he sufferings
of the natives and pilgrims of Palestine, every heart was melted to
compassion; every breast glowed with indignation, when he challenged the
warriors of the age to defend their brethren, and rescue their Savior:
his ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and tears,
and ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud
and frequent appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels
of paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. [212] The most
perfect orator of Athens might have envied the success of his eloquence;
the rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and
Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and decrees of the
supreme pontiff.

[Footnote 1: Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and
from thence of Picardie, which does not date later than A.D. 1200. It
was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome
humor of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the
frontier of France and Flanders, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447,
Longuerue. Description de la France, p. 54.)]

[Footnote 2: William of Tyre (l. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus describes
the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis ingenii, et oculum
habeas perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium.
See Albert Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p. 482. Anna Comnena in Alex isd,
l. x. p. 284, &c., with Ducarge's Notes, p. 349.]

[Footnote 211: Wilken considers this as doubtful, (vol. i. p. 47.)--M.]

[Footnote 212: He had seen the Savior in a vision: a letter had fallen
from heaven Wilken, (vol. i. p. 49.)--M.]

The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already embraced the
design of arming Europe against Asia; the ardor of his zeal and ambition
still breathes in his epistles: from either side of the Alps, fifty
thousand Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St. Peter; [3] and
his successor reveals his intention of marching at their head against
the impious sectaries of Mahomet. But the glory or reproach of
executing, though not in person, this holy enterprise, was reserved for
Urban the Second, [4] the most faithful of his disciples. He undertook
the conquest of the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was
possessed and fortified by his rival Guibert of Ravenna, who contended
with Urban for the name and honors of the pontificate. He attempted to
unite the powers of the West, at a time wh