The Foreground.

The great movements called the Crusades followed the leading of universal religious instincts.

Wherever a great leader has been born, has taught, has suffered, died, or been buried, the feet of his followers have been glad to stand. At such spots religious emotions are revived, holy influences are believed to be absorbed, and a sense of nearness to the prophets of God acquired. Whatever the teacher wore, used, or even looked upon, became a treasure through its relation to him. In India pilgrimages to holy shrines, rivers, and cities have been works of merit, even from prehistoric times. The same is true of China as to temples, tombs, springs, and mountain summits. Devotees of later religions, like that of Mahomet, have their Meccas, as the Roman Church has her Loretto and her Lourdes. The murder of Thomas Á Becket was followed by the Canterbury pilgrimages, immortalized by Chaucer. "From the lowest Fetichism up to Christianity itself this general and unconquerable propensity has either been sanctioned by religion or sprung up out of it."[1] Humanity leans more readily on the Incarnate Savior than on Him who was "before the world was." To-day the devout Christian feels the impulse to walk where the Master walked, to behold the sea which He stilled, to sit by the well where He preached, to pray in the garden of His agony, and to stand on the summit above which He shone. And if his faith can be assured as to the site of Calvary, the great tragedy loses all historical dimness and is made real, visible, and present, though its story be read through penitent tears. The place suggests the man; the man suggests the Divine Man; He seems nearer when we worship where an apostle said, "My Lord and my God."

The East has always been the fountain of religions to the European mind. To the westward flowed the stream of doctrines which sprang up in the Orient. We are beginning to see that Greece came to many of her gods through instruction from the Asiatic continent, and that her originality in religion lay chiefly in her refinement of nature worship and in the beautiful marble forms in which Greek genius enshrined her divinities. From Greece the stream reached Italy in Magna GrÆcia, and later by the adoption through Roman assimilation of the gods of the Greek Pantheon. The worship of Isis and Osiris came from Egypt to Rome, and became an influential cult there, as witness the abounding symbols of that worship still preserved in the Capitoline Museum.

To the Christian no land could be so full of religious suggestions, remembrances, and associations as Judea. France, Spain, Italy, Britain were no sooner Christianized in any degree than pilgrims began to set out for the Jordan, for Bethlehem, for Jerusalem with its Gethsemane, its Calvary, and its Holy Sepulcher. Those who were taught that blessing came "by the work wrought," especially when the years prophesied a brief space of life left, eagerly sought to wash sin away in Jordan or to die near the hill of the atonement.

When Christianity became imperial by alliance with the State, and corrupt by the ascendency of Constantine in its Councils, the number of pilgrims greatly increased. Ambitions as well as devotions drew men to Palestine. Constantine had evoked Jerusalem again as a name and as a city from the ruins of the preceding three centuries. The liberality of Constantine and Helena had identified the holy places sufficiently for the credulous faith of the time, and has decorated them with churches and colonnades. Michaud says: "An obscure cavern had become a marble temple paved with precious stones. To the east of the Holy Sepulcher appeared the Church of the Resurrection, where the riches of Asia mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome."[2]

The attraction of such buildings, however, was not so great a stimulus to pilgrimages as the security which the pilgrim might have, both on his journey and after his arrival, through the extended and effective authority of the Roman emperor. The pilgrim could now journey without fighting his way, could be housed without secrecy after his arrival, and could worship without stripes at any one of the many shrines which attracted his piety.

It is doubtful if any pilgrims traveled so far at first in such numbers through unsympathetic and unfriendly people as those who went as palmers before the settlement of the roads by Constantine or just before the Crusades. During the stay of St. Jerome at Bethlehem, in the fourth century, the pilgrims were so numerous that he speaks of them as coming in crowds, and says that the praises of God could be heard there in many languages.

Some of the great leaders of the Church, Jerome himself with varying note, were wise enough to point out the evils of these pilgrimages, and to remind the faithful that the Christ might be honored by good deeds at home. Gregory of Nyssa wrote: "The Lord has not said, 'Go to the Orient and seek justice.' Travel even to the west and you shall receive pardon." St. Augustine said in the first sermon on the words of the Apostle Peter: "I am unwilling to consider a long journey. Where you believe, there you arrive."[3] Jerome from Bethlehem itself writes, "Heaven is equally open to Britain and Jerusalem." He could not have advised against pilgrimages more strenuously if he had wished to keep Bethlehem for himself and for the Roman ladies drawn thither by his example.

For several centuries the passion for the pilgrimage increased steadily. Roads were indicated, resting places pointed out, and wealth sought to buy salvation by building hospitals and providing for doles of bread and wine to those who made the sacred journey. Charlemagne made their case a tax on his subjects through whose bounds they passed. "Even in our entire kingdom neither rich nor poor shall dare to deny hospitality to the pilgrims.... On account of the love of God and the salvation of our souls, no one shall deny them shelter, fire, or water."

In Jerusalem vast caravanseries were built for them, Gregory the Great building there one of the largest of all shelters.

The signs of the pilgrim—the staff, the wallet, and the scallop-shell—were blessed by priest or bishop before departure, and took on added sanctity, and even miracle-working power, if they had reached actual use in the Holy Land. It was not long before an indulgent Church guaranteed that bathing in Jordan should wash away all sin. And, as the Holy Land must be rich in the bones of martyrs and in the relics of Christ and His apostles, it was within the ambition of the pilgrims to possess a hair of the Virgin, a thread from the seamless coat, a nail which had pierced His hand, a splinter from the cross, or a thorn which had torn His brow. All these were believed to possess powers of healing, and their possession permanently increased the dignity of families and the wealth of Churches.

The demand for such relics from the Christian world was great and the supply was greater. Traffic in these was enriched by the purchase of the silks, spices, and other treasures of the East, and commercial greed came to move men under the cover of the cross.

The stream of pilgrimage was full until the reign of Heraclius. Then the Persian king, Chosroes, carried his arms through Syria and Palestine to Egypt. The fire-worshipers defiled the holy city by their authority and their worship. They tainted and robbed the churches, and carried off what was believed to be the cross of the crucifixion, which had been guarded by the Church of the Resurrection.

The wailing of the Christian world over this loss strengthened the courage of Heraclius through ten years of reverses, and aided in the late but full victory which not only brought back to Jerusalem the enslaved Christians but the Cross of Calvary, as the most glorious of trophies. The emperor himself bore this barefooted to the summit of Calvary, and at Constantinople received the congratulations of the Christian world.

Jerusalem was soon, however, to feel the weight of a new and heavy hand.

In Arabia a religion arose with a singular power of advance, which it retains to this day. The union of the spiritual with the material, of the sensual with a fatalistic theology, made the followers of Mahomet eager for heaven by way of the battle-field. The Jews had now no unity; Christianity had become divided into sects cursing each other; the Persian Empire had exhausted itself; the Greek Empire was wasted with its own corruptions. The way was open for the stern, sober, and, in all respects but one, self-denying followers of Mahomet. Until they learned to navigate they swept the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean. They early overwhelmed Palestine. Becoming masters of maritime peoples, they conquered even to Spain; were held at bay for a while by Constantinople; came even under the walls of Vienna, and were at length beaten back by Charles Martel.

Jerusalem was almost as sacred a city to the Mohammedans as to the Christians. Their prophet had visited it, and had journeyed to heaven from it. Attacked by the soldiers of Omar shortly after the death of the prophet, the Christians endured the horrors of a siege for four months, resisting armies which claimed the city as theirs by the promises of God. Omar came to receive the keys of the exhausted city, and Christians cried out in agony as the chief infidel defiled by his presence the Holy Sepulcher. They were permitted to worship, but not openly to exhibit their crosses and sacred books. Their conqueror erected a mosque on the site of the temple. This was more than the breaking heart of the Christian patriarch could bear. He died bewailing the sorrows and desolation of the city of the Great King.

While Omar lived the hand of persecution was in good measure stayed, but worked in full vigor as soon as he was dead. Christians were certain neither of their homes nor of their churches. Their taxes were increased to the point of exhaustion. They could not mount a horse nor bear a weapon. A leather girdle must always show their subjection. No Arabic word must fall from their lips, nor could they speak the name of their own Patriarch without permission.

These hardships awakened the sympathy of the Christian world, and stimulated many to go to the Holy Land that they then might be "accounted worthy to suffer with Christ."

Arculphus and Antoninus, of Plaisance, reached sainthood by making this journey and certifying to the Western Churches the persecutions of the Christians in the Holy Land.

Yet truth compels the statement that the Mohammedans were not always unjust or unkind. Intervals of peace came to cheer those who wept, and the reign of Haroun al Raschid offered them the largest hope. The great Charles was now great enough, even in Eastern eyes, to secure liberty and peace to Christians in far-off Palestine, and was treated as an equal through embassies and presents by the great Caliph.

Never could a monarch have received a more welcome present than did Charlemagne when the Caliph sent him the keys of the Holy Sepulcher.

It is also to be remembered that prophecy had been interpreted to mean that in the year 1000 A. D. Christ would appear and set up His millennial kingdom. This greatly stimulated the pilgrimages to the Holy Land, as it did all other phases of devotion. Thousands felt that it would be well to be at the scene of the cross and of the resurrection when Christ came with His angels. It were well they should be near where He ascended, whether they were living or dead when He came.

Persecutions followed the death of the great Caliph, particularly in the sultanate of Egypt. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was destroyed. Other Christian buildings shared the same fate. Then as now, the Jews had to suffer from suspicions created by their voluntary segregation as well as by their forced isolation. The Christians in France heard that the French Jews had sent word to the Sultan Hakim that a great Christian invasion of the Holy Land was intended. This led to a revenge, the justice of which in any degree remains unsettled to this day.

Unexpected calm came to Palestine through the development of the maritime powers of Italy, which could fall on Hakim's dominions at will. The largest annoyance of the pilgrims for awhile was the enforced payment of a toll for entering Jerusalem, established near this time by the Mohammedan powers. In the cooler blood of historical inquiry to-day, we can not wonder at a tax which failed at its greatest height to meet the increased cost of government when thousands of pilgrims were added to the population of Jerusalem and its environs. But it was often gladly paid by those who could, and the gates of Jerusalem were opened by the richer pilgrims for those to whom it was an impossible or severe burden.

Christianity had now attained a history of a thousand years. It had climbed to stately thrones and to cathedrals. Princes of great names, like Robert of Normandy, and bishops who were also secular princes made the pilgrimage and returned to speak with authority on the attractions of the holy places and on the shame of the infidel's domination.

In the shrewd management of the Church at this time, pilgrimages were substituted for penances, and troublesome sinners were sent out of their country on a pious mission which promised forgiveness if it could not pledge reform. It at least secured a period of quiet to their families and of security to the neighborhoods from which they came.

The Bollandist manuscripts afford many details of the pilgrim life at Jerusalem which had, however, to be enjoyed by permission of the infidel, always a bitter portion in the pilgrim's cup.

On arrival they prepared themselves by fasting and prayer. Then, covered by a mourning robe, they visited the Church of the Sepulcher. The robe thus attained such sanctity that it was preserved until death and enshrouded the owner at burial. They then visited, in turn, the sacred spots in and adjacent to the city. This accomplished, they sought the holy mountains of the Sermon, the Transfiguration, and Ascension. Then they washed their sins away in Jordan, and tore off palm-leaves near Jericho to attest on their homeward journey that the holy pilgrimage was complete.

The tenth and eleventh centuries thus kept by the thousands of pilgrims yearly, all Christian Europe became informed of the conditions which obtained in the land where Christ suffered for the sins of men.

Slowly there grew up a devotion which was nearly equal to a secondary religion. Service rendered to a pilgrim was almost the same as being a pilgrim. Nor did the pilgrims fail to profit by the reverence they inspired. Some of them paid their way by their prayers. There is record of one who paid his fare for a voyage from Alexandria to Palestine with a copy of the Evangelists.

On the St. Bernard, on Mt. Cenis, on the frontiers of Hungary, in Asia Minor, as well as in Palestine, hospitals and hostelries were built by the faithful as works of salvation.

No pious movement has ever long existed without drawing to itself some of impure and selfish motive. The rich had no surer way of advertising their generosity than by making the journey and aiding in the comfort of their poorer brethren. Some made the pilgrimage as many times as planet pilgrims now visit Europe. Yet to the credit of the pilgrim it must be said that no act of violence is recorded against any one who really made the whole journey. It is recorded of a Mussulman governor that he said of such, "They are not away from home with bad intent, but to keep their law."

Confusing to the moral sense as we possess it, and destructive of true morality as we must hold it to be, we must further admit with astonishment that pilgrimage was held to be a cure for the most dreadful sin.

A Brittany lord who murdered his brother and his uncle was ordered to make the journey twice with humiliating conditions, and returned, after three years on Mount Sinai, to be received as a saint and to dignify a monastery by his narrations and his residence.

One journey was enough to free from further penalty a Roman prefect who had dragged a pope from his altar. Foulque-Nerra, Count of Anjou, pursued by the ghosts of those he had murdered, sought to quiet them through three unavailing journeys.

For such reasons and for many others, some of which can hardly be brought within religious motives, thousands made the journey. Three thousand, beginning with the Bishop of Cambrai, were nearly all starved or murdered in Bulgaria, and the few who went on as far as Laodicea turned back or died there, while their leader went back to his diocese.

One more band, or army rather, of ten thousand started ten years later with the Archbishop of Mayence and the Bishops of Spires, Cologne, Bamberg, and Utrecht. They were almost in sight of Jerusalem when the Bedouins besieged and captured them. Saved from death by a neighboring Emir, they followed the news of their tribulations to Jerusalem, where they were received with joy. They lost during the whole journey three thousand of their number, and went back to fire Europe with accounts of their impressions, their perils, and their undeserved dangers.

As the tolerance of the earlier caliphs was succeeded by the fanaticism of the Turks, the Christians of Jerusalem ceased to be treated with any other consideration than that accorded to despised slaves. Pilgrims were no longer guests, but intruders. No persecution, however, stopped the flow of pilgrims. The harder the way, the greater the cost, the greater the merit. The pilgrim might, under these later conditions, easily become a martyr. The martyr's crown was sure, by the faith of the times, to become a heavenly crown. Few now survived the journey. These often came back starved, cut, and mutilated. Their appearance and the great gaps in the ranks of those who returned, kindled a smoldering fire under all Europe. Such had been the pre-eminence of Constantinople and the Greek Empire that if the Greeks had retained their former quality, the Turks might have been driven back by those who sat on that famous throne. But when the corruption of decay was attacked by the vigor of an almost savage state, there could be but one result.

Among the Greeks the lowest qualities and the basest acts found justification under the name of policy. Courage in battle was supplanted by the shield and mechanism of bodily safety. They killed the men who tried to rouse them. They had wasted all their inheritance but great memories, and had acquired a truculent and factious spirit. While they were nearing the utter decay of their influence the infant West was found to have grown until all that was noble in character and all that was true in Christianity, all which could respond in courage and self-sacrifice to the call of Jerusalem for deliverance, was to be found among those whom the Greeks had held to be Barbarians.

The Roman Curia, from its first date of political influence, had never ceased to enhance its authority by the use of the secular arm when it had none of its own, or by its own secular arm when it could command one. The disturbed conditions in the East, together with the decay of Greek influence and the cowardice and helplessness of the Byzantine emperors, had led Michael Ducas to appeal to Pope Gregory for help. The prize offered Gregory was the submission of the Greek to the Roman Church and the removal of all barriers. From the standpoint of ability, Gregory well deserves the title "Great." He seems as great in statecraft as in executive ability. The hope of being a universal pope led him to promise aid. He urged the faithful to take up arms against the Mussulmans, and promised to lead them himself. His letters were full of the loftiest ideas. Fifty thousand agreed to follow his lead. But he found the management of Europe more to his taste and perhaps to his need.

The decay of Byzantine power was wisely used for the development of pontifical authority and the spread of the Latin Church. And, again, the Eternal City through its popes, and particularly through Gregory, became the ruler of the world. Gregory summoned all monarchs to derive their authority and their enthronement from him, and endeavored to make laws for every country in which his Church had place. Resisted by some monarchs, his influence widened nevertheless, and while he forgot his pledge to deliver Jerusalem, he prepared the way for a final unity of action which he could not secure in his own lifetime.

In the pontificate of his successor, mingled religious and commercial motives led to a movement against the Saracens, which, while never numbered among the Crusades, almost deserved that name. The acquisition of maritime power by the Saracens had led to interference with Italian commerce.

Promising remission of sins to all who fought, Victor besought Christians to take up arms. Christians crossed to Africa and professed to have slain a hundred thousand Saracens; certainly did decorate Italian churches with the spoils of victory, and made a Moorish king pay tribute to the pope.

What kings, emperors, and popes could not do, a pilgrim accomplished. We pass from the Foreground to the Figure.

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