Peter the Hermit

the preacher of the first crusade. Little is known of his early life except that he was a monk born near Amiens. He is reputed to have attempted a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but to have been turned back by the infidels ere he reached the Holy City. After the great council at Clermont at which the decision was reached to attempt the liberation of Jerusalem, Peter journeyed through southern France, preaching a "Holy War" against the Saracens. He was clad in a hermit's robe and rode on the back of a mule, carrying an elevated crucifix in his hand. At the wayside, in villages, in inns, in churches, in short, everywhere opportunity offered, he inflamed the peasantry with stories of the maltreatment of pilgrims in the Holy Land and urged an immediate march upon the Saracens. He placed himself at the head of an ignorant, unorganized, unarmed horde of peasants said to number 30,000. They set out for the Holy Land almost without supplies. They swept like a desolating scourge down the valley of the Danube, perishing by the thousand from fatigue and disease and from the attacks of the native Christians who aimed to save their small belongings from pillage. A small remnant that reached the Bosphorus were massacred by the Turks. Peter appears to have preserved his own life and to have attached himself to a body of well armed crusaders who followed soon after. July 8, 1099, he had the satisfaction of preaching on the Mount of Olives. He entered the city of Jerusalem with the crusading army. He returned soon after to France and entered a monastery of which he became the prior. He died July 8, 1115.