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While Palestine continued subject to the caliphs, they had encouraged the resort of pilgrims to Jerusalem; and considered this as a beneficial species of commerce, which brought into their dominions gold and silver, and carried nothing out of them but relics and consecrated trinkets. But the Turks having conquered Syria, about the middle of the eleventh century, pilgrims were exposed to outrages of every kind from these fierce barbarians.

This change, happening precisely at the juncture when the panic terror above mentioned rendered pilgrimages most frequent, filled Europe with alarm and indignation. Every person who returned from Palestine related the dangers which he had encountered in visiting the holy city, and described with exaggeration the cruelty and vexations of the Turks.

When the minds of men were thus prepared, the zeal of a fanatical monk, who conceived the idea of leading all the forces of Christendom against the infidels, and of driving them out of the Holy Land by violence, was sufficient to give a beginning to that wild enterprise. Peter the Hermit, for that was the name of this martial apostle, ran from province to province, with a crucifix in his hand, exciting princes and people to this holy war, and wherever he came he kindled the same enthusiastic ardour for it with which he himself was animated. The council of Placentia, where upwards of thirty thousand persons were assembled, pronounced the scheme to have been suggested by the immediate inspiration of Heaven. In the council of Clermont, still more numerous, as soon as the measure was proposed, all cried out with one voice, “It is the will of God!” Persons of rank caught the contagion; not only the gallant nobles of that age, with their martial followers, whom we may suppose apt to be allured by the boldness of a romantic enterprise, but men in more humble and pacific stations in life, ecclesiastics of every order, and even women and children, engaged with emulation in an undertaking which was deemed meritorious and even sacred.