THE APPEAL OF ALEXIUS FOR AID IN IO95 I43 



Conclusion 



It is therefore strangely significant that no eyewitness of the council, 

 no contemporary chronicler, no Crusader who passed near Placentia on 

 his way to the Orient, no Crusader who wrote home about the expedition, 

 no contemporary Latin historian, no Greek contemporary, no ofl&cial 

 document either Latin or Greek, and no events within the empire itself 

 furnish any definite corroboration of Bernold's story concerning an 

 official appeal involving the two greatest potentates of Europe, delivered 

 before an immense assembly, and distinctly regarded by modern his- 

 torians as the immediate occasion of the First Crusade. Three eminent 

 historians must be exempted from this charge. Friedrich von Raumer 

 felt misgivings as to the alleged appeal because Anna Comnena did not 

 mention it. He concealed his opinion in a footnote after giving the 

 traditional tale.^ Somewhat more boldly Count Riant challenged it, 

 but confined his criticism to the omissions in Italian writers.^ Very 

 recently Rohricht confessed his inability to reconcile the program of 

 Placentia with that of Clermont because Jerusalem does not appear in 

 the former. He regrets that his sources do not afford an adequate 

 explanation.3 Thus have three eminent scholars presented their objec- 

 tions, each from a diJfferent standpoint. The present study arises out 

 of a consideration of these and other suggestions, seeking indeed not a 

 complete proof of the impossibility of an appeal in 1095, but a demon- 

 stration of the improbability of Bernold's story, in the light of all the 

 evidence extant. Great events do not always have a dramatic inaugura- 

 tion: although our Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter, 

 the Russo-Japanese war began when Japan was ready to spring and 

 without previous announcement of hostilities. The Council of Clermont 

 furnishes a sufficiently dramatic inauguration of the Crusade. Its basis 

 is a long series of appeals — military, ecclesiastical and personal — and 

 not the single incident recorded by a solitary writer. 



' Gesch. der Hohenslaufen und ihrer Zeit (1857), p. 28 note 3. 



' Epistola Spuria (1879), xiii, et passim. 



' Ceschichie des erslen Kreuz., pp. ig, 20: " . . . . ihr Ziel war aber nicht mehr, wie noch in Piacenza, 

 Constantinopel, sondem Jerusalem, ihre Gestalt nicht mehr die blosse Defensiv, sondern die Offensiv. Wo- 

 durch diese Verschiebung und Veranderung eigentlich veranlasst wurde, sagen die Quellen nicht. Vielleicht 

 . . . . " u. s. w. The easiest escape from this dilemma is to ignore Bernold. 



