Cistercian envoy waylaid him, Conrad III used a different excuse for not taking the cross until, a full year after Louis’ Christmas court at Bourges, Bernard celebrated Mass in Speyer on 27 December 1146. Exemplifying the true meaning of charisma , when the Holy Spirit is said to enter into a person chosen as the instrument of God’s will, Bernard was once again seized with preacher’s fervour. In the congre-gation was Conrad, who heard himself summoned to stand and account before the altar for the state of his soul and his steward-ship of his lands and possessions.
As at Vézelay, the words and the fire with which they were delivered provoked an outbreak of crusading fever in which the emperor pledged himself and his vassals to the cause. So great was the press of volunteers that Conrad, fearing the frail monk would be crushed to death, wrapped Bernard in his own cloak and carried him from the church.
Preparations political, financial and logistical took several more months on both sides of the Rhine. Barons mortgaged their lands and the common people found in the heavy taxes a topic for complaint to replace the five-year famine they had just endured. While for the equestrian classes departure on crusade was either a penance or an adventure, for the peasants and urban poor accompanying them it was the equivalent of death: they kissed their wives and children goodbye in the expectation of meeting again only in heaven.
The differences of personality between Louis and Eleanor were typified in their preparations. While he visited monasteries and hospitals, begging the prayers of his humblest and therefore most Christ-like subjects for the success of the crusade, she travelled the length and breadth of Aquitaine and Poitou, bullying and cajoling her richest and most powerful vassals to raise more money and men.
One of Suger’s many worries was the possibility that Louis would be killed or die from disease, leaving only Princess Marie to succeed him. To prevent the king’s brother Robert from usurping the crown, Eleanor and Louis considered marrying her to Henry, the fourteen-year-old son of the Count Geoffrey of Anjou, whom Louis had lately confirmed as duke of Normandy. The meeting between Eleanor and Geoffrey to discuss this would afterwards lead to scandal, but Bernard’s voice was heard loud and clear protesting that the mothers of the queen and Henry of Anjou were related in the third degree: Louis was to have nothing to do with the idea. And as for Count Geoffrey, how could so valiant a warrior not take the cross when his half-brother Baldwin was the king of Jerusalem, whose call for help they were answering?
Meantime, the widespread impatience to fight the perceived Muslim menace to Jerusalem found a much easier infidel target nearer home. At the time of the First Crusade, Jews had been victimised in France and killed in cities all over Germany, culminating in the great massacre of Mainz, where on the third day of Sivan according to the Hebrew calendar the entire community of 1,100 men, women and children was massacred in a bloody dress rehearsal for what would happen to the Jews in Jerusalem when the crusaders took the city.
While Eleanor and Louis were making their preparations, an itinerant monk by name of Randulf sanctioned the pillage of Jewish property in Germany and Alsace, using terms that were an incitement to fresh massacres. In condemning him, 16 pacific Bernard preached against harming the Children of Israel, whether in the Diaspora or the Holy Land. This was not because he loved Jews but taught – echoing St Augustine and Pope Gregory – that they were collectively guiltyof deicide and must be punished but not killed, so that they could continue to exist as witnesses of Christ’s Passion.
Because Easter and therefore Pentecost were late in 1147, Louis decided to postpone departure until the feast of St Denis on 11 June, so that the endeavour might be properly begun under the auspices of the
As at Vézelay, the words and the fire with which they were delivered provoked an outbreak of crusading fever in which the emperor pledged himself and his vassals to the cause. So great was the press of volunteers that Conrad, fearing the frail monk would be crushed to death, wrapped Bernard in his own cloak and carried him from the church.
Preparations political, financial and logistical took several more months on both sides of the Rhine. Barons mortgaged their lands and the common people found in the heavy taxes a topic for complaint to replace the five-year famine they had just endured. While for the equestrian classes departure on crusade was either a penance or an adventure, for the peasants and urban poor accompanying them it was the equivalent of death: they kissed their wives and children goodbye in the expectation of meeting again only in heaven.
The differences of personality between Louis and Eleanor were typified in their preparations. While he visited monasteries and hospitals, begging the prayers of his humblest and therefore most Christ-like subjects for the success of the crusade, she travelled the length and breadth of Aquitaine and Poitou, bullying and cajoling her richest and most powerful vassals to raise more money and men.
One of Suger’s many worries was the possibility that Louis would be killed or die from disease, leaving only Princess Marie to succeed him. To prevent the king’s brother Robert from usurping the crown, Eleanor and Louis considered marrying her to Henry, the fourteen-year-old son of the Count Geoffrey of Anjou, whom Louis had lately confirmed as duke of Normandy. The meeting between Eleanor and Geoffrey to discuss this would afterwards lead to scandal, but Bernard’s voice was heard loud and clear protesting that the mothers of the queen and Henry of Anjou were related in the third degree: Louis was to have nothing to do with the idea. And as for Count Geoffrey, how could so valiant a warrior not take the cross when his half-brother Baldwin was the king of Jerusalem, whose call for help they were answering?
Meantime, the widespread impatience to fight the perceived Muslim menace to Jerusalem found a much easier infidel target nearer home. At the time of the First Crusade, Jews had been victimised in France and killed in cities all over Germany, culminating in the great massacre of Mainz, where on the third day of Sivan according to the Hebrew calendar the entire community of 1,100 men, women and children was massacred in a bloody dress rehearsal for what would happen to the Jews in Jerusalem when the crusaders took the city.
While Eleanor and Louis were making their preparations, an itinerant monk by name of Randulf sanctioned the pillage of Jewish property in Germany and Alsace, using terms that were an incitement to fresh massacres. In condemning him, 16 pacific Bernard preached against harming the Children of Israel, whether in the Diaspora or the Holy Land. This was not because he loved Jews but taught – echoing St Augustine and Pope Gregory – that they were collectively guiltyof deicide and must be punished but not killed, so that they could continue to exist as witnesses of Christ’s Passion.
Because Easter and therefore Pentecost were late in 1147, Louis decided to postpone departure until the feast of St Denis on 11 June, so that the endeavour might be properly begun under the auspices of the
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