Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [102]
When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground.
Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent.25
Urban’s diatribe talked of Palestine, although in reality even under Al-Hakim assaults this severe had never taken place. But Urban’s invisible subtext was the cruel and bloody Roman martyrdoms so familiar to his listeners.
It is an open question as to whether the Crusades could have been launched without the oratorical skills of Urban II. He understood both his immediate and his wider audience. He skillfully reworked the elements known to his listeners—cruelty and barbarity, the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre, infidel rule—into an appeal that could have only one response. Unfortunately, we know tantalizingly little about his plans and intentions in the late summer of 1095 when he crossed the Alps into southern France. Had Urban already decided to make his appeal to Christendom, or did this conviction emerge as the autumn progressed? He had certainly chosen the venue with some care. The leaders of the church in France were summoned to meet the pope in Clermont, on the edge of the Auvergne; it was a point accessible from both north and south. On November 18, 1095, 300 churchmen and their clerical retinues gathered in the largest church of the city, filling it to capacity. There they settled disputes about discipline and good order: the king of France was excommunicated for adultery and the bishop of Cambrai for selling official positions in his diocese. But as the meeting proceeded, the pope suddenly announced that on Tuesday, November 27, he would speak not just to the church but to the world. A dais was built outside the eastern gate of the city and early on the morning of the address the papal throne was set up before a huge crowd.
For so momentous an event in history, the accounts of Urban’s speech are teasingly confused. No one wrote down a verbatim account and there are five different versions of what Urban said, each subtly different in tone and emphasis, to reflect the writer’s own preoccupations. However, clearly common to each version is Urban’s method of winning over his audience, and if the details differ, his intention and technique are evident. He was telling the vast crowd gathered before him a story, reminding them of facts they knew already, interweaving his ideas and narratives in ways that they had hitherto not considered. In one version, by Robert the Monk, he appealed to them as men of France, upon whom he called in the hour of Christendom’s need:
Oh, race of Franks, race from across the mountains, race chosen and beloved by God as shines forth in very many of your works; set apart from all nations by the situation of your country, as well as by your catholic faith and the honour of the holy church! To you our discourse is addressed and for you our exhortation is intended.26
In another (by Fulcher of Chartres), he carefully linked the issue of a pure church, which they had been discussing for nine days, with the great and manifest evil in the East. He called upon Christians to make a pilgrimage in arms to the East:
I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to … carry aid promptly to those Christians