Crusades Post #2
The Beginning of the First Crusades
Who were Popes Urban and Gregory VII?
Urban was an educated former prior from France. He was also known as Odo of Châtillon or Otho de Lagery. He supported the previous pope, Gregory VII. After Gregory's death, Pope Victor III briefly reigned, and then Urban was elected pope.
Gregory clashed with Emporer Henry IV
One of the key issues in this conflict was the investiture, the practice of secular rulers appointing and investing bishops and abbots with their religious offices. Pope Gregory VII sought to reform the Church and establish its independence from secular authority, arguing that the appointment of church officials should be the sole prerogative of the Church.
Henry IV, on the other hand, wanted to maintain control over the appointment of bishops and church officials within his realm.
So Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the German King Henry IV. It was the first time a reigning monarch had been excommunicated since Theodosius the Great, seven centuries earlier. The excommunication absolved all Henry's subjects from allegiance to him, and anyone supporting Henry risked being excommunicated themselves. Henry retaliated by calling together a synod of German and Italian Bishops, who elected a new Pope, Pope Clement III, whom Henry attempted to install in Rome in place of Gregory. Gregory was eventually saved by the military intervention of the Normans, who as Vikings tend to do then went on to rampage and plunder their way through Rome in 1084.
Gregory had previously attempted crusades particularly concerned with the East. When the news of the Muslim attacks on the Christians in the East filtered through to Rome, and the political embarrassments of Byzantium increased, he conceived the project of a great military expedition and exhorted the faithful to participate in recovering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—foreshadowing the First Crusade. In his efforts to recruit for the expedition, he emphasized the suffering of Eastern Christians, arguing Western Christians had a moral obligation to go to their aid.
In July 1095, Urban II turned to his homeland of France to recruit men for the expedition. His travels there culminated in the ten-day Council of Clermont, where on 27 November he gave an impassioned sermon to a large audience of French nobles and clergy.
Urban made a speech imploring nobles to take up arms and aid in the recapturing of Christian Lands (these lands had not been Christian for nearly 400 years). The consensus is that the Crusades were called to aid the Byzantine Empire against the Seljuk Turks.
Urban invoked a holy war and declared a full penance to Crusaders stating
"All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested"
