God Wills It!

Today, is November 27th! I couldn’t let the day go by without posting.

Urban II’s  crusading movement took its first public shape at the Council of Piacenza, where in March 1095 Urban II received an ambassador from the Byzantine Emporer Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118), asking for help against the Muslims. A great council met, attended by numerous Italian, Burgundian, and French bishops in such vast numbers it had to be held in the open air outside the city. At the Council of Clermont held in November of the same year, Urban II’s sermon proved the most effective single speech in European history, as he summoned the attending nobility and the people to wrestle the Holy Land from the hands of the Seljuk Turks:

“I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.”

The chronicler Robert the Monk, quotes Urban II as saying that

“[...] this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. [...] God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the kingdom of heaven.”

Robert further reports: “When Pope Urban had said these [...] things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out ‘It is the will of God! It is the will of God!’.When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, [he] said: Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.’ Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!”. Which in Latin is “Deus Vult!”

Urban II died on July 29,1099, fourteen days after the fall of Jerusalem to the Crusaders, but before news of the event had reached Italy; his successor was Pope Paschal II (1099–1118). I ask you all to please click on the link to the Council of Clermont, as it goes more in-depth than myself. Happy November 27th, and “Deus Vult!”