Deus lo volt! Deus lo volt! Deus lo volt!
And the shout rang across the meadow. God wills it! We are told that while Pope Urban addressed the multitude an apparition of the Holy City glowed in the sky above his head. Does not a certain order embrace all things?
Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy knelt before the pontiff, asking leave to go. His Holiness decreed that Bishop Adhémar should go and rule the host. This was as it should be. Nine years earlier he had made the pilgrimage and now was first to accept the cross.
Next came envoys from Raymond, count of Toulouse, half-Spanish through his mother, Princess Almodis of Barcelona. He was fifty-three years old, scarred by ancient wounds, had lost one eye battling the Moors. Count Raymond would undertake the journey, his blue standard leading Provence mountaineers with saddles fashioned from soft Córdoba leather, reins weighted with gold ornament. He would bring his youthful wife Elvira, princess of Aragon, and their newly born son. Thus would they journey toward another life, realizing that duty imposed by Holy Scripture which bids us transcend the self.
News of this assembly at Clermont traveled across Europe faster than swift horsemen, more quickly than fire consuming a parched field. To the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, hamlet to village to city. Thousands rushed to take the cross, noble and commonage. Ironsmith, groom, villein, carter, fletcher, knave, chandler, monk, fisherman, cleric, teacher, young, old, thieves absolved of crime through papal edict, debtors released from claims of creditors rising from the abyss of misery, touched by the light, impelled to take up arms against enemies of the Lord. Two brothers from Provence, Guy and Geoffrey de Signes, accepted the cross for the grace of pilgrimage, as they declared, but also to quench that immoderate madness wherein Christians are oppressed, made captive, slaughtered with barbaric fury. Since the creation of the world what has occurred so marvelous as this exodus toward Jerusalem? Abbot Guibert de Nogent disclosed how the Savior instituted holy war that all might find a new path to salvation.
Portents of divine favor blazed overhead. Mounted warriors, infidel and Christian, battled with fiery swords. Stars hurtled earthward, each a dying pagan. Clouds redder than blood darted to the zenith. In the east a comet was observed changing place by sudden leaps. A child was born with double limbs, another with three heads. A woman two years pregnant bore a child that knew how to speak. A foal emerged from its dam with uncommonly large teeth. Here and there people repeated what others said, that Charlemagne would rise from his grave to lead this army of the Lord.
Does not a wheel turn slowly at first? Now faster, faster. Knights mortgaged their estates, great or small, farmers sold their plows, artisans their tools, each after his fashion preparing to liberate the Holy Land. Some who felt reluctant or undecided got unwelcome gifts to express contempt, a knitting needle, a distaff. Meanwhile the clerics of France distributed swords, staves, pilgrim wallets. Yet dissident whispers and murmurs could be heard. How have Saracens troubled us? Why take arms against strangers that neither harry nor bait us? But these skeptics did not think rightly or they would perceive how everywhere Christianity lay wounded by Saracen misbelief.
As to women, thousands employed smoking hot iron in the form of a cross to sear themselves on the breast and stained their wound with red ointment. Whether burnt in flesh or cut from silk or woven gold to exhibit on mantles, tunics, cassocks, was it not appropriate that Christ’s servants be thus identified? Since they made themselves known under this acknowledgment of faith did they not in truth acquire that Cross of which they bore the symbol? This emblem they adopted as a sign of pious intent and does not good intent warrant the accomplishment of good work?
How many pilgrims left home? Who counts the grains of wheat in a field? From mist-shrouded uplands came Scots clothed in shaggy skins, legs bare, each with his fleas and sack of victual. Now here came the Welshman out of his forest, the Dane who would forswear drinking to make a pilgrimage, the Northman turning his back on raw fish. From strange distant lands came unfamiliar men to disembark at Frankish ports, bawling a language so foreign that, unable to make themselves understood, they laid two fingers in the form of a cross to show in default of words how they wished to join this expedition. Many western Franks left home without regret because of civil war, famine, and plague spreading from the church of Saint Gertrude de Nivelle. Even today there is no help for this plague, which burns like fire until the victim must give up the afflicted part or his life. Neither leech nor physic nor corrective is any use, proof of sovereign displeasure.
Thousands marched toward Amiens lightly provisioned, crudely armed, taut with desire to swarm about Peter the little hermit, joyful and pious, eager to follow. They are said to have been ripe with laughter, full of badinage so confident were they, numerous as pebbles at a beach, fearless in their numbers, peregrini Christi. They busied themselves cutting scarlet crosses for their tunics while he preached. Yet what were these innocents who expected to vanquish a Saracen horde? Hapless peasants, mock monks, halegrins, ribalds, druggists, pick-thanks, beribboned harlots, sodomites, magicians, catamites, those with hairless shanks, cripples that begged a sou from
