Peter asked the patriarch if nothing could be done
to protect the pilgrims, and to retrieve the Holy Places. The patriarch
replied, "Nothing, unless God will touch the heart of the western princes,
and will send them to succor the Holy City." The patriarch did not propose
meddling himself, nor did it occur to him that the pope should intervene.
He took a rationalistic view of the Moslem military power. Peter, on the
contrary, was logical, arguing from eleventh-century premises. If he could
but receive a divine mandate, he would raise an invincible army. He
prayed. His prayer was answered. One day while prostrated before the
sepulchre he heard Christ charge him to announce in Europe that the
appointed hour had come. Furnished with letters from the patriarch, Peter
straightway embarked for Rome to obtain Urban's sanction for his design.
Urban listened and gave a consent which he could not prudently have
withheld, but he abstained from participating in the propaganda. In March,
1095, Urban called a Council at Piacenza, nominally to consider the
deliverance of Jerusalem, and this Council was attended by thirty thousand
impatient laymen, only waiting for the word to take the vow, but the pope
did nothing. Even at Clermont eight months later, he showed a disposition
to deal with private war, or church discipline, or with anything in fact
rather than with the one engrossing question of the day, but this time
there was no escape.
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