od things of the world which she professed to have renounced.

CENTURY XI.

The Prussians, during this century, were driven into the fold of the
Church. A Christian missionary, Adalbert, bishop of Prague, had been
murdered by the "fierce and savage Prussians," and in order to show the
civilising results of the gentle Christian creed, Boleslaus, king of
Poland, entered "into a bloody war with the Prussians, and he obtained,
by the force of penal laws and of a victorious, army, what Adalbert
could not effect by exhortation and argument. He dragooned this savage
people into the Christian Church" (p. 230). Some of his followers tried
a gentler method of conversion, and were murdered by the Prussians, who
clearly saw no reason why Christians should do all the killing. We have
already seen that Sylvester II. called upon the Christian princes to
commence a "holy war" against "the infidels" who held the holy places of
Christianity. Gregory VII. strove to stir them up in like fashion, and
had gathered together an army of upwards of 50,000 men, whom he proposed
to lead in person into Palestine. The Pope, however, quarrelled with
Henry IV., emperor of Germany, and his project fell through. At the
close of this century, the long-talked of effort was made. Peter the
Hermit, who had travelled through Palestine, came into Europe and
related in all directions tales of the sufferings of the Christians
under the rule of the "barbarous" Saracens. He appealed to Urban II.,
the then Pope, and Urban, who at first discouraged him, seeing that
Peter had succeeded in rousing the most warlike nations of Christian
Europe into enthusiasm, called a council at Placentia, A.D. 1095, and
appealed to the Christian princes to take up the cause of the Cross. The
council was not successful, and Urban summoned another at Clermont, and
himself addressed the assembly. "It is the will of God" was the shout
that answered him, and the people flew to arms. "Every means was used to
excite an epidemical frenzy, the remission of penance, the dispensation
from those practices of self-denial which superstition imposed or
suspended at pleasure, the absolution of all sins, and the assurance of
eternal felicity. None doubted that such as persisted in the war
received immediately the reward of martyrdom. False miracles and
fanatical prophecies, which were never so frequent, wrought up the
enthusiasm to a still higher pitch. [Mosheim states, p. 231, that Peter
the He