Peter The Hermit - Role in Preaching First Crusade

Role in Preaching First Crusade

Although later Catholic historians and many other scholars disagree, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris wrote that Peter the Hermit was the true author and originator of the First Crusade, a view also recounted in the anonymous Gesta Francorum - written c. 1100 - and by Albert of Aix in his Historia Hierosolymitanae Expeditionis, and also supported by some modern scholars.

Such historical sources recount that during an early visit to Jerusalem some time before 1096, Jesus appeared to Peter the Hermit in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and bade him preach the crusade. This story also appears in the pages of William of Tyre, which indicates that even a few generations after the crusade, the descendants of the crusaders already believed Peter was its originator. The origin of such a legend is a matter of some interest. Von Sybel, in his Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges, published in 1841, suggested that in the camp of the paupers (which existed side by side with that of the knights, and grew increasingly large as the crusade took a more and more heavy toll on the purses of the crusaders) some idolization of Peter the Hermit had already begun, parallel to the similar glorification of Godfrey by the Lorrainers.

According to these traditional accounts, Peter naturally became the instigator of the crusade just as Godfrey became the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem and the legislator of the assizes. This version of Peter's career seems as old as the Chanson des chétifs, a poem which Raymond of Antioch caused to be composed in honour of the Hermit and his followers soon after 1130, now part of the so-called "Crusade cycle" of chansons de geste. It also appears in the pages of Albert of Aix who wrote somewhere about 1130; and from Albert it was borrowed by William of Tyre. Despite the majority of contemporaneous scholars and writers agreeing that Peter was the true author of the Crusade and that its aims became corrupted and violent over time in contrast to the purer and mostly non-violent People's Crusade, most recent scholars such as Jonathan Riley-Smith consider such views as an excellent instance of the legendary amplification of the First Crusade—an amplification which, beginning during the crusade itself, in the "idolizations" of the different camps (idola castrorum, if one may pervert Bacon), soon developed into a regular saga. This saga found its most piquant beginning in the Hermit's vision at Jerusalem, and there it accordingly began—alike in Albert, followed by William of Tyre and in the Chanson des chétifs, followed by the later Chanson d'Antioche.