ver, that Urban could not yet command Italian
aid and unity. Commerce had so developed that religion, where it
interfered with it, could not command undivided allegiance. The
Italians, too, were near enough to know the limitations of Urban's
power, his failures and disgraces, and could not be summoned to action
as successfully as those who were farther away from knowledge of the
weakness of the papal grip. So the second Council met at Clermont in
Auvergne, and was equally weighty in the numbers attending and the
authority represented. "The cities and villages of the neighborhood were
so filled that tents and pavilions were erected in the meadows, although
the weather was very cold."[4]

Various matters of Church and social discipline were first considered
and determined. The purposed delay in reaching the real object of the
Council seemed to whet the appetites for the consideration of the wrongs
of the East. Enthusiasm grew to fanaticism, and a grand and universal
impatience of other topics finally brought the greater matter before the
body.

[Sidenote: _Artful Delay_]

The opening of the subject was had in the great square before the
cathedral. A throne had been prepared there for the pope, who approached
it followed by his cardinals and accompanied by Peter the Hermit in the
garb now known to the Christian world everywhere.

[Sidenote: _Describes Sufferings of Christians_]

Peter was put forward to speak first. His countenance was cast down with
humiliation, and his voice expressed his inward agony as he told what he
had seen of the sufferings of Christians at the scene of the world's
redemption. He told how they had been chained, beaten, harnessed like
brutes; how their bread had been taken away; how they had been compelled
to pay from the poverty of the pilgrim's wallet for approach to the
sacred shrines; how Christian ministers had, like their Lord, known the
rod, and met their death.

It is not needful to suppose that the growth of Peter's emotion, as he
told this tale of horrors, was simulated. In the cooler blood of to-day
the narrative stirs a sluggish heart. He ceased to speak because choked
with sobs.

[Sidenote: _Urban's Great Speech_]

The speech of Urban, who followed Peter, was one of the greatest ever
spoken in its effect on the history of the world. Delivered undoubtedly
in French, it survives only in ecclesiastical Latin. He was in France.
He wished to stir the French. He could not have moved