until he pulls out his own entrails and falls dead.” The Pope gazed out over the horrified crowd, watching the effect of his announcement. “I have heard many such reports, delivered to me from too many sources, and believe me when I say these are not isolated incidents. Throughout the East, from Jerusalem to Byzantium, these things are happening daily.”
Again he paused, his eyes moving constantly, and then he said, “Let me remind you of the words of our beloved Savior, Jesus Christ. ‘Whoever should abandon in my name his house or his brothers, his father or his mother, his wife or his children or his lands, will receive them again a hundredfold and will come to eternal life.’” The silence was absolute, because people were unable to believe what they had just heard from the lips of the Pope himself. But Urban was not yet done. He gazed around him and raised both arms wide. “Heed the words of God, my children, and you knights and men of prowess, hear the cries of your brethren in the eastern lands, dying beneath the heel of the ungodly. Think not about your petty quarrels here at home, among your friends, but turn your eyes towards true Glory … the Holy City of Jerusalem itself cries out for deliverance! Take the road to the Holy Sepulcher as soldiers of God, and tear God’s land from these abominable people!”
The silence lasted for perhaps another five heartbeats, just long enough for Godfrey St. Omer to turn, open mouthed, and look into Hugh’s eyes. And then erupted a great, tumultuous shout of “God wills it! God wills it!”
Afterwards, no one could say how it began or who had started it, but the words, and the sentiment, exploded like a wind-driven fire in long, dry grass, almost as though the crowd had rehearsed it in advance and had been waiting for that moment to proclaim it. The Count and his entourage were as stunned as everyone else by the unexpectedness of what was happening, but Hugh was even more astounded by the reaction of Count Hugh himself.
It was plain that the Pope had planned his address carefully and with an eye to recruiting knights for the new war he had called for, because there were priests at the front of the crowd, close to the Pope’s dais, who were well supplied with stocks of plain white cloth crosses, evidently prepared against the surge of expected volunteers. Hugh noticed them immediately, and his cynicism about anything the Church inspired ticked in recognition. It was equally clear, however, that no one, including the Pope himself, had anticipated the furious response that his speech and its emotional appeal provoked. Everyone, it appeared, every individual member of the multitude there—knights and commoners, young and old and women and children—wanted to volunteer and rush off to attack and dismember the infidel Turks.
“Well,” Godfrey said loudly, “that was worthy of a raised eyebrow, don’t you think? Il Papa is an accomplished orator.”
“What did you expect, Goff?” Payn had to shout to make himself heard. “Think you he got to be Pope by being deaf and mute?”
“No, I don’t, but he had me thinking, for a moment there, that I should rush away and fight the Turks like a good Christian knight anxious to please his bishop and earn a blessing or two. What did you think, Hugh?”
Before Hugh could respond, the Count’s right-hand man, Pepin, interrupted. “His Grace requires your presence, gentlemen.”
They followed Pepin through the cordon of guards surrounding the Count’s party and found the Count himself among a group of his senior advisers, frowning and plucking at his lower lip. Although all of his advisers were looking at him, none of them were speaking, even among themselves. Pepin went directly to him and whispered in his ear, and the Count crooked a finger at the newcomers, then walked towards the high peak of the tent where his personal standard hung limp in the windless air. No one else moved to accompany them, and the Count opened the tent flap himself, holding it there while the three younger knights filed past him into the interior.
“Well,” he said, as soon as he had followed them inside, “what did you think of that?” He waited half a heartbeat, then added, “Any one of you may speak, for I know you’re all capable. Did the Pope stir your manly juices?”
“He was … persuasive, my lord,” Godfrey murmured.
“And? Were you persuaded, St. Omer? Were any of you?”
“Not entirely, my lord.” This was Payn.
The Count raised one eyebrow slightly. “Why not?”
Payn shrugged, not yet ready to respond, and Hugh spoke up.
“I believe it’s a matter of learning, my lord. Our studies have shown us that anything related to, or instigated by, the Church exists for the benefit of the Church and its clerics only. That is why my friends and I hesitated in the first place.”
“A matter of learning, you say. Have you learned nothing, then, about our Order?”
“My lord? I fear—”
“Aye, you fear you don’t understand. I fear the same, that you do not understand. Now here is what I require you to do. I want you and your friends here to make your way directly to the bishops surrounding the Pope’s dais and there volunteer for the Pope’s new war. Each of you will take one of the white cloth crosses they are passing out and sew it onto your surcoat, immediately, this night, so that tomorrow you will be plainly seen and recognized as one of the Pope’s Holy Warriors.”
Hugh was astounded, and he could see his friends were, too, but the Count held up his hand to silence all of them. “Think! Think of the full name of our Order. Think now of what the Pope is suggesting. Think next of how long our Order has been planning a return to its place of origin. And think about where the Pope’s war will lead. Now, do you not think a trip to Jerusalem might prove to be worthwhile for a member of our brotherhood?”
And thus it was that Hugh de Payens and his two friends were among the very first knights in Christendom to take the cloth cross from the hands of Pope Urban himself.
Hugh sewed the cross onto his surcoat that very day, aware of, but steadfastly refusing to consider, the ironies involved in their ancient and secretive Order’s instant commitment to the new Christian cause. It was sufficient for him, and his friends, to know that Count Hugh had excellent reasons underlying the swift decision he had taken, and Hugh believed that he would be informed of those reasons when, and not before, the time was right. And so, being the man he was, he threw himself into his new duties and permitted himself to be swept up into the frenzy of the moment, so that, like almost everyone else in Clermont on that occasion, he began his personal odyssey to the Holy Land in a state of fevered commitment verging on ecstasy, screaming the instantly coined catchphrase “Deus le veult!” with everyone else.
“Deus le veult!” God wills it! It was a phrase Hugh de Payens would grow first to distrust, then to detest.
The hysteria unleashed on that final day of the Council of Clermont took everyone by surprise, including Pope Urban himself. He had been working hard for months, meticulously preparing what he would say to the assembly, and he had spent weeks struggling to find the very best way of couching his emotion-laden appeal so that it would be as close to irresistible as he could possibly make it to the hard-headed people for whom he intended it. Urban had hoped to spark enthusiasm for a real war, in a glorious cause, among the bored and fractious young Frankish knights and their aristocratic leaders, knowing that if he could win the commitment and involvement of the Franks, then all the other knights and lords of Christendom would run to join them. That had been Urban’s sole objective, and in launching his initiative at the council in Clermont, he could have had no idea of what would happen.
The mood of the people, comprising equal parts of hopelessness, disillusionment, and despair, allied with the appalling conditions of poverty and moral deprivation under which they lived and their need for something tangible and visible in which they could believe, combined on that Tuesday afternoon, the twenty-eighth of November, 1095, to create the perfect tinder for the spark of Urban’s impassioned appeal. The result was instant chaos, an incredible and utterly spontaneous explosion of raw emotion and popular enthusiasm