volume one

336 nisroET of the csrsADEs.
it ^vas resolved by unanimous consent, to give him the command
of the holy war. The Crusaders, they said, could
never fail to be victorious under the laws of a leader to
whom God appeared to have coniided his omnipotence. The
abbot of Clairvaux, who remembered the example of Peter
the hei-mit, refused the perilous employment with which
thev desired to honour him ; he was even so much terri-
fied by the pressing entreaties of the barons and knights,
that he addressed himself to the pope, and conjured the
sovereign pontiff not to abandon him to the fantasies of men.
The pope answered St. Bernard that he only need arm
himself with the sword of the word of God, and content himself
with sounding the evangelical trumpet to announce the
war. The abbot of Clairvaux employed himself in nothing
thereafter, but his mission ; and he acquitted himself with
so much zeal, and his preachings produced such an extraor-
dinary, and I will venture to add, so unfortunate an effect,
that they depopulated cities and countries. He wrote to
Pope Eugenius : " The villages and the castles are deserted ;
and there are none left hut widows and orphans, ivhose husbands
and parents are still living.''^
"While St. Bernard was thus preaching the crusade in the
pro"vinces of Prance, a German monk, named Eodolphe, exhorted
the people of the Ehine to massacre the Jews, whom
he represented in his vehement discourses as the allies of the
Saracens, and the most dangerous enemies of the Christian
religion. The abbot of Clairvaux fearing the effect of these
preachings, hastened into Germany to impose silence on this
seditious apostle of the holy war. As the German monk
had flattered the passions of the multitude, St. Bernard required
all the ascendancy of liis virtue and his fame to combat
his doctrines. He ventured to raise his voice in the
midst of an -irritated people, and to make them feel that
Christians ought not to persecute Jews, but pray to Heaven
for their con\'ersion ; that it belonged to Christian piety to
pardon the weak, and make war against the exalted and
proud. The preacher of the crusade at length silenced the
turbulent orator, and sent him back to his monastery, reminding
him that the duty of monks was not to preach, but
to weep ; that they ought to consider cities as jy^^i^ons, and
solitude as their paradise.