resentment
and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the
Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and
earnestly inquired, if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the
Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness
of the successors of Constantine. "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit,
"the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was obedient
to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with
epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at Bari,
than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff. His stature
was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively;
and he possessed that vehemence of speech, which seldom fails to impart
the persuasion of the soul. [2] He was born of a gentleman's family,
(for we must now adopt a modern idiom,) and his military service was
under the neighboring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first
crusade. But he soon relinquished the sword and the world; and if it
be true, that his wife, however noble, was aged and ugly, he might
withdraw, with the less reluctance, from her bed to a convent, and at
length to a hermitage. [211] In this austere solitude, his body was
emaciated, his fancy was inflamed; whatever he wished, he believed;
whatever he believed, he saw in dreams and revelations. From Jerusalem
the pilgrim returned an accomplished fanatic; but as he excelled in the
popular madness of the times, Pope Urban the Second received him as
a prophet, applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a
general council, and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the
Holy Land. Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff, his zealous
missionary traversed. with speed and success, the provinces of Italy and
France. His diet was abstemious, his prayers long and fervent, and the
alms which he received with one hand, he distributed with the other: his
head was bare, his feet naked, his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse
garment; he bore and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which
he rode was sanctified, in the public eye, by the service of the man of
God. He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and
the highways: the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and
the cottage; and the people (for all was people) was impetuously moved
by his call to repentance and arms. When he painted t