Moreover, if those who set out thither lose their 

 lives on the journey, by land or sea, or in fighting against the heathen, their 

 sins shall be remitted in that hour; this I grant through the power of God 

 vested in me." 



The Pope set the time of departure, ordered who should go and who 

 should not go, offered privileges to the participants, and threatened 

 with excommunication all who should not fulfill their vow. For 

 two hundred years and more the Popes were always proclaiming that 

 the crusades were on imperative duty and everyone recognized their 

 preeminent concern in the holy wars. 



Why did the Popes enter upon this undertaking? What did 

 they hope to gain for the Church and for Christendom from these 

 crusades ? Many have attempted to answer these questions and their 

 answers have been very contradictory, too often reflecting merely 

 the prejudice of the writer. Thomas Fuller in his History of the 

 Holy War said : 



" Though the pretences were pious and plausible, yet no doubt the thoughts 

 of his holiness began where other men's ended, and he had a privy project 

 beyond the public design: First, to reduce the Grecians into subjection to 

 himself, with their three patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constanti- 

 nople; and to make the Eastern Church a chapel of ease to the mother church 

 of Rome." 



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