volume one

HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. 57
inspiration ; laermits and anchorites issued from forests and
deserts, and muisfled ^Yith the crowd of Crusaders. AVhat is
stni more difficult to believe, thieves and robbers, quitting
their secret retreats, came to confess their crimes, and promised,
whilst recei^'ing the cross, to go and expiate them in
Palestine.
Europe appeared to be a land of exile, which every one was
eager to quit. Artisans, traders, laboiu'ers, abandoned the
occupations by which they subsisted ; barons and lords even
renounced the domains of their fathers. The lands, the
cities, the castles for which they had but of late been at
war, all at once lost their value in the eyes of their possessors,
and were given up, for small sums, to those whom the
grace of God had not touched, and who were not called to
the happiness of visiting the holy places and conquering the
East.
Contemporary authors relate several miracles which
assisted in heating the minds of the multitude. Stars fell
from the firmament ; traces of blood were seen in the
heavens ; cities, armies, and knights decorated with the
cross, were pictured in the clouds. The monk E-oberfc
asserts that on the very day on which the council of
Clermont determined on the holy war, that decision was
proclaimed beyond the seas. " This news," adds he,
"raised the courage of the Christians in the East, and
caused despair among the nations of Arabia." As the most
effective of prodigies, saints and kings of preceding ages
were said to have issued from their tombs, and many
Erenchmen declared they had seen the shade of Charlemagne
exhorting the Christians to fight against the Mussulmans.
AVe will not relate all the other miracles reported by historians,
which were believed in an age in which nothing was
more common than prodigies, in which, according to the
remark of Eleury, the taste for the wonderful prevailed
greatly over that for the true. The readers of this history
will find quite enough of extraordinary things in the descrip-
of Chartres, relates that a vessel laden with Crusaders having been
wrecked on the coast of Brundusiura, all the shipwrecked bodies appeared
with a kind of cross imprinted on their flesh, and on the very part on
which it had been worn on their clothes when they were alive.