Urban II: the pope who launched the "Holy War"
64He was born around 1035 to a noble family in northern France. After Gregory's death and the short papacy of Victor III, Urban was elected pope on March 12, 1088, but was in exile at the time. He continued to regain support and finally was able to enter Rome in 1094. Before and during his papacy, Urban was a member of a reform movement that wanted the clergy to be more removed from "worldly values" and influences, bringing life in general, closer to life in a monastery.
In the first week of March 1095, a delegation from the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus presented Urban with a request for help against the Turks. Pope Urban II's response was to preach the First Crusade, starting on November 27, 1095, at the Council of Clermont. This first preaching was geared explicitly to the French, those all others who wished to participate were encouraged--unless of course, they were from Spain. The Spanish were encouraged to fight the Muslims in Spain instead of in the middle east. In fact, Urban's proclamation was given in French.
This is the reason why Christians, who had followed more or less peaceful policies in the previous 1,000 years, suddenly began to display an appetite for war-specifically, the "liberation" of the holy city of Jerusalem and Palestine as a whole. Also at that time the Muslim societies' wealth and prosperity-played on the minds of Europeans.
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I think the reason the he delivered his speech in French was because he was French, speakin to a mostly French crowd, and in a French city.
i thought he died on july 22nd 1099
Pope Urban 11 certainly saved the world and Christianity from muslim infestation and a culture of darkness and bigotry. God had willed it that the world be liberated from the armies of darkness from Arabia which had descended upon the sons of Isaac, only to ne stopped by Charlemagne the Hammer at the Battle of Tours, and Urban 11's Crusaders.
adamthebug 3 years ago
Do you think that Spain was encouraged to fight the Crusades in Spain had anything to do with the fact that Spain was already being invaded by Islam, and if warriors were pulled away form that front line, then the Islamic warriors would've had a open door to the rest of Europe?Furthermore, do you think that Islam's invasion of Europe barely a century before, in which France barely managed to hold off the invaders under the command of Charles Martel, had anything to do with Europe's willingness to accept this as a threat?The idea that Europe had practiced "peaceful" policies until Urban II had stirred them into a war frenzy is unfounded at best, laughable at worst. European kingdoms had been battling it out for supremacy from the very moment that Rome fell. This weakened them as a people, and put them at great risk from a unified Muslim enemy.Urban II realized that an attack on Jerusalem would draw Islam's greatest horsemasters and warriors away from their assault on Byzantium and Spain, and focus their efforts on liberating Jerusalem.Basically, he managed to unify a Europe, which was in a constant state of war into a unified force, and launch the first major offensive against the Islamic world, instead of being besieged by it.Even though the Crusades themselves failed to hold onto Jerusalem, the Islamic kingdoms powers slowly began to fade, and Europe's grew without living under the constant threat of another Islamic invasion. ...Except for Spain which didn't fully liberate their kingdom until shortly before Christopher Columbus sailed off looking for a new trade route with India, which was a direct result of Islam's capture of Constantinople, thus cutting off Europe's previous trade route.Pope Urban II should be known as the man that saved Europe and Christianity.