Especially
was there one, the divinely appointed shepherd of the poor of Christ,
the anxious steward of His Church, who from his high and ancient watch
tower, in the fulness of apostolic charity, surveyed narrowly what was
going on at thousands of miles from him, and with prophetic eye looked
into the future age; and scarcely had that enemy, who was in the event
so heavily to smite the Christian world, shown himself, when he gave
warning of the danger, and prepared himself with measures for averting
it. Scarcely had the Turk touched the shores of the Mediterranean and
the Archipelago, when the Pope detected and denounced him before all
Europe. The heroic Pontiff, St. Gregory the Seventh, was then upon the
throne of the Apostle; and though he was engaged in one of the severest
conflicts which Pope has ever sustained, not only against the secular
power, but against bad bishops and priests, yet at a time when his very
life was not his own, and present responsibilities so urged him, that
one would fancy he had time for no other thought, Gregory was able to
turn his mind to the consideration of a contingent danger in the almost
fabulous East. In a letter written during the reign of Malek Shah, he
suggested the idea of a crusade against the misbeliever, which later
popes carried out. He assures the Emperor of Germany, whom he was
addressing, that he had 50,000 troops ready for the holy war, whom he
would fain have led in person. This was in the year 1074.

In truth, the most melancholy accounts were brought to Europe of the
state of things in the Holy Land. A rude Turcoman ruled in Jerusalem;
his people insulted there the clergy of every profession; they dragged
the patriarch by the hair along the pavement, and cast him into a
dungeon, in hopes of a ransom; and disturbed from time to time the Latin
Mass and office in the Church of the Resurrection. As to the pilgrims,
Asia Minor, the country through which they had to travel in an age when
the sea was not yet safe to the voyager, was a scene of foreign
incursion and internal distraction. They arrived at Jerusalem exhausted
by their sufferings, and sometimes terminated them by death, before they
were permitted to kiss the Holy Sepulchre.

9.

Outrages such as these were of frequent occurrence, and one was very
like another. In concluding, however, this Lecture, I think it worth
while to set before you, Gentlemen, the circumstances of one of them in
detail, that you may be