volume one

48 HISTOET OF TRE CErSADES.
The council held its tenth sitting in the g;reat square or
place of Clermont, which was soon filled by an immense
crowd. Followed by his cardinals, the pope ascended a
at his
species of throne which had been prepared for hbn ;
side was Peter tiie Hermit, clad in that whunsical and uncouth
garl) wliich had evei'}"\vhere drawn upon hun the attention
and the respect of the multitude. The apostle of the holy
war spoke first of the outrages committed against the religion
of Christ ; he reverted to the profanations and the sacrileges
of which he had been a witness ; he pictured the torments
and persecutions which a people, enemies to God and man,
had caused those to suffer who had been led bv religion to
visit the holy places. He had seen, he said, Christians
loaded with irons, di-agged into slavery, or harnessed to the
yoke, like the vilest animals ; he had seen the oppressors
of Jerusalem sell to the children of Christ permission to
salute the temple of their God, tear from them even the
bread of their misery, and torment their poverty itself to
obtain their tribute ; he had seen the ministers of God
dragged from their sanctuaries, beaten with rods, and condemned
to an ignominious death. AVhilst describing the
misfortunes and degradation of the Christians, the countenance
of Peter was east doAvn, and exhibited feelings of
consternation and hoiTor ; his voice was choked with sobs ;
his lively emotion penetrated every heart.
Urban, who spoke after Peter, represented, as he had
done, the holy places as profaned by the domination of the
infidels. That land, consecrated by the presence of the
Saviour, that mountain whereon he expiated our sins by his
sufferings,—that tomb in which he deigned to be enclosed
as a victim to death, had all become the heritage of the
impious. The altars of false prophets were raised within
those walls which had contained the august assemblv of the
apostles. God had no longer a sanctuary in his own city
the East, the cradle of the Christian religion, now witnessed
nothing but saci-ilegious pomps ; impiety had spread its
darkness over all the richest coimtries of Asia. Antioch,
Ephesus, Xicea, had become Mussulman cities ; the Turks
had carried their ravages and their odious dominion even to
the Sti-aits of the Hellespont, to the very gates of Constantinople,
and from thence thev threatened the West.
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