Enthusiasm is
contagious, and the pope appears to have caught it instantly from one
whose zeal was so unbounded. Giving the Hermit full powers, he sent
him abroad to preach the holy war. Peter departed, going from town to
town, and from village to village, and, in the language of the
chroniclers, "traversing the whole of Europe in less than a year's
time." His strange and wild aspect, his glittering eye, his shrill
and unearthly eloquence, the grandeur of his theme, his pathetic
descriptions of Jerusalem and the Christians there, produced
everywhere the most extraordinary sensations. "He set out," says a
contemporary historian, "from whence I know not, nor with what
purpose; but we saw him passing through the towns and villages,
everywhere preaching, and the people flocking round him, loading him
with gifts, and praising his sanctity with such eulogiums, that I
never remember having seen so great honors paid to any other man. The
people reverenced him so that they plucked the hairs from the mane of
his mule, and kept them afterward as relics. Out of doors he generally
wore a woolen tunic, with a brown mantle, which descended to his
heels. His arms and feet were bare, he ate little or no bread, but
lived on fish and wine."
10. Such being the success of the Hermit's mission, the pope showed
his approbation of the project by summoning in the year 1095 two
councils.
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