THE APPEAL OF ALEXIUS FOR AID IN IO95 I37 



medieval man — there should remain a sufficient number of eyewitnesses 

 to herald the acts of the council throughout Western Europe. For, 

 when all these churchmen returned home, they were compelled by the 

 conditions of medieval travel to tarry for food and rest at numerous 

 monasteries — the hotels of the Middle Ages; ecclesiastics from Salzburg, 

 Passau, Constance and other distant cities would be guests in many 

 places where courtesy would require a full answer to the inquiring abbot 

 or chronicler who wished to learn the acts of the council. Indeed, the 

 intimate bond existing between the papacy and the monks created an 

 intense interest in every incident affecting the progress of the true Pope 

 as against the anti-Pope. Had the eastern Emperor "humbly implored 

 the Pope and all the Faithful," as Bernold alone asserts, the good news 

 could not have been concealed from so many chroniclers who heard 

 something about this council but who record nothing about an appeal 

 from the East.' 



From Placentia Urban and his retinue proceeded by easy stages into 

 France, dedicating churches by the way and meeting various bishops.^* 

 At Clermont he delivered the famous exhortation which induced so 

 many thousands to take the cross. This oration was reported by a group 

 of writers^ who thus had ample opportunity to learn all the important 

 acts of the previous council. With such facilities at hand, all but one 

 of these writers omitted Placentia, and the one exception — Baldric of 

 Dol — remembered that it was a "general synod." This result is the 

 more striking because each writer alludes briefly to the origin of the 

 Crusade. Urban himself seems to have made no allusion to Placentia, 

 and it is plain that these contemporaries, like their brethren in Italy, 

 did not think of such an appeal as Bernold alone records. It is equally 

 plain, however, that complaints of the eastern Christians were abundant 

 throughout this period. The Pope reminded his hearers of the frequent 

 • tales of misery brought from Jerusalem, Constantinople and the East;^ 



' Besides those cited above, see Pandulf of Pisa in Muratori, III, p. 352; Ordericus Vitalis, lib. IX, 

 c. i: "Urbanus papa piacentiae concilium tenuit, et de pace aliisque utilitatibus sanctae Ecclesiae diligenter 

 tractavit." Gaufredus Malaterra has no record of it. 



' See Urban's itinerary in Jaffe's Regesta (1885). 



3 Robert the Monk, Baldric, and probably Fulcher and Guibert; see American Historical Review, 

 Vol. XI, pp. 232, 233. 



♦ Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, III, 323; 727; also IV, 12-13. 



