Peter the Hermit
Encyclopedia
Amiens
Amiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardy...
and a key figure during the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
.
Before 1096
According to Anna Comnena, he had attempted to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem before 1096, but was prevented by the Seljuk Turks from reaching his goal and was tortured.Sources differ as to whether he was present at Pope Urban II
Pope Urban II
Pope Urban II , born Otho de Lagery , was Pope from 12 March 1088 until his death on July 29 1099...
's famous Council of Clermont
Council of Clermont
The Council of Clermont was a mixed synod of ecclesiastics and laymen of the Catholic Church, which was held from November 18 to November 28, 1095 at Clermont, France...
in 1095; but it is certain that he was one of the preachers of the crusade in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
afterward, and his own experience may have helped to give fire to the Crusading cause. He soon leapt into fame as an emotional revivalist; and the vast majority of sources and historians agree that thousands of peasants eagerly took the cross at his bidding. However, Jonathan Riley-Smith
Jonathan Riley-Smith
Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith, K.St.J., Ph.D. MA, Litt.D., FRHistS is an historian of the Crusades, and a former Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History...
has proposed that the People's Crusade
People's Crusade
The People's Crusade is part of the First Crusade and lasted roughly six months from April 1096 to October. It is also known as the Peasants' Crusade or the Paupers' Crusade...
also included well armed soldiers and nobles. This part of the crusade was also the crusade of the "paupers", a term which in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
indicated a status as impoverished or mendicant wards of the Church. Peter organized and guided the paupers as a spiritually purified and holy group of pilgrims who would be protected by the Heavenly Host.
Crusade to the Holy Land
Leading one of the five sections of the People's CrusadePeople's Crusade
The People's Crusade is part of the First Crusade and lasted roughly six months from April 1096 to October. It is also known as the Peasants' Crusade or the Paupers' Crusade...
to the destination of their pilgrimage, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians, is a church within the walled Old City of Jerusalem. It is a few steps away from the Muristan....
, he started (with 40,000 men & women) from Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
in April, 1096, and arrived (with 30,000 men & women) at Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
at the end of July. The Eastern Roman Emperor Alexius I Comnenus was less than pleased with their arrival, for along with the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople
Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople
Nicholas III Grammatikos or Grammaticus was an Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople .Educated in Constantinople, Nicholas spent much of his early years in Pisidian Antioch, where it is believed he took his monastic vows. He eventually left the city around 1068 when it was threatened by...
, he was now required to provide for the care and sustenance of the vast host of paupers for the remainder of their journey.
Most of the paupers failed to make their way out of Roman Catholic jurisdiction. The majority were incapable of being provided for by the various lordships and dioceses along the way and either starved, returned home or were put into servitude, while a substantial number were captured and sold into slavery by the various Slavic robber barons in the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, kindling the view of the Balkan Slavs as unredeemed robbers and villains. Peter joined the only other section which had succeeded in reaching Constantinople, that of Walter the Penniless
Walter the Penniless
Walter Sans Avoir , also mistakenly known as the Penniless, was the lord of Boissy-sans-Avoir in the Ile-de-France. As lieutenant to Peter the Hermit he co-led the People's Crusade at the beginning of the First Crusade...
, into a single group and encamped the still numerous pilgrims around Constantinople while he negotiated the shipping of the People's Crusade to the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
. The Emperor meanwhile had failed to provide for the pilgrims adequately and the camp made itself a growing nuisance, as the increasingly hungry paupers turned to pilfering the imperial stores.
Alexius, worried at the growing disorder and fearful of his standing before the coming armed Crusader armies, quickly concluded negotiations and shipped them across the Bosporus
Bosporus
The Bosphorus or Bosporus , also known as the Istanbul Strait , is a strait that forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with the Dardanelles...
to the Asiatic shore in the beginning of August, with promises of guards and passage through the Turkish lines. He warned the People's Crusade to await his orders, but in spite of his warnings, the paupers entered Turkish territory. The Turks began robbing and finally attacking the largely unarmed host. Peter returned in desperation to Constantinople, seeking the Emperor's help.
The Turks soon followed the retreating People's Crusade into Byzantine territory, and in Peter's absence the pilgrims were ambushed and cut to pieces in detail by the Turks who were more numerous as well as more disciplined. Despite Peter's pronunciations of divine protection, the vast majority of the pilgrims were slaughtered by the swords and arrows of the Turks, or were enslaved. Left in Constantinople with the small number of surviving followers, during the winter of 1096-1097, with little hope of securing Byzantine support, the People's Crusade awaited the coming of the armed crusaders as their sole source of protection to complete the pilgrimage.
When the princes arrived, Peter joined their ranks as a member of council in May 1097, and with the little following which remained they marched together through Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
to Jerusalem. While his "paupers" never regained the numbers previous to the Turkish massacres, his ranks were increasingly replenished with disarmed, injured, or bankrupted crusaders. Nonetheless, aside from a few rousing speeches to motivate the Crusaders, he played a subordinate part in the remaining history of the First Crusade which at this point clearly settled on a military campaign as the means to secure the pilgrimage routes and holy sites in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
.
He appears, in the beginning of 1098, as attempting to escape from the privations of the siege of Antioch
Siege of Antioch
The Siege of Antioch took place during the First Crusade in 1097 and 1098. The first siege, by the crusaders against the Muslim city, lasted from October 21, 1097, to June 2, 1098. The second siege, against the crusaders who had occupied it, lasted from June 7 to June 28, 1098.-Background:Antioch...
--showing himself, as Guibert of Nogent
Guibert of Nogent
Guibert of Nogent was a Benedictine historian, theologian and author of autobiographical memoirs. Guibert was relatively unknown in his own time, going virtually unmentioned by his contemporaries...
says, a "fallen star." However, Guibert and other sources go on to write that Peter was responsible for the speech before the half-starved and dead Crusaders which motivated their sally from the gates of Antioch and their subsequent crushing defeat of the overwhelmingly superior Muslim army besieging the city. Thus, having recovered his stature, in the middle of the year he was sent by the princes to invite Kerbogha
Kerbogha
Kerbogha was Atabeg of Mosul during the First Crusade and was renowned as a soldier. He was a Turk who owed his success to his military talent. In 1098, when he heard that the Crusaders had besieged Antioch, he gathered his troops and marched to relieve the city. By the time he arrived, around...
to settle all differences by a duel which the Emir subsequently declined; and in 1099 he appears as treasurer of the alms
Alms
Alms or almsgiving is a religious rite which, in general, involves giving materially to another as an act of religious virtue.It exists in a number of religions. In Philippine Regions, alms are given as charity to benefit the poor. In Buddhism, alms are given by lay people to monks and nuns to...
at the siege of Arqa
Arqa
Arqa is a village near Miniara in Akkar District of the North Governorate in Lebanon, 22 km northeast of Tripoli, near the coast...
(March), and as leader of the supplicatory processions around the walls of Jerusalem before it fell
Siege of Jerusalem (1099)
The Siege of Jerusalem took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099 during the First Crusade. The Crusaders stormed and captured the city from Fatimid Egypt.-Background:...
and later within Jerusalem which preceded the Crusaders' miraculous victory at the Battle of Ascalon
Battle of Ascalon
The Battle of Ascalon took place on August 12, 1099, and is often considered the last action of the First Crusade.-Background:The crusaders had negotiated with the Fatimids of Egypt during their march to Jerusalem, but no satisfactory compromise could be reached — the Fatimids were willing to give...
(August). At the end of the year he went to Latakia
Latakia
Latakia, or Latakiyah , is the principal port city of Syria, as well as the capital of the Latakia Governorate. In addition to serving as a port, the city is a manufacturing center for surrounding agricultural towns and villages...
, and sailed thence for the West. From this time he disappears; but Albert of Aix
Albert of Aix
Albert of Aix-la-Chapelle or Albert of Aachen , historian of the First Crusade, was born during the later part of the 11th century, and afterwards became canon and custos of the church of Aachen....
records that he died in 1131, as prior of a church of the Holy Sepulchre which he had founded in France.
Role in Preaching First Crusade
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
appeared to him in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians, is a church within the walled Old City of Jerusalem. It is a few steps away from the Muristan....
, and bade him preach the crusade. This story also appears in the pages of William of Tyre
William of Tyre
William of Tyre was a medieval prelate and chronicler. As archbishop of Tyre, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from a predecessor, William of Malines...
, 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
Heinrich von Sybel
Heinrich Karl Ludolf von Sybel , German historian, came from a Protestant family which had long been established at Soest, in Westphalia....
, in his Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges, suggests that in the camp of the paupers (which existed side by side with that of the knights, and grew increasingly large as the crusade tolled (?) more and more heavily in its progress on the purses of the crusaders) some idolization of Peter the Hermit had already begun, parallel to the similar glorification of Godfrey
Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon was a medieval Frankish knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087...
by the Lorrainers
Lorraine (province)
The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....
.
In this view Peter naturally became the instigator of the crusade, just as Godfrey became the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem
Kingdom of Jerusalem
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Catholic kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods....
and the legislator of the assizes
Assizes of Jerusalem
The Assizes of Jerusalem are a collection of numerous medieval legal treatises containing the law of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and Kingdom of Cyprus...
. This version of Peter's career seems as old as the Chanson des chétifs, a poem which Raymond of Antioch
Raymond of Antioch
Raymond of Poitiers was Prince of Antioch 1136–1149. He was the younger son of William IX, Duke of Aquitaine and his wife Philippa, Countess of Toulouse, born in the very year that his father the Duke began his infamous liaison with Dangereuse de Chatelherault.-Assumes control:Following the...
caused to be composed in honour of the Hermit and his followers soon after 1130, now part of the so-called "Crusade cycle
Crusade cycle
The Crusade cycle is an Old French cycle of chansons de geste concerning the First Crusade and its aftermath.-History:The cycle contains a number of initially unrelated texts, collated into interconnected narratives by later redactors...
" 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
Jonathan Riley-Smith
Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith, K.St.J., Ph.D. MA, Litt.D., FRHistS is an historian of the Crusades, and a former Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History...
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
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
), 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
Chanson d'Antioche
The Chanson d'Antioche is a chanson de geste in 9000 lines of alexandrines in stanzas called laisses, now known in a version composed about 1180 for a courtly French audience and embedded in a quasi-historical cycle of epic poems inspired by the events of 1097 – 1099, the climax of the First...
.
The original authorities for the story of Peter the Hermit are, for the authentic Peter, Anna Comnena and the Gesta Francorum
Gesta Francorum
The so-called Gesta Francorum or in full De Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum is a Latin chronicle of the First Crusade written in circa 1100-1101 by an anonymous author connected with Bohemund I of Antioch.It narrates the events of the First Crusade from the inception in November...
; for the legendary Peter, Albert of Aix. The whole career of the Hermit has been thoroughly and excellently discussed by H. Hagenmeyer, Peter der Heremite (Leipzig, 1879).