The Crusades

On November 27, 1095, at Clermont in central France, Odo of Châtillon, elected pope in 1088, was a monk-trained reformer who understood both ecclesiastical politics and the military culture of the European nobility. His speech at Clermont is considered one of the most consequential public addresses in medieval history, launching what became known as the Crusading movement that would span two centuries. climbed onto a platform in an open field and delivered a speech that no one had written down in advance. No verbatim transcript survives. Five different chroniclers recorded five different versions of what he said, and they disagree on nearly every detail.

They agree on the result.

Urban called on the knights of western Christendom to march east, to aid their Christian brothers in Byzantium who were being pressed by the Seljuk Turks, and to liberate the holy city of The city sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam simultaneously — site of the Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Dome of the Rock. It had been under Muslim rule since 637 CE and remained so, with a brief interruption, until 1187. Its centrality to all three Abrahamic faiths made it perpetually contested and perpetually symbolic. from Muslim control. The crowd reportedly shouted Deus vult — God wills it. Within months, an army was assembling across France, the Low Countries, and the Norman kingdoms of southern Italy.