Council of Clermont was a church assembly, which was called by Pope Urban II in the French city of Clermont in 1095 to address church administrative and political issues. At the end of this meeting Urban II made a spirited speech, the results of which had a great influence on the whole European history. Although there is no accurate record of the words of the Pope, some versions of the contemporaries remained that can provide approximate interpretations of what was said during this assembly. The goal of this paper is to analyze these historical accounts and show the significance of this speech in changing history.
Although Robert the Monk provides a little bit different interpretation of this event, the main points of his story remain the same. It is worth mentioning that as the Pope is at the head of the Church, he has a significant influence on the faithful. His speech was quite powerful and as it was a huge gathering of people we can imagine what effect his words have made on the crowd.
What concerns the importance of this speech it is known that it resulted in the First Crusade and gave rise to other Crusades that were in fact military campaigns in Europe and Asia sanctioned by the Pope. As we can see from Robert the Monk’s account of the given speech, the Pope finished it with the words: “It is the will of God!” (Munro, p. 8) This phrase became a battle-cry of the crusaders. As it is seen from the speech, the main emphasis was laid on an honorable mission of the knights to obey the will of God. They were shown not as warriors and their deeds as a cruel war, but they were convinced that they were “faithful and zealous in the service of God” (Munro, p. 2).
The symbol of the crusaders was a red cross. The inception of this tradition and its origin are mentioned in the Gesta version: “caused crosses to be sewed on their right shoulders” (Krey, p. 28). For nearly two centuries, from 1096 to 1291, European Christians carried out trips to the Hole Land, and against adherents of different Christian denominations and Catholicism pagans. The crusaders were blessed by the Pope.
Works Cited
Krey, August. The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921. Print.
Munro, Dana. Urban and the Crusaders: Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1895. Print.
