Peter in Jerusalem

When the main body of the First Crusade reached the Holy Land, Peter the Hermit joined them as a member of the council that made decisions. Peter had drummed up so much support for the Crusade that he was welcome, even though his "People's Crusade" (see the last few posts) had gone spectacularly off the rails.

In fact, Guibert of Nogent, a contemporary of the Crusade who wrote a chronicle of it, refers to Peter's status in 1098 as a "fallen star." His preaching continued, however. During the Siege of Antioch, for instance, Guibert gives Peter credit for making a stirring speech to the starving Crusaders that inspired them to leave the city and attack the larger Muslim force and achieve victory. (Part of that inspiration may have been from the discovery of the Holy Lance.)

The march to Jerusalem included besieging the town of Arqa, during which it is recorded that Peter was given responsibility as treasurer of alms.

Peter was present at Jerusalem when the Crusade captured the city, and spent some time there. According to The Alexiad, the account written by Anna Comnena of that time from the viewpoint of the reign of her father, Alexios I:

He saw many forbidden and wicked things occurring there… so he sought out the patriarch of the holy church of Jerusalem and asked why gentiles and evil men were able to pollute holy places and steal away offerings from the faithful, using the church as if a stable, beating up Christians, despoiling pilgrims through unjust fees, and inflicting on them many sufferings." The frustrated patriarch threw up his hands in exasperation: "Why do you reprimand me and disturb me in the midst of my fatherly cares? I have but the strength and power of a tiny ant when compared to those proud men. We have to redeem our lives here by regular tribute payments or else face death-dealing punishment."

Perhaps he was discouraged by what he saw in Jerusalem. In 1099 he went to Latakia (Laodicea) in Syria, and from there sailed west and home. On his way home, with Count Conon of Montaigou, a storm threatened their ship, but subsided when they prayed and promised to found a church if they survived. The two later founded Neufmoustier Abbey in Huy.

It seems he founded an Augustinian monastery in France, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The contemporary Albert of Aachen claims Peter died there in 1131 as its prior, but this must be a fabrication. In the records of Neufmoustier Abbey we find an entry for 8 July 1115:

...the death of Dom Pierre, of pious memory, venerable priest and hermit, who deserved to be appointed by the Lord to announce the first to the holy Cross.

We assume this is more accurate than Albert, especially since Albert had a tendency to presume things that suited him. And because Neufmoustier contains Peter's tomb (see illustration).

One item attributed to Peter that cannot be proven is that he invented the rosary, presumably as a guide for the illiterate in their prayers. Tomorrow we'll look at what history we know about the rosary.

Peter the Hermit

After the announcement of the First Crusade, a French Roman Catholic priest from Amiens named Pierre took it upon himself to preach the Crusade around the countryside. He chose to go about in a long coarse robe, forsaking shoes and hat. Riding a donkey, he preached all over Italy. Outside Italy, he preached around Huy in Lower Lotharingia. In fact, tradition in Huy says he was there when the word came (not at Clermont for the announcement, as some historians reported), and immediately started preaching to anyone who would listen of the need to join up.

His mother's name was Alide Montaigu, so he may have been related—albeit distantly—to the Counts of Montaigou. He certainly traveled with Count Conon on the Crusade itself, as seen in yesterday's post.

He tried to get to Jerusalem on his own, not waiting for the Crusading army called by Pope Urban II. He persuaded thousands of lower-class folk to follow him to the Holy Land. The result was thousands of  unskilled men and women with little means to pay their way across Europe (and some knights as well). This "pre-Crusade" is known as the People's Crusade, as I explained 13 years ago.

Why did many thousands of poorer people join? Millenarianism, the belief that the Year 1000 could bring the Apocalypse, may have been a concern for people who wanted to expiate their sins with a grand gesture. There had been a recent outbreak of ergot poisoning that seemed like an end-time sign. Sights in the sky recently—a meteor shower, a lunar eclipse, the Aurora Borealis, a comet—also created fear.

Peter claimed a divine mandate from Christ to preach the Crusade, and even claimed he had a letter to prove it. He had everyone to whom he preached agree to meet at Cologne in Germany, which they did on 12 April 1096, Holy Saturday.

Their religious fervor became indiscriminate in their choice of enemy, finding people to kill before they ever left Germany. Tomorrow we'll learn about the shameful Rhineland Massacres.

Count of Montaigou

When Huy became the first municipality north of the Alps to be granted city rights, its right to some self-governance meant Conon, Count of Montaigou, lost some of his rights over it.

Conon was connected to Huy from an early age. His parents were Gozelon of Montaigou and Ermengarde de Grandpré. Ermengarde's father was Count of Clermont, and after his death that title passed through Ermengarde to her son. Count Gozelon died in 1064, succeeded by his eldest, Conon, a couple years before Huy's city rights charter. Conon up to that time was a knight who had only appeared as witness to a few royal charters.

Records are scarce for that part of Lotharingia, but a 1 January 1071 document confirms that he was then known as Count Conon, whose liege lords were Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and the Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Godfrey IV "The Hunchback." (Godfrey has appeared a few times in this blog, as godfather to Godfrey of Bouillon and as former husband of the widowed Matilda of Tuscany.)

Conon and his wife, Ida, had four sons: Gozelon, Lambert, Henry, and Theobald. Theobald died young. Henry became an archdeacon and provost. Lambert became count of Montaigou and Clermont after his father's death. Gozelon's fate? You'll see shortly.

Conon was one of the nobles who agreed to the Treuga Dei, the Truce of God. Conon loved justice. When Bishop Otbert of Liège tried to depose Abbot Theodoric II of the monastery of Saint Hubert, Conon supported Theodoric.

When the First Crusade came along, Conon went along with his two eldest sons under Godfrey of Bouillon's banner. Among the first to arrive at Constantinople, Conon was one of the men negotiating with the representative of Emperor Alexios I. Gozelon died before reaching Jerusalem, but Conon and Lambert fought in Jerusalem and lived.

While Conon was returning home (a legend says) with Peter the Hermit and some men of Huy, a storm endangered their ship. They prayed that they would build a church if they survived, at which the storm immediately subsided. Conon and Peter founded the Augustinian canonry of Neufmoustier in Huy, where (according to tradition), Peter lived until his death in 1115 and was buried there. It was said that if you could not make it to Jerusalem after vowing to go, a pilgrimage to the abbey was sufficient to fulfill the vow. (Some of the ruins are shown above.)

Conon himself died on 1 May 1106, succeeded by Lambert, who lived at least until 1140.

Peter the Hermit, although he has cropped up in a few blog posts over the years, has never been fully discussed. Let's resolve that next time.

The First City

If you saw yesterday's post on city rights, you might wonder: if they weren't already, when was the first "city" thought of as such? Wasn't Rome already a city?

Well yes, cities existed before the Middle Ages. In the growing feudalism north of the Alps, however, a powerful noble claimed control over all the lands he could conquer, or that he was given by a higher-ranking noble. Giving up that power wasn't common. When a municipality proved itself to be especially valuable, however, they might be allowed some self-governance. The first such place north of the Alps was Huy, from Latin Hoius vicus, "Hoyoux village." 

It had an ideal location, at the mouth of the River Hoyoux where it joined the larger River Meuse, making transportation of goods easy. From the original Roman camp, it was evangelized by St. Domitian, the "Apostle of the Meuse Valley," in the 6th century. Legend says he delivered the area from the ravages of a dragon.

Huy also became known for tanning, woodworking, and wine, making it one of the most prosperous cities along the river. When the local office of bishop became a prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 985, Huy and the area around it became its own county, with a count appointed by the bishop to administer it.

By this time it already had a market; we know this because records of King Childeric III in 743 gave an exemption to some monks from the toll paid on goods sold at the market. (That was kind of Childeric, since these tolls—essentially a sales tax—provided a healthy source of revenue for royal coffers.) Revenues from Huy were sufficient that King Lothair II in 862 diverted some to the double monastery of Stavelot-Malmedy. In 890 its status was upgraded with the construction of a fortress on a hill. (The illustration shows the castle as it appeared c.1600.)

We don't know what the tipping point was. It was overseen by a series of counts, but under Count Conon in 1066 it was granted the first known city rights charter north of the Alps.

Huy was one of the areas Peter the Hermit wandered through to drum up support for the First Crusade and the People's Crusade. The textile industry was an enormous source of its power and revenue in the 13th and 14th centuries.

One of its strengths—its strategic position on the rivers—made it a target during the wars of Louis XIV, and it suffered so much that the residents dismantled the castle themselves in 1715 to eliminate its military value. A modern citadel exists on the hill now.

When power transfers hands, someone suffers. What was Count Conon like, and was it difficult for him to have such a gem removed from his governance? Let's take a look at this obscure Count of Montaigu tomorrow.