Pope Urban Thesis

The Gesta Version recorded that Pope Urban said as much, “Great is your reward in Heaven.” This previous quote follows the same path that the first two accounts discussed as well. Pope Urban knew that if he could make the men confidant in their eternal life then they would march wherever he told them to. This manipulation of a man’s spirituality was a very cunning move since a lot of the regular soldiers would have to come from the peasants of the nation. Thus, when Pope Urban told them that if they left behind their meager conditions in their home nation in order to fight the Muslims, he made sure they knew that their life after their mortal one would be better by tenfold. One could see how a decision to leave poverty in order to secure a
place in heaven would have appealed to the poor.
One interesting point that the Gesta Version does not discuss is the relationship between Muslims and Christians. There was not a single point where Pope Urban insulted the Muslims or the Islamic faith nor tried to paint them as “the other”. From this version alone one might assume that there was no need for Pope Urban to address the Muslims since, having used the men’s spirituality, the common man was already motivated enough to go east. However, even though the Gesta Version did not mention this relationship, it has become evident from the previous two versions that there was a raw hatred between the different religions.
The version of Balderic of Bol recorded Pope Urban as having used several different angles in order to inspire the men to wage war. The first area Pope Urban drew upon was the anger of the men gathered. It was in the first paragraph when Pope Urban said, “The blessed Peter first presided as Bishop at Antioch; behold, in his own church the Gentiles have established their superstitions, and the Christian religion, which they ought rather to cherish, they have basely shut out from the ball dedicated to God! The estates given for the support of the saints and the patrimony of nobles set aside for the sustenance of the poor are subject to pagan tyranny.” One would imagine that this was said so that the men would have balked at. These acts that Pope Urban described must have riled up the men and made them more willing to participate in the Crusade. In this sense, anger would have been an excellent motivator because it would have provided the men with the motivation to kill the Saracens. When Pope Urban sparked anger within the men he most likely knew that it would make them more willing to volunteer since anger has a way of making people ignore the risks.
In Bolderic’s account Pope Urban took an interesting turn near the end of his speech when he pivoted from anger to shame, “You, girt about with the badge of knighthood, are arrogant with great pride; you rage against your brothers and cut each other in pieces.
This is not the (true) soldiery of Christ which rends asunder the sheepfold of the Redeemer. The Holy Church has reserved a soldiery for herself to help her people, but you debase her wickedly to her hurt.” In this way Pope Urban made sure that if anger did not move the men then shame would. It would have been no small thing to be told that the way one was leading a life was disgraceful to the church. This would have filled the men with a desire to atone for their misdeeds and to do it in the most prominent way possible. Their atonement could have been easily fulfilled with the army that the church was so conveniently gathering to march east. Shame and anger were two excellent motivators and Pope Urban understood exactly how to elicit them from his
listeners.
Guibert de Nogent’s version shared many similarities with the previous versions but it did set itself apart in one regard.
Unlike the others, this version is the only one that mentioned the Antichrist, “And if Antichrist finds there no Christians (just as at present when scarcely any dwell there), no one will be there to oppose him, or whom he may rightly overcome.” This would have been the best tool to elicit a sense of duty from the men. As unique as it was for this version to use the Antichrist it still shared similarities with the other versions. Once Pope Urban invoked the Antichrist it would have elicited anger, like Balderic of Dol’s version, a need for security, similar to Robert the Monk’s version, and the idea of trying to earn redemption, like the Gesta Version. Those three feelings would have motivated the men to march east and could have been the deciding factors that pushed the men to
commit.
Pope Urban’s letter to the Crusaders gave perhaps the best insight into how volatile the relations between Christians and Muslims were at the time. Near the beginning of his letter he wrote, “Your brotherhood, we believe, has long since learned from many accounts that a barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient.” Pope Urban categorized the Muslims into the barbarian category and this allowed the Crusaders to view their enemies as a less civilized people, ones that needed to be cleansed from the world. Many of the prior sources aimed at doing the same thing so that the Muslims would seem like anything but fellow humans to the Crusaders.
All five versions of Pope Urban’s speech have shown different motivators used to influence the men to march east. There was no one key emotion that the Pope tried to tap into but instead it was a range of feelings that helped start the Crusades. Added to this, the way in that the Christians viewed the Muslims and their faith also helped to stoke the fire. Pope Urban capitalized upon this as well and together with feelings of anger and compassion or a need for security and redemption, the Pope was able to begin the Crusades.