the Crusaders rendered them perfectly odious to the men and women on whom they were billeted. The whole matter is very complicated. Still, when we consider the course of events, we must come to the conclusion that for history the supreme significance of the Crusades lies in the fact that they put a check on the Turkish advance, and so effectually broke its power that the fatal consequences momentarily threatened were for ever prevented. He who believes that God is in history will see the fanaticism of relic worship overruled for the deliverance of Christendom from total destruction.
While the appeal of Alexius and the thundercloud in the East to which it pointed may have furnished the motives of statesmen, it was the maltreatment of holy pilgrims and the desecration of holy sites that roused the passion of the multitude. In this age of relic worship it was intolerable that infidels should hold the most sacred of all relics—the cave in which the Saviour was born, the Cross on which He had died, and the tomb in which He was buried. A practical age will smile at the fanaticism of such a thought rousing Europe to a war fever. But it has been justly observed that we have here a rare instance of warfare waged for an idea. For this reason we may perceive in the inception of the Crusades the poetry of chivalry, as we see in the legends that followed them its romance; unhappily, when we come to study the grim story of the actual events, poetry and romance vanish in horrors of carnage.
The popes have the credit of originating the Crusades and of being their chief promoters. The earliest effort of the kind has been sought in a letter ascribed to Pope Sylvester ii., about the year 1000, in the midst of the crisis of gloom and terror when people were expecting the end of the world. This letter is addressed to all Christians in the name of the church at Jerusalem, beseeching them to pity the miseries of the Holy City and come to its rescue with money if not with arms; but its
