, to raise his powerful
voice against abuses wherever he found them. Vice met in him an austere
and uncompromising reprover; no man was too high for his reproach, and
none too low for his sympathy. He was just as well suited for his age as
Peter the Hermit had been for the age preceding. He appealed more to the
reason, his predecessor to the passions; Peter the Hermit collected a mob,
while St. Bernard collected an army. Both were endowed with equal zeal and
perseverance, springing in the one from impulse, and in the other from
conviction, and a desire to increase the influence of the Church, that
great body of which he was a pillar and an ornament.

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF VEZELAI.]

One of the first converts he made was in himself a host. Louis VII. was
both superstitious and tyrannical, and, in a fit of remorse for the
infamous slaughter he had authorised at the sacking of Vitry, he made a
vow to undertake the journey to the Holy Land.[10] He was in this
disposition when St. Bernard began to preach, and wanted but little
persuasion to embark in the cause. His example had great influence upon
the nobility, who, impoverished as many of them were by the sacrifices
made by their fathers in the holy wars, were anxious to repair their
ruined fortunes by conquests on a foreign shore. These took the field with
such vassals as they could command, and in a very short time an army was
raised amounting to two hundred thousand men. At Vezelai the monarch
received the cross from the hands of St. Bernard, on a platform elevated
in sight of all the people. Several nobles, three bishops, and his queen,
Eleanor of Aquitaine, were present at this ceremony, and enrolled
themselves under the banner of the cross, St. Bernard cutting up his red
sacerdotal vestments, and making crosses of them, to be sewn on the
shoulders of the people. An exhortation from the Pope was read to the
multitude, granting remission of their sins to all who should join the
Crusade, and directing that no man on that holy pilgrimage should encumber
himself with heavy baggage and vain superfluities, and that the nobles
should not travel with dogs or falcons, to lead them from the direct road,
as had happened to so many during the first Crusade.

[10] The sacking of Vitry reflects indelible disgrace upon Louis
VII. His predecessors had been long engaged in resistance to
the outrageous powers assumed by the Popes, and Louis
continu