Part 1 (1/2)
Peter the Hermit.
by Daniel A. Goodsell.
PREFACE
Original material for a biography of Peter the Hermit either does not exist in this country, or, if here, does not yield itself readily to knowledge and use. The ”Life of Peter the Hermit,” by D'Outremant, and another by Andre Thevet, on which Michaud draws heavily, seem beyond reach, as are also the histories of the Crusades, by von Raumer and Maunbourg.
On examining a number of English and American ”Histories of the Crusades,” I found them to be largely abridgments or paraphrases of Michaud's monumental work.
It is, then, from Michaud and Milman chiefly that the writer has drawn the facts herein recorded, having often found it necessary to chasten the too p.r.o.nounced Roman sympathies of Michaud by the equally p.r.o.nounced Protestantism of Milman. To these authors I am so much indebted as to call for the fullest acknowledgment. The Rev. Dr. J. A. Faulkner, Professor in Drew Theological Seminary, has put me under great obligations by permitting me to use Hagenmeyer's ”Life of Peter,”
especially valuable to the early and late parts of Peter's life.
BROOKLINE, _June, 1906_.
Peter the Hermit
CHAPTER I.
PETER THE HERMIT.
THE FOREGROUND.
The great movements called the Crusades followed the leading of universal religious instincts.
[Sidenote: _The Cause of Pilgrimages_]
[Sidenote: _Belong to all Religions_]
[Sidenote: _The Impulse of To-day._]
[Sidenote: _Pilgrimages and Historic Memory_]
Wherever a great leader has been born, has taught, has suffered, died, or been buried, the feet of his followers have been glad to stand. At such spots religious emotions are revived, holy influences are believed to be absorbed, and a sense of nearness to the prophets of G.o.d acquired.
Whatever the teacher wore, used, or even looked upon, became a treasure through its relation to him. In India pilgrimages to holy shrines, rivers, and cities have been works of merit, even from prehistoric times. The same is true of China as to temples, tombs, springs, and mountain summits. Devotees of later religions, like that of Mahomet, have their Meccas, as the Roman Church has her Loretto and her Lourdes.
The murder of Thomas a Becket was followed by the Canterbury pilgrimages, immortalized by Chaucer. ”From the lowest Fetichism up to Christianity itself this general and unconquerable propensity has either been sanctioned by religion or sprung up out of it.”[1] Humanity leans more readily on the Incarnate Savior than on Him who was ”before the world was.” To-day the devout Christian feels the impulse to walk where the Master walked, to behold the sea which He stilled, to sit by the well where He preached, to pray in the garden of His agony, and to stand on the summit above which He shone. And if his faith can be a.s.sured as to the site of Calvary, the great tragedy loses all historical dimness and is made real, visible, and present, though its story be read through penitent tears. The place suggests the man; the man suggests the Divine Man; He seems nearer when we wors.h.i.+p where an apostle said, ”My Lord and my G.o.d.”
[Sidenote: _The East the Fountain of Religions_]
[Sidenote: _Influence of Magna Graecia_]
The East has always been the fountain of religions to the European mind.
To the westward flowed the stream of doctrines which sprang up in the Orient. We are beginning to see that Greece came to many of her G.o.ds through instruction from the Asiatic continent, and that her originality in religion lay chiefly in her refinement of nature wors.h.i.+p and in the beautiful marble forms in which Greek genius enshrined her divinities.
From Greece the stream reached Italy in Magna Graecia, and later by the adoption through Roman a.s.similation of the G.o.ds of the Greek Pantheon.
The wors.h.i.+p of Isis and Osiris came from Egypt to Rome, and became an influential cult there, as witness the abounding symbols of that wors.h.i.+p still preserved in the Capitoline Museum.