ON THIS DAY ·
Council of Clermont
27 Nov 1095 — Pope Urban II asks Western knights to help Eastern Christians and free Jerusalem, offering remission of sins. The crowd answers, “God wills it.” Those present cannot yet imagine what the call has set in motion.
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The moment in context
The Near East that the crusaders approached had no single ruler able to summon all its forces against them. The Sunni Seljuk sultans governed in the name of the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, whose remaining authority was largely religious. In Egypt, the Shia Fatimid caliphs were their political rivals and, in Seljuk eyes, heretics. Syria lay between these powers, divided among competing emirs. After Sultan Malik-Shah died in 1092, his heirs fought for control of his realm. A united power might have crushed a Western expedition at the frontier; instead, an attack on one ruler did not automatically unite his neighbors in defense.
From Causes of the First Crusade, chapter 1 of The Crusades, 1095–1291 (1095).
The place: Council of Clermont — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — Manzikert and the Byzantine appeal. The defeat at Manzikert in 1071 was followed by the loss of much of Anatolia, a region that had supplied Byzantium with food and soldiers. Alexios I…
- The turn — Clermont, 27 November 1095. At Clermont, Urban offered lay warriors a way to make their fighting an act of penance, with a reward in heaven and, some hoped, on earth. Five…
- What it changed — An armed pilgrimage, not an army. The people who set out were bound by vows rather than organized as a single state army. Lords raised forces and often sold or mortgaged land to fund…
Then ask the room: How did religious and material motives contribute to the First Crusade? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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