whilst some princes maintained the rights of one party, and some
defended the pretensions of the other: sometimes the prince acknowledged
one Pope, whilst his subjects adhered to his rival. The scandals
occasioned by these schisms were infinite; and they threatened a deadly
wound to that authority whose greatness had occasioned them. Princes
were taught to know their own power. That Pope who this day was a
suppliant to a monarch to be recognized by him could with an ill grace
pretend to govern him with an high hand the next. The lustre of the Holy
See began to be tarnished, when Urban the Second, after a long contest
of this nature, was universally acknowledged. That Pope, sensible by his
own experience of the ill consequence of such disputes, sought to turn
the minds of the people into another channel, and by exerting it
vigorously to give a new strength to the Papal power. In an age so
ignorant, it was very natural that men should think a great deal in
religion depended upon the very scene where the work of our Redemption
was accomplished. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem were therefore judged highly
meritorious, and became very frequent. But the country which was the
object of them, as well as several of those through which the journey
lay, were in the hands of Mahometans, who, against all the rules of
humanity and good policy, treated the Christian pilgrims with great
indignity. These, on their return, filled the minds of their neighbors
with hatred and resentment against those infidels. Pope Urban laid hold
on this disposition, and encouraged Peter the Hermit, a man visionary,
zealous, enthusiastic, and possessed of a warm irregular eloquence
adapted to the pitch of his hearers, to preach an expedition for the
delivery of the Holy Land.

Great designs may be started and the spirit of them inspired by
enthusiasts, but cool heads are required to bring them into form. The
Pope, not relying solely on Peter, called a council at Clermont, where